thoughts about thunderhead
Please note I wrote this, like, one month ago, and I kinda forgot to post it here, lol.
I just finished Thunderhead a few minute ago and is baffled by the ending. What the actual heck did I just read? I’d be damned if in the next book (OF COURSE THERE WILL BE THE NEXT BOOK RIGHT, RIGHT?) Thunderhead doesn’t use Greyson’s body as its vessel! The idea of locking Rowan and Citra in the ‘safe box’ is so brilliant, they can be revived in the future, but, BUT IF THUNDERHEAD AND ITS FANCY TECHNOLOGY STILL EXISTS.
On a calmer note, let’s review the book from the beginning.
The first thing is that the book has so much going on inside. Like, I think I had written that Scythe (the first book) is really fast-paced. This second book is fast-paced, and also there’s a lot going on inside, so if you are not a patient reader (like me) I think there will be a lot of details missed (like what I missed). I think I will need to re-read both book, but I will be happy about that because I’ll always happy rereading a book!
I kind of feel the book is about blindspot. Blindspot in everything. It is about perspective and opportunity, and counting possibility (man, that rhyme so well). In this verse, Thunderhead is everything; it is nearly perfect and actually what makes it only ‘nearly’ is its own limitation to itself; like the decision to leave the Scythedom alone, for example. It is interesting (and exciting?) to read that everyone (Scythe Faraday, Rowan, Citra, Munira, Greyson) is constantly finding (and being, for Greyson’s case) the blindspot of Thunderhead. So roughly, if we are going to have a ‘moral of the story’ shit from here is: that we have to be smart and find the blindspot in our lives to go on, lmao.
Now that the between-chapter notes are the thoughts of Thunderhead, it gives us the feeling that the Thunderhead is not merely an AI. It kinda creepy, really. And when I finally come to the end part of the book, you cannot miss the changing tone of Thunderhead’s notes; it goes warm at the first time: it explains its intelligence, its capability, its limitation and all; and then it goes straight to cold and threatening. It is not in the content of what it says, but it is in the intonation and the word choice that shows the mighty (mighty?) Thunderhead has gone mad. Mad at its creator: human.
In my ‘Thoughts while reading’ thread, I mentioned that the Thunderhead may be a symbolism of something. Now that I finished, it must be the symbolism of something. Human, perhaps? On how human nature is actually a complicated system that control its body? Besides, the Thunderhead is only an abstract being, isn’t it? I will proceed to read the metas in tumblr so I can have deeper understanding about this.
The other change that I accidentally discovered is on how the narration refer to Citra! It is brilliant, I repeat, brilliant, to refer her as Anastasia only after she explicitly says that finally she becomes ‘Scythe Anastasia’. Before that, the narration always refer her as Citra: Citra does this, Citra does that, and Scythe Anastasia is only used when other characters are calling her. But, man, when Citra says ‘I think I becomes Anastasia now’, the narration refer her to Anastasia! Anastasia does this, Anastasia does that! And I’m wheezing at the last chapter when she and Rowan is in the fault and it is mentioned that ‘she becomes Citra again at last’ and the narration refers her as Citra again asddjfkslnjshweffhw I can’t!
I am excited, very excited in fact, to read the continuation! I will be damned if Scythe Rand doesn’t plot against Scythe Goddard.
