It’s been four years since the last book in the Arc of Scythe series was published, and seven since one with a full, comprehensive story was released. In that time, author Neal Shusterman has worked on several other novels, but is now returning to writing the series with a new prequel, Rising Thunder. According to him, the book will follow both the creation of The Thunderhead and backstories of the founding scythes. When the series ended, readers were left with several questions and mysteries that weren’t touched on very heavily, or were only spoken about in very broad and unclear ways. I feel that this prequel will offer exciting insights which I and many others have been awaiting for years. The information that’s been given so far has been very general regarding the basic plot, but I have a few predictions, and hopes for the story.
The first prediction I have for the book as a whole is that it will have a much more negative look at AI. The series was written throughout a period where artificial intelligence was not present in society on a wide scale, and so it was able to be written benevolently because it was more of a subversion of the typical evil AI trope. Now there’s a lot of uncertainty and debate regarding AI, and I feel like it’s gotten to a point where if the original trilogy were published today, it would be received negatively for having the perfect artificial intelligence of the Thunderhead. Shusterman was quoted as saying, “While writing it, it felt eerily resonant with AI issues of today.” so I think that there’s going to be a lot of different changes made to the Thunderhead’s creation to really perfect it, maybe it will even have different iterations like Cirrus in The Toll. There were also mentions of there being a rival to the Thunderhead, which brings me to where I think a big conflict in the story is going to stem from.
It’s known that part of the conflict will come from two different AIs struggling for dominance, and while I think readers can be certain that the Thunderhead will be the one to root for, and portrayed as the “good” one, its opposition is something there isn’t much information about. While I don’t know what the rival AI will be like, I will make a prediction about its background, and a potential villain for the story. Shusterman doesn’t seem to think too highly of the modern big tech industry given his subtle jab at Elon Musk in Gleanings and cynical portrayal of large tech corporations in All Better Now, so I can see the company and its CEO which are creating the rival AI to be creating their artificial intelligence for a malicious, or greedy reason, and that they will be the primary source of conflict throughout the book.
The Arc of Scythe has always focused on several different perspectives and plotlines however, and the AI battle will only be one half of the story at least. It seems that the other major plotline which will be taking place will involve the founding scythes, elusive figures whom readers have only gotten glimpses of. I’m confident that all of them will get in-depth personalities, but more notably readers will get insights into how they were able to achieve some of their most notable accomplishments. Their creation of the 10 plagues will be something I’m sure will be touched on, and the fact that engineering the plagues involved nanites leads me to a hunch which I’ve had since I first read the series. I think that at least one of the founding scythes (possibly Da Vinci) will be revealed to have worked on the creation of the Thunderhead. Someone had to program in the blind spot, and know how to engineer nanites more powerful than the Thunderhead’s, and the reveal that it was the work of a founding scythe would make perfect sense. Additionally, the separation of the Scythedom and Thunderhead had to be established at some point, and if details of the separation’s establishment were to be given, I could see this playing into that.
Finally, there are a few elements of the book that there isn’t much reason to think will appear, but that I could see being brought up, as well as parts that I would like to see. First, seeing how different parts of the world reacted to immortality is something that would be interesting to see. Readers are told that near the beginning of the post-mortal age people were afraid of the Thunderhead, and that there were protests in Russia specifically over its implementation. A prequel is the perfect opportunity to expand more on this, and I can clearly see that being done. Second is information about what the other charter regions are; there’s a comprehensive explanation of three of the regions, and a small amount of detail given to a fourth, leaving three which there’s no information on. The charter regions are some of the most interesting parts of the series’ world, so I think it would be interesting to see the rest. It’s also likely that there will be some giant cataclysm before the plot’s climax. The only reason I see that happening is because of the fact that I’ve seen it occur in almost every single book which Shusterman has written. Frequently, it’s a fire; fires happen very frequently in his books, and I could easily see this being a continuation of that trend.
In the end, there’s a lot of different directions Rising Thunder could go, and these are only a few ideas. The Arc of Scythe has been full of twists, and viewpoints into areas of its world which readers may not have ever thought about, if it wasn’t brought up. I’m eagerly awaiting the book’s release, and while I think these predictions are likely, they’re only smaller pieces of a larger picture.
