Neal Shusterman

Between the time the Thunderhead came to sentience and Scythe Goddard decided something needed to change, there were hundreds of years when humans lived in a world without hunger, disease, or death and Scythes acted as the living instruments of population control.

The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not enough to be kept...