Imagine you’re walking alone down a side street, beginning to sweat, feeling slightly anxious. Your mind begins to wander. A flash of silver, quick movements, and a knife is at your throat, a rough man in front of you now, threatening your life.

But wait — this would never happen in MidMerica, the setting for Neal Shusterman’s popular and endlessly relevant Scythe series, where killing, and in fact all needless death, is nonexistent. Random acts of violence are a feature of the Mortal Age, the time you and I live in today, a time far in MidMerica’s past. In the world of Scythe, citizens need only worry about the scythes themselves, those people whose jobs are to maintain balance in the population by killing off — what is called “gleaning” — other people.

I believe it’s impossible to find a 100% original idea, but renowned author Neal Shusterman certainly comes close to one with his young adult novel, “Scythe,” published in 2016 by Shuster & Sons. Scythe is the first book in the Arc of a Scythe series, which includes the second book, “Thunderhead,” and the third, “The Toll,” along with a collection of short stories called “Gleanings.” With Scythe, Shusterman has certainly created a fascinating dystopian take on what a “perfect” world might look like and a powerful way to explore the idea of death.

This new world was created by the “Thunderhead,” which in our time could be thought of as “the cloud.” It then became an artificial intelligence that put an end to all imperfections of the mortal age. It showed people how to make the perfect world, and although it is always watching, it never intervenes unless there is true danger.

So, fans of books like “1984” by George Orwell, or those who see a positive future in Artificial Intelligence and self-driving cars, will really like this book. Death is no longer a problem in this new age, all the horrors of mortality — war, famine, poverty, disease, crime, politics — are far in the past. Just watch out for the Scythes.

The Scythedom was founded on the belief that humanity cannot go on without loss, and so they became the bringers of death. Scythes choose who they kill, or glean, based on who they are. One may glean at random, or another may choose based on different characteristics, such as their vibe. Either way, they must reach a certain quota by a certain time, though they may not glean each other.

In the book, we follow two teenagers, Citra and Rowan, who both truly think they could never glean another human being, or ever want to. But alas, they are both thrown into a joint apprenticeship with a scythe, knowing nothing about each other. Soon enough, they begin to grow closer, even to the point of dancing around that little word known as love (yes, love does still exist in MidMerica). Only one of them can succeed in gaining scythehood, though neither want to. Their lives only get worse from here as a sudden heart-wrenching turn of events will make them dread the end ever more.

This story has the perfect amount of suspense and surprises, and a satisfying balance of dark and light. Although, in a world like this, especially in the future, I think that there could be more representation of different kinds of love, such as inclusion of queer characters.

Shusterman explores the point of mortality so powerfully in this book, how even in a perfect world, people still must die, because immortality seems to destroy our appreciation of art and each other. “Scythe” also touches the fact that not all of humanity has the ability to be perfect. We will still feel greed and a thirst for power, money, or blood. Some of us will still need to feel bad, even if the crime rate is dialed down low. We will always be selfish creatures, at least a little bit, even if we don’t realize it. We can live in a perfect world, but we will still always be imperfect.

There is a moment of the book that still burns in my head. Still an apprentice, Citra is being shown how her new scythe gleans, by bringing the victim’s family to her home, cooking for them, treating them like her own family, then offering to let them kill her. It is a surprisingly beautiful way of gleaning that shows how much she truly cares about those she gleans.

In today’s world, a world that is far from perfect, reading “Scythe” may just help us to rethink ourselves and those around us, the choices we make that could affect the world. I finished this book almost satisfied. I say almost because I was still striving to feel the next book in my hands. But really I felt the story ended perfectly, and it brought me to think more about how we care for one another. I have found that the right moment to go ahead and do something unexpected is the moment you least expect it.

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Jeshua Wilkinson is a writer, dancer and fashion designer who lives on a farm in the hamlet of Sugar Bush. His writing has appeared in the 2023 “Wild Words Teen Writing Anthology” and in PoemVillage 2023. He’s going into 10th grade. Neal Shusterman will give a presentation at the Harrietstown Town Hall in Saranac Lake on Friday, Sept. 22 at 9:30 a.m. Register for free at www.adirondackcenterforwriting.org.