I unfortunately abandoned my reading of Scythe, despite some genuine qualities.

On paper, the world-building is very appealing: a society where death has been conquered, where "Scythes" must decide who has to die in order to regulate the population. The theme is original and raises some great philosophical questions, even though, in the portion I read, this potential remained fairly underexploited.

The novel does, however, deserve credit for offering main characters whose age is finally consistent with their characterization. Here we avoid the recurring YA cliché of the 13-year-old teenager who, with no particular background, already possesses the maturity and expertise of a forty-year-old man. In the same vein, the romance, while present, remains understated and never takes precedence over the plot. This is rare enough to be worth pointing out, since this kind of subplot is usually poorly handled in the genre, with romances that end up overtaking the story to the point of erasing the world-building, and characters who fall in love for no reason other than their looks. Here, it stays in its proper place, which suits me well since I don't particularly enjoy this type of subplot when it becomes too overwhelming.

The novel's real problem is its pacing. The plot takes an interminable amount of time to get going: I understand the narrative logic — the characters are in training, and it's normal for that phase to take time — but almost nothing happens for far too long. On top of that, the characters lack depth, especially the main protagonists, which makes them bland and hard to connect with despite their central importance to the story.

In the end, Scythe remains an enjoyable, undemanding YA read, carried by an appealing world at first glance. But between the slow start and the underdeveloped characters, I couldn't find the motivation to see it through to the end.

Nachtland, by Marius von Mayenburg, is a play that deliberately embraces provocation as its dramatic engine. It exposes the worst in its characters to explore a burning question: can we truly separate the artist from their work?

Through figures that are by turns opportunistic, moralizing, or simply overwhelmed by their own contradictions, Mayenburg crafts a human gallery oscillating between the grotesque and the disturbingly plausible.

The play multiplies its angles of attack: ethical debates, vulgar provocations, and parallels so heavy-handed they sometimes verge on irrelevance. Yet despite these excesses, it manages to evoke a wide range of emotions. We laugh, we cringe, we feel outraged, but we also - sometimes reluctantly - understand the characters? reasoning, however twisted or exaggerated it may be. It is precisely in this tension between rejection and comprehension that the play finds its strength.

Reading Nachtland, it is impossible not to think of contemporary debates surrounding the separation between an artwork and its creator. The controversies involving Roman Polanski during his Oscar recognition, or the public accusations surrounding Gérard Depardieu, resonate strongly with the questions raised by the pLay. Nachtland seems to converse with these cases, not to judge them, but to reveal how deeply they divide us and expose our own moral contradictions.

On another level, the play reminded me of Le Prénom by Matthieu Delaporte, a French comedy that sparked intense discussion upon its release. Both works share a similar device: a family gathering that spirals out of control around a charged symbobvo here a painting, there a name But while Le Prénom relies on 6-humor and social discomfort, Nachtland pushes provocation much furtherluv ziotisq confronting the audience with its own ehical boundarie.

Ultimately, Nachtland is disturbing, sometimes excessive, but indeniably stimulating play. It forces us to face questions we often prefer to avoid, and or that may well be its greatest achievement.