There are at least two hundred people in the country club’s grand ballroom. Lev got to pick the band, he got to choose the food—he even got to select the color of the linens: red and white—for the Cincinnati Reds—and his name, Levi Jedediah Calder, is stamped in gold on the silk napkins for people to take home as a remembrance.

This party is all for him. It’s all about him. And he’s determined to have the best time of his life.

So how will this turn out to be horrible?

Some of his friends had felt funny about coming of course.
“I don’t know, Lev,” they had said, “it’s kind of weird. I mean, what kind of present am I supposed to bring?”
“You don’t have to bring anything,” Lev had told them. “There are no presents at a tithing party. Just come and have a good time. I know I will.”
And he does.
He asks every girl he invited to dance, and not a single one turns him down. He even has people lift him up in a chair and dance with him around the room, because he had seen them do that at a Jewish friend’s bar mitzvah. True, this is a very different kind of party, but it’s also a celebration of him turning thirteen, so he deserves to get lifted up in a chair too, doesn’t he?

He’s celebrating his imminent not-death. I really like the bar mitzvah comparison – thirteen is historically important as the age a lot of cultures used for someone who had grown up. Here, it’s the age where you’re killable. Also, he’s just so believably okay with all this.

I mean, yeah, this is insane because it’s something that’d only develop in a culture with a long, long history of this and even then it’d need to have a more positive beginning than a compromise between two opposing factions. But everything about this book is stupid, at least this bit works in isolation.

His parents give a toast. His grandmother gives a toast. An uncle he doesn’t even know gives a toast. “To Lev: It’s been a joy to watch you grow into the fine young man you are, and I know in my heart that you’ll do great things for everyone you touch in this world.”

This totally should have been the first chapter. This is great.

It’s also got some actual sane emotions. Lev keeps thinking the party’s going by too fast. He’s obviously got some buried feelings about his life ending, but it’s subtle and very similar to any kid moving on to some big life event, keeping the dissonance of this being about his death.

Then his oldest brother screws things up. The guy is twenty-eight and it seems like his family’s been steadily having kids the whole time. I wonder how old his parents are? Maybe that’s part of why they’re killing him. You can have one last kid when you’re getting old, then get rid of it before it’s too much trouble and go hang out in Florida.

But anyway, oldest bro has just been sulking and drinking the whole time, despite having to fly across the country to make it to this party. And it’s not because he’s jealous of all the attention Lev’s getting. He hugs Lev.

“I’m having the time of my life.”
“Damn right! The time of your life! Gotta wrap up all those life events, all those parties, into one—birthdays, wedding, funeral.” Then he turns to their father. “Very efficient, right, Dad?”
“That’s enough,” their father says quietly, but it only makes Marcus get louder.
“What? I’m not allowed to talk about it? Oh, that’s right— this is a celebration. I almost forgot.”
Lev wants Marcus to stop, but at the same time he doesn’t.

This is such a great chapter, it really is.

We finally have someone objecting to this in a way that feels real – it’s treated as a family squabble, the way actual serious differences in opinion would shake out.

“Here’s to my brother, Lev,” Marcus says. “And to our parents! Who have always done the right thing. The appropriate thing. Who have always given generously to charity. Who have always given 10 percent of everything to our church. Hey, Mom— we’re lucky you had ten kids instead of five, otherwise we’d end up having to cut Lev off at the waist!”

How does that work, though?

When we first heard about the plane tickets, I thought the idea was that you’re paid lots of money for signing your kid up. But there’s since been no reference to that, and you’d really expect that to have come up with Risa, especially because culling some kids to pay for the rest would be a better reason to kill a healthy but not too impressive kid. The state homes are presumably full of kids that wouldn’t have much value as organ parts, so things could easily get cutthroat between the smaller percentage of healthy kids who all have to prove they’re worth even more whole than they are in pieces.

So how are they giving their kid to the church? Do the priests get first dibs on his organs? Was there a compromise about the sex scandals where priests agreed not to molest kids but in return they’d get free child dicks? I mean, it makes about as much sense as the other compromise.

Actually, given the constant insistence that you’re still alive and it’s still you, as well as that all the parts are used, wow, that’s really squicky and let’s move on now.

Gasps from all those assembled. People shaking their heads. Such disappointing behavior from an eldest son.

…well, all good things must come to an end.

Tithing does not seem to be standard at all. All his classmates were weirded out by it, and the scope of the celebration makes it clear this is a very unusual thing.

Now, you could have some setup where, again, there’s longstanding tradition that just happens not to be done very often these days, so although most people wouldn’t kill their kid, they think it’s a mark of honor to do so. But – for that to be true, tithing has to have some value, as it’s already been established that kids are getting unwound left and right. There’s no lack of kids getting killed because their parents don’t like them or the state is sick of housing them, so why would donating an extra kid mean anything?

Really, the only place this should have any religious connection is some sort of hardcore environmentalist stance, where they see it as part of population control. Of course, even then for it to be believable as a sacrifice for their beliefs you’d still have to remove the idea that kids are getting killed all the time for being annoying.

Then he turns and storms out with such steady confidence in his stride that Lev realizes he’s not drunk at all.

I think this is like Connor not having any tattoos. (Actually, wait, if they use all parts and the kids get tattoos, doesn’t that mean other people will end up with tattoo chunks?)

Because why shouldn’t he be drunk? His parents are murdering his baby brother and the whole community’s turned out to celebrate this. It might just be there because the author wants to make it clear that he’s right about what he’s saying, but it’s not like anyone was confused about if ganking thirteen year olds for their sweet, sweet organs is good. I think it’s there simply because getting drunk is a sign of bad people, and so no good person can have that as a trait.

Anyway, his dad apologizes to Lev and suggests getting back to the party, but Lev is unsettled and decides to go talk to the pastor, who’s been a friend of the family since before he was even born. I am not 100% up on the exact terminology breakdowns, but pastor generally means some sort of Protestant, so now we know slightly more about the religious setup. Unfortunately there are a billion different flavors of that, so narrowing it down further is going to be harder.

The pastor asks if he’s feeling scared, and he admits he is.

“I thought I was ready. I thought I was prepared.”
“It’s natural. Don’t worry about it,”
But it doesn’t ease the disappointment Lev feels in himself.

Really, best chapter! Even as he feels something wrong, he reacts to it as a failing on his own part. This is what I want to see when I’m presented with a different culture.

He’s had his entire life to prepare for this—it should have been enough. He knew he was a tithe from the time he was little. “You’re special,” his parents had always told him. “Your life will be to serve God, and mankind.” He doesn’t remember how old he was when he found out exactly what that meant for him.

See? Why is no one else bringing their kids up to think this is a great idea? So creepy!

The pastor asks if any of the kids have been giving him trouble, and he says nothing new.

All his life he’s had to deal with kids who resented him, because grownups treated him as if he was special. There were kids who were kind, and kids who were cruel. That was life. It did bother him, though, when kids called him things like “dirty Unwind.” As if he was like those other kids, whose parents signed the unwind order to get rid of them.

Ah. And here the book’s just charged headlong into what I was complaining about – it doesn’t make sense for him to be a sacred thing if other people are doing it for petty reasons, especially when those petty reasons make up the majority of situations.

He is his family’s pride and joy. Straight As in school, MVP in little league. Just because he’s to be unwound does NOT means he’s an Unwind.

I wonder how this is intended. I mean, it does give you the whole sense that this is so horribly wasteful, but then, the reason murdering kids is wrong isn’t because a few of the murdered kids get good grades and it’s not fair to them.

There are, of course, a few other tithes at his school

What?

Okay, look, eighty kids have turned out for this, none of whom seem to have been at one of these parties before. There’s so little cultural context for it they weren’t even sure how to behave. And he just got through saying that he got some bullying at school because other kids being unwound is because their parents wanted to get rid of them. You can’t then say that actually, there’s a bunch more like him. For there to be a bunch of tithes at his school alone while the standard unwind is a troublemaker, they must be killing an astounding number of kids.

but they’re all from other religions, so Lev has never felt a real sense of camaraderie with them.

What? God, book, and you were doing so well at making Lev seem like a person and not some weird teen robot hybrid. Even just getting murdered should be enough that they seem more like you than anyone else. These kids are getting murdered for exactly the same reason as you, after being raised up their whole life knowing about it, exactly like you. How is the fact they don’t go to exactly the same church as you the biggest issue here?

Also, what? What religions? That presumably means they’re non-Christian. Even if we assume Lev is from a branch of Christianity that doesn’t believe Catholicism is a real religion, that only gets us to two religions (also I just can’t see the Catholic church being super gungho about this. As I said, they’re one of the few large prolife groups that are more than profetallife.). Anyway, the other major candidates would be Judaism (I don’t think so), Islam (they require explicit consent from the donor so presumably nope), Mormons (I’m not aware of any extra issues they’d have besides the basic childmurder bit), Hinduism (ditto) and looking it up apparently Buddhism is in favor of organ donation as holy self-sacrifice, so they’d either be all over it or completely rejecting it on the basis that forcing the kid is profaning what should be sacred. And certainly all the sects that believe all medicine is evil aren’t going to be part of this.

And that’s just the current state of things – introducing something as off the wall of this means most religions would have to come to a brand new ruling on the matter. Hinduism is fine with regular organ donation, but they might object to someone being divided up alive because they decide it’ll fuck with reincarnation and karma and stuff.

Plus. Most religions are conservative, which means that even if we accept everyone doesn’t really get upset about slaughtering kids, most churches would still oppose it just for being a huge change to how things were traditionally done. Actively sacrificing kids for the church’s honor requires the church not only get over that first hump but then turn around to embrace the idea.

I mean, I’m sure there’d be a couple sects where tithing shows up. The bible does have a segment about how God doesn’t want you to kill your kid for him. But it also has him expressing that by asking for it, then speaking to the guy about to carve his kid’s heart out and saying never mind, then providing a suitable substitute. Some preacher is going to take that to mean that God would speak up if he didn’t want them to sacrifice their kid, so therefore doing it must be Jesus-approved. That would also fit with the otherwise bizarre insistence that it’s not really killing the kid – that means it’s sacrificing your child without killing your child, so it’s not violating the bit about God not wanting dead kids while being the greatest possible thing to give up.

(Or would be if most parents weren’t doing it to get rid of the kid. It’s like making a big deal of offering a portion of food in these modern times where we throw out a hundred times more every day.)

Where were we? Right, Lev’s thinking about how he’s different from other kids.

Their lives will be lived in an undivided state. Their bodies and their futures are their own. Lev has always felt closer to God than to his friends, or even his family. He often wonders if being chosen always leaves a person so isolated.

Ah, back to what this chapter does well.

“I’ve been having lots of wrong thoughts,” Lev tells Pastor Dan.
“There are no wrong thoughts, only thoughts that need to be worked through and overcome.”

If they weren’t wrong you wouldn’t need to overcome them, would you?

I don’t know if this is supposed to be especially creepy because I tend to just find this stuff inherently disturbing, but it just seems like he’s trying to redefine what Lev’s feeling for no discernible reason.

Anyway, Lev’s wrong thoughts are that he’s jealous of all the people who aren’t going to die instead of being grateful for the honor of being tithed.

I can’t stop wondering why it has to be me.”
Pastor Dan, who was always so good at looking people in the eye, now looks away. “It was decided before you were born. It’s not anything you did, or didn’t do.”

That’s…not really what he’s saying, though. He knows it’s nothing he did, and he’s feeling that isn’t fair.

“The thing is, I know tons of people with big families . . .”
Pastor Dan nodded. “Yes, it’s very common these days.”

Huh. So sounds like they banned abortion and contraception in one go. That would be absolutely disastrous. But it does seem to fit – a lot of birth control works in part by preventing implantation, and we seem to be going off the “life begins at conception” model. It’d also fit with the total lack of understanding of what prochoice people want.

“But lots of those people don’t tithe at all—even families in our church—and nobody blames them.”

Getting shaky. I mean, yeah, a tithe is traditionally something you’re told you have to do, but it’s already established almost no one does this. It’s not that lots of the people in his church don’t, none of them have in his memory because he’s never met another tithe that’s of the same religion as him. And even the traditional tithe is pretty archaic these days and moderately remarkable for someone to do.

The pastor dodges this one completely:

“There are also people who tithe their first, second, or third child. Every family must make the decision for itself.

Yes, but apparently not many because we’ve established he’s never met one and almost all of the kids getting unwound are there for annoying their parents.

Your parents waited a long time before making the decision to have you.”
Lev reluctantly nods, knowing it’s true. He was a “true tithe.” With five natural siblings, plus one adopted, and three that arrived “by stork,” Lev was exactly one-tenth. His parents had always told him that made him all the more special.

So storking is something other than adoption. Maybe it’s the difference between making the decision to have a child and just getting pregnant.

Then the guy says that he’s the best of their family.

you are the finest of all of them in so many ways, I wouldn’t even know where to start. That’s what God asks for, you know. Not first fruits but best fruits.”

It may make no sense for this kind of belief to have developed so fast out of a thrown together nonsense compromise, but this is a pretty decent idea for how a religion might look at things.

And now Lev’s back to being okay with his upcoming death.

It’s tense the next morning, with all the other kids being kind of somber and quiet, and their goodbyes to him are long, but he wants to just get going.

Lev, dressed in his silk tithing whites, eats carefully, so as not to leave any stains on his clothes.

Yet another thing where it makes no sense for there to be time to create this sort of tradition.

his Dad’s Cadillac
…
his Mom says.

Christ.

Lev asks about what’ll happen when he gets to the harvest camp.

will they do it right away?”
His parents look to each other. “I’m sure there’ll be an orientation,” says his father.

The book says this shows they don’t know what’ll happen, but it seems just as possibly they know he’s just going to be hacked up and don’t want to sound depressing.

But it’s a very good question. What do they do with the kids they get? They seem to be processing huge numbers of them and from everyone’s insistence that there’s nothing wrong with it, they must be doing it as cleanly as possible, with minimal crying and begging from the kids to disturb anyone.

As they pull onto the interstate, Lev rolls down the window to feel the wind on his face

So I guess that answers the window question.

the pull of the seat belt on his shoulder.

While pointing out a new issue.

Lev reaches over to quickly put up his window, but before he can this kid reaches in, pulls up the lock on the door, and tugs the door open.

Some crappy locks, too. All the switch locks I’ve encountered are lower down, and the locks you have to pull like it seems is here usually are a bit more difficult to get up. Unless, I guess, the window takes absolutely forever to close.

Connor tries to pull him out and the belt stops him.

The maniac reaches over and in one swift motion unclips Lev’s seat belt.

So the seat belts, like the locks, are made of effortlessness.

Why is this being made so difficult? Just have him open the door and yank Lev out. That’s so much less complex than unlocking the door while the window’s being closed, then yanking him, then realizing there’s a seatbelt, then reaching across him to undo the seat belt.

After all that, someone finally reacts – the pastor tries to grab him and just gets punched for his trouble. Connor yanks Lev out successfully.

When he looks up he sees his father finally getting out of the car, but the crazy kid swings the car door hard against him, sending him flying.

…seriously?

And he really does go flying into the traffic. He’s not run over but the car swerves and smashes into another one and shortly there’s a pileup.

Lev pleads with Connor not to hurt anyone and to just steal whatever it is he wants, only to discover Connor was more interested in a hostage, because Connor’s a moron.

“I’m worthless as a human shield,” Lev says, trying to reason with him. “Those are tranq bullets they’re shooting, which means the cops don’t care if they hit me

It’s bad when the author’s characters are pointing out the plot doesn’t make sense. Connor insists that his value as a shield is worth it, because that totally makes up for dragging a struggling kid around.

Then the stupidity catches up to Lev.

I’ll miss my harvest! You’ll ruin everything!”

I mean, come on. It’s not like they won’t take him if he shows up late. It’d make sense to have him saying something about how he doesn’t want to get injured or killed because of the waste of organs, but not that he’ll be late to it.

Then Connor is distracted by the bus that he makes crash while running across traffic with this kid, followed by the fact a girl gets off it. Lev confirms for us that yeah, the bus driver’s looking rather dead, then decides that while his kidnapper is distracted, he should escape.

This kid is an animal. The only way to deal with him is for Lev to become an animal himself. So Lev grabs the arm that’s locked around his neck and sinks his teeth in with the full force of his jaws until he tastes blood.

Lev really has a point here. I mean, Connor’s in a bad situation and you can argue the adults are all complicit in what’s happening even if they don’t personally take part, but he doesn’t seem to even have a dim sense of regret that he’s causing all this collateral damage. Plus the first chance he got he decided to get an innocent kid involved in his mess – and while there may not have been too much risk in using him to block tranquilizer bullets, he then dragged him onto a highway.

Anyway, it works and Lev runs back.

Pastor Dan says with a hiss and strange warble to his voice, “Bun, Lev!”
Lev wasn’t expecting this. “What?”
“Run! Run as fast and as far as you can. RUN!”

God damn it.

Look, he’s a friend of the family. If he wasn’t in favor of murdering kids for god, he could have mentioned it to them at some point when they were mentioning their plan to murder their kid for god. He then spent thirteen years sitting around doing fucking nothing to try to prevent this.

Now, if he was a pastor without close ties to the family who was just coming along because of it being a tithe, this could work – he could legitimately say he didn’t think there was anything he could do to save the kid so all that was left was trying to keep Lev from being unhappy. But not with thirteen years of time to think about this – more, since the book explicitly says they only decided to have another kid after deciding to tithe it, and they’d probably been considering the idea for much longer than that.

I guess it makes most sense to figure it’s meant to be that he slowly realized it was wrong over the time he spent with Lev, but really, unless Lev is the most awesome kid and the rest of his siblings are the worst ever, ever seeing the other nine of them grow up should have been enough to clue him in that killing one is a bad thing.

Plus, stupid railroad plot. Connor has no real reason to stop and go through so much trouble for a useless hostage, and Lev shouldn’t be joining the group just because he’s a main character.

We even end the chapter with him knocked out, but the blurb says he’ll be part of the group anyway. It does make some degree of sense for Connor to try to cart him away, since Lev’s admitted he’s about to be killed himself, but not much, since Connor’s an asshole who doesn’t care about dragging innocent kids into traffic and on a purely practical level, outrunning adults trained to stop escaping kids will be hard enough without carting around an unconscious kid.