Wednesday, December 5, 2018

The Archived

The Archived
by Victoria Schwab
Hyperion, 2013. 321 pgs. Young Adult.

When you die, you become a History which then gets filed in the Archives. Mackenzie is a Keeper. It’s her job to return Histories to the Archives if they ever wake up. After moving with her parents to an old hotel, the number of Histories that she’s assigned to return increases and becomes harder to manage. As more and more Histories find their way into her territory, it becomes clear that something is wrong with the Archives.

This book’s entire premise was fascinating to me. I loved Schwab’s take on the afterlife (which is essentially a library). For the first 2/3 of this book I just had so many questions and didn’t feel like I was getting any answers, but by the end almost all of my questions were answered. I liked Mackenzie as a main character overall, but I felt so frustrated at how secretive she was. Sometimes she had good reasons for keeping secrets, but at other times it felt like her reasoning was an angsty, “They won’t understand!” Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it for people who don’t mind diving into a semi-complicated world and waiting a while for any kind of payoff.

AU

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