Thursday, October 12, 2017

The Archived by Victoria Schwab

Author: Victoria Schwab
Original title: The Archived
Pages: 384

Edition Language: Russian
Series: The Archived #1
Format: e-book
Genres: YA, Contemporary
Goodreads

Blurb:     
      Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books. Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.
     Mac has grown into a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves. In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.


My thoughts: 
      What can I say? This is my first acquaintance with Victoria Schwab and unfortunately not a happy one. I hear about this author almost on every book channel that I watched and decided to read something by her. I do not know why I have chosen this book, but I did not like it at all. I have so many issues with it: firstly I was greatly bored by the narration - it was rather slow, secondly, I was terribly irritated by main characters Mac and this other Keeper, and finally, I was disappointed by the author style.
     As for the first point slowness, by the time there was some action I was already half way through the book and utterly bored. As for the main characters...I think Mac should be kicked out of her job straight away. Being on a dangerous job the best thing she does is not telling her supervisors about abnormalities. If she would behave as a normal employee behaves in an unknown hazardous situation, this book would not happen. And the rest of her decision making has been just so poor that I kept rolling my eyes. And finally the style: the story is terribly repetitive, we have description of everything all over and over again: his eyes were underlined, the walls were vibrating, the key hole was lightened and all those tiny details repeating again and again...I guess it could be twice shorter.
    What I liked is the idea itself: our memories in the shape of our body stored like a book in a library, but I am not sure I want to continue with the series.

Rating: 
    2,5/5 

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