◆ A lost teenage girl ◆ An abusive man ◆ A face-stealing demigod ◆ A plan for revenge ◆ A chance to escape death.There is no God waiting for you in paradise. No afterlife where friendships severed by death are reformed and family members reunited. There is only the Aether, a dimension of insatiable hunger that will possess you no matter your beliefs or the life you led.Yet there is hope for a lucky few. Archivists, existing between the world of the living and the world of the dead, can offer salvation ... for a price. Taking your essence in the final moments before death, they tether you to the physical world. They become your afterlife, linking you with the living while your body rots.17-year-old Sun-young Kang lives with an abusive man and will do anything to protect her 12-year-old sister, Laure. After a chance meeting with a young archivist, Sun-young hatches a plan to dispose of her abuser for good. But soon Sun-young learns there is more at play, and as she grows closer to the mysterious archivist, believed to be the last of his kind, she finds herself the centre of a plot to ensnare him.The Archivist is a macabre fantasy about death, loss and love. It is an incredibly rich novel with a truly original concept. It is cinematic in its scope and details the haunting, but also beautiful, gift an archivist could offer a person in their final moments.Finalist in the 2022 Wishing Shelf Awards."The book is a marvellous story about death, but more importantly love, life and hope. V S Nelson has an incredible technique in writing a whole novel about death that never once makes it distressing... It is rare to find a book that can capture one's imagination and attention like this book does." Readers' Favorite. "A fascinating concept skilfully executed, 'The Archivist' by VS Nelson hypothesises that what waits for us after death is only an insatiable Aether. That is unless you enter into a contract with an archivist, strange beings with the ability to syphon your soul and hold it within themselves, allowing families and friends to still communicate over the boundary fence of life and death." LoveReading. "This dark fantasy melds into a mystery, as an unknown villain seemingly targets the Archivist, Sun, and Laure. Nelson keeps the rather sizable cast in check, and the story is never convoluted, despite red herrings and dead characters popping up on the Archivist's face. Though the location of all the action is unspecified, the author paints memorable visuals and supplies and a worthy open ending." Kirkus. "The first chapter is so good, I challenge anybody to read it and not want to keep going!" The Wishing Shelf
