I was one of many people offered an opportunity to read a large chunk of The Archived by Victoria Schwab for free pre-publication. I loved it! It's a young adult (YA) novel about a girl who is a Keeper for the Archive. The Archive contains the memories of everyone who has ever died (wouldn't that be a historian's paradise!). It occupies a place that is not a part of the Outer, the Archive's name for the "normal" world we live in. Mackenzie was chosen by her grandfather, who had also been a Keeper, to follow in his footsteps because she inherited the ability to read Histories' (dead people) memories. For some reason, some Histories are not at peace in the Archive and attempt to escape. The Keepers find them in the connecting passages between the Outer and the Archive and return them to the Archive.
Mackenzie's ability to read Histories allows her to read memories that have soaked into places and things as well (she can see, for example, a murder that was committed in the apartment she moves into). It also makes it impossible for her to bear being touched by other living things, human or animal. She can't read people's memories but she feels the noise and confusion of their thoughts and emotions. Her beloved younger brother dies and she is beginning to forget things about him.
Ms. Schwab created an interesting and imaginative new world. Although the excerpt was about 1/3 of the finished novel, it wasn't enough to explore all the secrets of the Archive (why is it there at all? why do the Histories try to leave?), or to find out how Mackenzie and her parents are going to get over her brother's death. I look forward to reading the rest of the novel when it is published in January, 2013.
