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Jan. 5th, 2014 03:34 pmI picked up The Archived from the library because . . . it's a YA fantasy . . . with archiving in the title . . .
SOMETIMES MY NEEDS ARE SIMPLE.
Sadly, The Archived is not actually about archiving. I knew it wouldn't be, but hope springs eternal. The Archived is about how our plucky heroine works for a secret order of supernatural librarians who keep creepy zombie copies of dead people in boxes in their creepy dead people archive. Occasionally the creepy zombie copies escape, at which point our heroine tracks them down and puts them back in a box in the creepy dead people archive. Since the archive does not function in any way as an archive -- nobody ever accesses it! there are no finding aids! no metadata! to the best of my knowledge the content benefits nobody's research at all! -- the purpose of all this is extremely unclear.
Our Heroine Mackenzie is sort of distracted from poking at any of this however because she is too busy dealing with the actual plot of a MYSTERY at a CREEPY HOTEL and HORDES OF ESCAPING ZOMBIE COPIES, in addition to the obligatory YA tragic backstory (dead little brother!), the obligatory YA love triangle (one guy is a quirky Goth! the other is a hot zombie!), and the semi-obligatory YA angsty first-person present tense narration.
WHICH IS A SHAME, because, like, there's certainly potential here! Sections of the book are very atmospheric, and I'm interested in the dead people archive, maybe even interested enough to read the sequels to find out if anything is actually explained and the archive is in fact meant to be as creepy as it comes across. It is certainly not outside the bounds of possibility that the series as a whole could turn out to be good. But at the time I was reading it I was mostly just frustrated by the lack of personality in the first-person narration, and the inevitable onset of the inevitable love triangle.
SOMETIMES MY NEEDS ARE SIMPLE.
Sadly, The Archived is not actually about archiving. I knew it wouldn't be, but hope springs eternal. The Archived is about how our plucky heroine works for a secret order of supernatural librarians who keep creepy zombie copies of dead people in boxes in their creepy dead people archive. Occasionally the creepy zombie copies escape, at which point our heroine tracks them down and puts them back in a box in the creepy dead people archive. Since the archive does not function in any way as an archive -- nobody ever accesses it! there are no finding aids! no metadata! to the best of my knowledge the content benefits nobody's research at all! -- the purpose of all this is extremely unclear.
Our Heroine Mackenzie is sort of distracted from poking at any of this however because she is too busy dealing with the actual plot of a MYSTERY at a CREEPY HOTEL and HORDES OF ESCAPING ZOMBIE COPIES, in addition to the obligatory YA tragic backstory (dead little brother!), the obligatory YA love triangle (one guy is a quirky Goth! the other is a hot zombie!), and the semi-obligatory YA angsty first-person present tense narration.
WHICH IS A SHAME, because, like, there's certainly potential here! Sections of the book are very atmospheric, and I'm interested in the dead people archive, maybe even interested enough to read the sequels to find out if anything is actually explained and the archive is in fact meant to be as creepy as it comes across. It is certainly not outside the bounds of possibility that the series as a whole could turn out to be good. But at the time I was reading it I was mostly just frustrated by the lack of personality in the first-person narration, and the inevitable onset of the inevitable love triangle.
