The Archivist by V S Nelson

What if death was not the end?

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, it 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.

When a newly-realised 18-year-old Archivist meets wayward teenager, Sun-young Kang, he finds himself the centre of a spate of suicides committed by schoolgirls. Believing himself to be the last born of his kind, the Archivist must come to terms with the reality that there is another archivist nearby. He soon learns of their plan to entrap him and, with the help of Sun-young, must unpick the mystery of the suicides before anyone else dies.

The Archivist 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.

“The book is a marvelous 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