Warning: The following review contains topics that some readers may find disturbing. Reader’s discretion is advised.

Archivism is a fascinating job, dealing with the long-gone memories of people many years dead and buried. I first stumbled upon V S Nelson‘s latest book, The Archivist, quite simply by accident; Falling in love with Tiberius Lee’s cover art of a suited figure with a head that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. Skimming the description, I was intrigued enough by the dark themes set to take place. Out of the gate, I wasn’t disappointed. As always, an impactful first line is essential: A mission statement succeeded by an adventure into the macabre of this dark and twisted world.

The Archivist may be a little troublesome to feel engaged by on your own. There are heavy topics such as death, a position on the afterlife that is not that of any church, sexual assault, outright violence against young women, suicide, and even presentations of broad pedophilia (or precisely, hebephilia). Beyond personal grievances that one might have with the subject matter, I could also see some readers struggling to grasp the writer’s world-building and dialogue. Character voice or presentation feels flat a majority of the time, and descriptions of the world themselves are that of a single pessimistic viewpoint as if a single mind is behind every character.

With such a gloomy perspective coming in an onslaught and lengthy chapters that took upwards of 20-minutes each (on average), V S Nelson’s The Archivist can be a slow and tiring read at times. Focusing on the aetherial description of death and how our memories or feelings escape into this void of nothing, characterizations of people or rooms are often much like the titular Archivist we follow. They are nondescript, undefined, or what I believe the writer thinks is too bland a setting for the story being told. Without a descriptive illustration or even a short sentence on how dingy and unpleasant the room is or the unsavory person we’re supposed to root against, I found an inability to properly immerse myself into the troubles faced early on.

For all your favorite books, you can cast the lead(s) and their counterparts from memory. Here, I’m left with clouded visions of humans with grey smoke obscuring their descriptive features. The setting was ambiguous until the mention of salt-and-vinegar crisps in the second chapter. The chief problem I had while dragging myself through those early chapters was an unwillingness of what is written on the paper (or screen) to wrap its arms around me and pull me into the world. There is a lack of defining character to hitch my wagon to or scene-setting exposition that puts me in that room alongside characters. I’m going to hate the man attempting to force himself onto the 12-year-old sister of one of our leads. I require something to keep me reading, not depress me with its accuracy of horrific events.

All of this said, I so desperately want to like The Archivist simply because it is a deeply fascinating idea of a grim reaper-like figure that kills, but also does something else. The job of a real-world archivist is to maintain and protect documents from history that serve a great purpose to researchers or others who need documents that are hundreds, possibly a thousand years old. While that isn’t the case with our Archivist, he does preserve the people he kills. He takes their “essence” and more or less feeds off of it. This provides grieving families an extra bit of time with someone who is dying from a variety of horrible topics we often ignore.

Often in fiction, we view shape-shifters as something to be feared, with the only positive view that comes to mind being that of Odo from DS9. As such, the idea here of a feared mythical rumor actually trying to help is interesting. The trouble in that is the early vagueness that surrounds him and (by nature of the writing style) that same ambiguity surrounds everyone else too. For me, that made the entire experience of straining through those early chapters, drenched in their dark and twisted attempts to shock and horrify readers, exhausting.

I do enjoy the story of The Archivist, I don’t want that to be misconstrued. Not aiming to spoil the plot, it is a story of a mythical figure that is almost the antithesis of a messianic figure as he is caught up in a web of mysterious conspiracy and death. Nevertheless, I found myself questioning the writing. Not questioning the plot, but how it is written and how every idea is expressed to get us to the next point in the story. It is slow, with the pacing and overall way of bleeding out the information like a riddle. Information trickled out enough that it wasn’t until about 35% of the way through that I was starting to click ideas into place. For a mystery/thriller/suspense novel, the lack of actual suspense kills the pacing and makes the first act largely useless.

That pacing and the attempted way that the story is told isn’t inherently a bad thing. However, for a mystery with these fantasy elements, that could be seen as messy. For a mystery story, you want the reader, viewer, or listener to not only keep up with the story but understand it so much so that when a twist comes, it feels logical in that world. Once again, I’m not aiming to spoil anything, especially when I am talking about something that happens in the second half. Nonetheless, I did catch myself writing annotations calling into question why it felt necessary to throw in a twist or question where the twist was going.

I would like to explore this world more. The Archivist (the character) is such a fascinating concept of a Shaman-like figure of death treated as a god/a mythos among men. That withstanding, I’d also like a story that understood I don’t have to be shocked and horrified every few moments with graphic descriptions, sly comments of a dark nature, throwing in expletives, and the aforementioned story beats not for the story itself but a How-To handbook’s structure guide. We’ve all read Save the Cat.

As I keep trying to reiterate, it is not the story itself I have an issue with, but how it is written. Especially towards the end, as all the pieces are spread out across the metaphorical table and the puzzle comes together, I kept wondering to myself when the story was going to be allowed to tell itself. V S Nelson has the ability to create an original story full of interesting lore to pick apart and enjoy, but at some point towards the end, a writer needs to get out of the way and let the story simply be told. Sadly, that wasn’t the case here. While I’m not looking to spoil anything, the long build to the climax goes not with a bang but a whimper.

The Archivist himself, though initially cold and distant, does become someone you’ll find to be caring and interesting despite the fact you’ll never be able to give him a face. Sun and Laure, the other lead and her little sister, are full of life and passion. What all three have together (and individually), growing across the 370-sum pages as characters should, is something achieved rarely like this in my experience. What Nelson set out to do with all three is probably the crowning accomplishment of The Archivist amid the complaints I do have.

Ultimately, The Archivist is one of the most original stories full of pessimistic and downright off-putting topics, which is partially why this review comes almost three months after the release. Where the attempts at a mystery/thriller failed to capture me are made up for in character and depth of mythology, but are let down once again by an ending that simply isn’t. What I keep repeating to myself every time I think about The Archivist is that if V S Nelson were to get out of his own way, and tell the story without trying to show me how clever he is, I’d have enjoyed it far more.

An advanced manuscript of The Archivist was provided by Matador for this review.

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The Archivist

$11.65

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• A grim and original story.
• Endearing character growth.
• Tiberius Lee's cover art.

Cons

• An exhausting attempt to shock and horrify readers.
• For a suspense novel, the pacing lacks the page-turning excitement of the genre.