Definitely quite strange and unique. I highly appreciate that in today's world of homogeneous fiction. I highly recommend this book.

Marcus Eaton’s life is stagnant with no hope of changing. Until he awakes to find himself imprisoned in a futuristic room with a disembodied voice asking for his life’s story. When he tries to take a stand, he’s painfully punished by a second voice known as Moloch. Dr. Regina Padgett stumbles across Marcus’ testimony much further into the future and realizes that her missing crewmates were mistakenly transported to the past. With the use of a hyper-intelligent Suit, she travels to find her crew’s remains and uncovers a secret and dangerous plot being perpetrated by Moloch.

The premise of this one was promising, but its execution was exceedingly painful. This read is divided into three sections, or books. Each book began with a list of characters or concepts that were important. Book Two had over 30 listings, while Book Three had over 40 (I couldn’t be bothered to go back and count Book One’s).

The execution of Book One was exceedingly boring. Essentially, a man is imprisoned in a futuristic room with unknown voices speaking to him, and he must dictate his life’s story to the present point. Unfortunately, his life doesn’t hint at being interesting until around 15% into the read, and it’s about 25% before it actually becomes relevant information regarding the rest of the book (also, that’s approximately page 120 and page 200, respectively). There are still long portions of irrelevance scattered throughout all of this, though, and his retelling lasts the whole first third of the book. The interactions he has with the voices are interesting, but you have to wade through so much irrelevance to get to those parts.

Books Two and Three become more interesting and more sci-fi based, as in we finally get a view of a bit more of the world and the technology and receive some hints into what might actually be going on. Book Two still starts off quite slow, though, and again takes time to get into relevant information. I did end up mostly liking these portions, despite there being many places where I had to skim to keep reading.

Most portions of the read lacked any real oomph from the plot or characters to make things feel like they were moving at all, which led to a long, drawn out, boring read. Until this 824-page book gets trimmed down by about 400 pages (or even just 300 pages), I can’t recommend this to anyone. My thanks to NetGalley and Matador Publishing for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

The Archivists is the product of an author voice who knows their stuff -- Martin Ikedais's experience as an educator clearly informs the work. I appreciate this working together of parts of the science fiction, fantasy, and mythological worlds. Recommended for readers looking for an engaging journey across these storytelling spaces.

I was excited for this one as the plot is quite unique, but it just failed to reel me in. Not to mention it felt like it went on forever, and getting through it became a chore.

Putting an end to the evil Moloch and his plan to dominate the universe is Dr. Regina Padgett’s goal after she allows an “inquisitor” access to her memories and also reads the transcript of regular guy Marcus Eaton who had been abducted so that Moloch could learn details about his family’s life. Whew!

Spage adventurer Pagett and a super powerful AI in a space suit put together clues related to Pagett’s fellow spaceship crew member’s lives (which they lived in various earlier time periods because they were transported there by superior forces) to develop a strategy to defeat Moloch.

It’s quite an ingenious plot and narrative technique; I wish that it all suceeded in creating a juicy, science fiction tale like Harkaday’s Gnomon. However, for me the scenes were overly-long and without enough suspense and plot-driven energy to generate a lot of interest in the characters or the outcome of humanity.

I received a copy of this book from Matador publishers and NetGalley. This is an honest review.

Oof this was a tough book. I loved the premise but I found the execution just didn't work for me. The book is far too long and I struggled to finish it.

"The Archivists" is an okay story with very enjoyable writing, but it felt far too long and it seemed to take forever for anything to actually happen. I'm tempted to say I got bored with the characters, but the truth is that I never gained an interest in them. I think the majority of readers will get a kick out of this book, but it just wasn't for me.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.