Selen Marsh

The Archive of Unfinished Things holds records that were never completed—correspondence that was never sent, legislation that was never passed, genealogies that stopped mid-branch, histories that ended before their subjects did. The Archive's purpose is to hold these records until they complete themselves or until they can be safely forgotten. Selen Marsh has been the Archivist's apprentice for three years. She has learned that some documents complete themselves when they're filed correctly—the loose ends tying off, the narrative resolving, the record becoming what it was meant to be. She has learned that some documents should never be filed at all—the incomplete things that would become dangerous if given the structure of completion. Then she finds a document that has been waiting for her specifically—a record that bears her name in a handwriting she doesn't recognize, that describes a life she hasn't lived yet, that ends in mid-sentence at a date that hasn't arrived. *The Archivist's Apprentice* is fantasy about archives, completion, and the question of what happens to the things we leave unfinished. It follows Selen through her apprenticeship as she learns the Archive's methods, discovers the document that bears her name, and has to decide whether to file it, forget it, or let it complete itself in whatever way unfinished things choose. The novel unfolds across four acts: The Apprenticeship (the Archive's methods, the filing that completes things, the forgetting that Archive also practices); The Discovery (the document with her name, the life it describes, the mid-sentence ending at a date that hasn't arrived); The Investigation (tracing the document's origin, understanding what kind of record it is, discovering why it's been waiting for her specifically); and The Filing (what happens when she files the document—or doesn't—and what the Archive does with records that won't complete). Selen is not a conventional protagonist. She approaches the Archive the way she a