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The Archive Undying (The Downworld Sequence #1)
Written by Emma Mieko Candon
Read by Yung-I Chang
Book 148/200
Genre: Sci-Fi
Format: Digital/Audio, ARC
Pages: 496
Published: 2023
Rating: 4/10

*This ARC was provided in exchange for an honest review*

The Archive Undying is a sprawling and complex sci-fi story that I'm still not sure I completely understand. I am thoroughly going to lodge this book under "not for me". I found it overly confusing and i just couldn't feel anything towards the characters. This book also uses a big pet peeve of mine, writing in second person. Most of the time I think this can come off as overly pretentious, though fortunately, Candon's writing is good enough to prevent that. This book is a HARD Sci-Fi and I would encourage fans of the sub-genre to give it a try, it's just not for me.

I jumped at the chance to review this book based on the synopsis. Gods that are AIs? Well, as someone who’s been thinking people have been a little too worshipful of AIs lately, I was incredibly interested in this book. It wasn’t what I was expecting, to be honest, but I found it intriguing and worth my time.

The author doesn’t waste time here explaining the history of the world or the physics of it. AIs are Gods, they have giant robots, and they can influence and control people’s minds, whether the people want them to or not. Oh, and the AIs all became corrupted some time ago, and went berserk, killing their followers and anyone else they came across.

We see the political fallout of this, too, of course. People who still want to worship their Gods, secretly or not-so-secretly. A fascist regime of a group that wants to exterminate all the rogue AIs, or use the technology for their own ends. Those ends, are, of course, keeping themselves in power. Aren’t they always?

Except..

One particular AI managed to resurrect a single, special follower after its rampage. A follower who hated them. A follower who now cannot die. We watch Sunai as he makes terrible choices over and over again, until he has to face the AI he hated and that gifted him with his undying existence. When he faces this AI, he can help it or try to murder it, and Sunai isn’t even sure which he’s going to choose until the last moment.

If you were expecting something Pacific Rim-esque here, where it’s all epic robot battles and explosions. Well, those happen, too, but it’s not the fun, exciting fare from the movie. This book manages to grapple with free will and its consequences, the repercussions of technology, and whether or not one should be able to trust one’s own mind. Not to mention the lingering questions of belief and whether one should really trust in a supposed higher power. Heavy subjects in among those robot battles.

I also didn’t particularly like Sunai, and he’s certainly an unreliable narrator. The matter of fact way that sexuality and gender is handled in the world is refreshing (if only we could manage the same). There also seems to be plenty of world we haven’t seen yet, and a history that appears to include a mass migration to the moon and back. Is this our world in a far distant future? Is it another world? Is it all a Matrix-like creation of the AI Gods in question? I spent the whole book wondering about that last one. If the AIs can influence human minds, then those minds must be plugged in somehow. That question is going to keep me coming back to this series just to see how it all plays out.

Well… unfortunately, I’m setting this one aside for the moment. I can tell it’s going to require me to devote more brain space than I have available right now to properly grasp the story. It’s hella queer, which I’m 100% here for, but the experimental scifi stuff is confusing AF for me, and I feel like I’m already lost. There’s a fantastic story here, I just can’t wrap my head around it properly right now.

The Archive Undying is truly a mixed bag of a book. There are things I really loved about the book, I thought there were some really strong elements like pieces of the dialogue, the backdrop of the world, and the themes surrounding the AI “gods.” Unfortunately, the writing sometimes detracted from the message, especially in the second half as perspective jumps and becomes confusing. If you like mechas, AIs, and stories of reluctant rebels, then this story is for you.

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC of the book.

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar

“You are alone when you die. The autonomous intelligence Iterate Fractal has corrupted, and it is dying, and in its divine death, it has killed you. You and thousands more across Khuon Mo, the island city-state of which Iterate Fractal is— was— patron and protector…”

How would your life be, if your god was an AI? If that AI was the city, were you livid? If everyone was interfaced with the AI? Well in the world of The Downworld Sequence series, this is how people live, well some of them do. This story is centered around Sunai and the city he used to call home, Khuon Mo, who fell when the AI Iterate Fractal was corrupted and killed everyone who was interfacing with it, even Sunai.

The Archive Undying takes place seventeen years after the fall of Khuon Mo, Sunai has made it his mission to run from anything that might remind him of home, even loved ones, and hide his true self, as he hasn’t aged at all in the last seventeen years. When Iterate Fractal was corrupted, he was in the process of interfacing with Sunia to kill him. Why? Sunai is not sure, but this left him different; he can no longer die, he has become a relic.

Iterate Fractal was not the first AI city to corrupt and was not the last one. In the absence of the AI’s to command the cities, a military group, Harbor, started to take over the cities and use the corpses of the AI archives to build giant robots, ENGINEs, to control the population. To control the ENGINEs, Harbor puts the priest or Archivist of the AI’s inside of them to interface with whatever is left. Sunai is one of those Archivists, yet still different from the rest of the relics alive, he knows that he cannot get caught by Harbor.

So, for the past years, Sunai has tried to not make connections even if he fails and later suffers, but after one letter from a person he has been running from arrives, he falls into a drinking spree that ends with him remembering a night of sex and waking up with a new job that will take him back to Khuon Mo.

Worst of all, Sunai learns that Harbor has created an ENGINE with Iterate Fractal corpse.

The Archive Undying is an interesting and exciting book. It’s like the anime Neo Genesis Evangelion meets Pacific Rim, meets Ghost in the Shell with giant robots. I like these science fiction stories that have as topics AIs, Autonomous Intelligence, with either futuristic or parallel worlds to ours. But the Archive Undying is much more, it’s about faith, traumatic pasts, right and wrong, and the need to stay alive.

We meet Sunai when he is a mess. The letter he received causes him to spiral down, but he meets Veyadi Lut, the doctor that has hired him to find a hidden archive of a dead AI Register Parse, and a somewhat affection blooms between them, but Vye is hiding his own past. I like Sunia, he was broken and the reader follows him as he finally starts to heal and confront the monsters of his past.

The Archive Undying is full of characters that come and go and will later play a role in things to come. Among them we meet Imaru, a mercenary friend and past lover of Sunai and owner of the ship Never Once, Jin a mercenary that takes a liking to Sunai and seems to want something from him and Iterate Fractal the AI who from time to time we get POVs in the story.

Another thing that I liked about this book is that given it’s the first in the series it’s full of lore and world-building information. Because the AIs are seen as gods, faith and the origin of them is built into the lore, which we were not given all of it but bits that catch our attention and keep the reader hooked. The Lay, their religious book, is full of myths and fables about creation that can be read and understood differently by its reader.

“Everybody knows Leaf 8: “Unify.” It describes two souls who meet again and again across spatiotemporal instances, two souls who inevitably kill each other. One is a falcon who eats the other as a fish; the fish returns as a king who executes a poet; the poet returns as a novice who treads upon an ant; and so on through the eons. At length, they come to a time in which they are both Emanations of God, and so realize the nature of their relationship. They fall into each other’s thousand thousand arms, weeping, laughing, kissing, and at last dying, whereupon they return to an instant in which one stalks the other across dunes, through forests, and into a city, and the Leaf comes to an end.”

Given the type of story and the lore behind this world, The Archive Undying is complex. As a reader, you need to pay attention to what the story is telling you as well as what the characters know and don’t know, for it feels like Iterate Fractal wants to talk to the reader and explain but the corruption doesn’t allow it. Although it may feel slow paced at the beginning, it’s an interesting story, but the narrative picks up and as a reader, you would want to continue reading way into midnight to understand what’s going on, who is the true villain, and who can Sanai trust.

“’I lean into your grasp, I tought my mouth to my mouth. Our mouth, together. I say, “I”, and “I”, and “I —”’

I recommend The Archive Undying. In this story, author Emma Mieko Candon brings to life a world filled with faith and sadness, but also with devotion and love that might even revive the fallen one one more time.

Before anything else, I would like to take this moment to give my heartfelt gratitude to the publisher for granting me access to this wonderful queer book.

Lately, life has caught up with me, and I found myself in a predicament as I got swamped with a lot of ARCs that I either could not finish or unable to start reading. Which is why I am apologizing to both the author and the publisher for being unable to read and review this ARC. However, I will try my best to purchase a finished copy and review it when the time comes.

I interviewed the author, Emma Mieko Candon about The Archive Undying for the June episode of the New Books in Science Fiction podcast.

DNF at 72%

I wanted to love this book so much. The premise of the story and the queer main character caught my attention immediately, but, unfortunately, the execution of the book just wasn't great. The author throws the reader into the deep end with words and phrasing that I imagine we are supposed to get through context clues eventually, but even three-fourths of the way through the book, there were aspects of the novel that hadn't been explained and would end up undermining reveals because I just wasn't sure why something was important or why it was different than something else that already happened. Even the main antagonist, The Harbor, isn't exactly well defined. They hate AI and use ENGINEs to fight, but I'm not sure how exactly they were created, who is in charge, or why they are fighting whatever the Pantheon is.

There was also a lot of telling instead of showing with the feelings of the main characters, which I felt made it hard to care about them. It was frustrating to get through a conversation and then have the narrative basically define where multiple people were at in what they were feeling when I felt like there was no hint of it in the actual conversation.

I can understand reviewers who are frustrated/confused. This is a convoluted narrative and a lot of important information is withheld for the vast majority of the book. That said, while I would have liked to get a little bit more foundation in the worldbuilding before the plot really took off, I enjoyed being along for the ride, wasn't too frustrated by the confusing elements, and am really, really into everything going on here. This is a book interested in big questions about personhood, autonomy, and devotion, while also being about Some Guy Who's A Mess and Big Fuck Off Robots.

This sci-fi delight hit the ground running, and by page 150, I felt that this book had put me through the ringer. I kept wondering, how does it keep going??? at this pace and at no point did it slow down, forcing me to keep up in the most fun way. Getting through this book was like finishing a marathon - it was work, but it was all encompassing and incredibly satisfying to have done. I can't wait for more from the series and characters.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am sad to say that this was a disappointment. I usually love sci-fi that incorporates giant mechas, especially with lgbt+ main characters. But I had no idea what was happening the entire time I was reading this story. I wanted to like it, but I just could not follow the story, the plot, or the lore/backstory of what was happening and WHY it was happening. I didn't know why I should care about any of the characters.

They can't all be winners.

In The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon, the first volume in her Downworld Sequence, she has created a transformative and brilliant piece of fiction, where war machines and AI gods run amok. The first thing that will captivate you will be the language and the concepts. But as you read further it will be the rich and complex characters that tug at your heartstrings and the tangled relationships between the individuals in the main character Sunai’s life that will keep you reading. 

I absolutely loved the rich language and the ideas, the conflict between identity, sacrifice and healing. The thoughts it raises are brilliant and evocative and the concepts of body and healing are transformative. The novel is rich with ideas and while the story is dark at times, there is a brightness to the ideas as well. I also liked the diversity to the relationships, the hidden truths and the voice of the AI gods. It has a gorgeous and engaging ending that will make you yearn for more. 

If you love novels about AI’s, war machines and complex characters who fall in love with the wrong person, this novel is for you.  It is both transformative and brilliant. It is also beautiful in how it handles the relationships between the characters. It was one of the most absorbing novels I’ve read this year.

I'd heard a lot of chatter before starting THE ARCHIVE UNDYING that this was a strange book, the kind you really have to dig into to make sense of it. A handful of pages in, I started getting the same sense. THE ARCHIVE UNDYING throws you waaaay into the deep end of a strange world of mechs and AI, and does very little to get you oriented on any axis. And while I tried to stick it out, to make sense of what was going on, I ultimately chose to DNF this one at 25%.

I don't mind books that don't hold your hand, that make you figure out the world-building as you go. But I have to have enough grounding in SOMETHING to let me get my bearings, and a reason to push forward. For me personally, I couldn't really find a single point to latch onto to help carry me through the books. The lead character is purposefully unlikeable, messy, and mysterious, none of which is a bad thing, but in this instance it just didn't make him compelling. If he had been a better touchstone to guide me through this mysterious world, I may have hung on longer.

As it was, all of the world building was just too vague and obtuse. On the one hand, there were glimpses I liked, like the idea of giant robots with faulty programming roaming the land, or large crawlers full of scavengers trekking out to fallen cities. But in between all that, I had no idea what kind of nation was behind this world. There's a government called Harbor, but what do they want? How did they come to power? I got the idea that Harbor was bad, but not much else. It's possible that if I'd stuck it out, I would have gotten answers, but at this point, I think this just isn't a book for me.

Thank you so much Tordotcome for sending me an eARC so I could give this a try!

Based on the cover and the synopsis I really thought The Archive Undying was going to be one of my favourite reads of the year. And while I did enjoy it I sadly found myself somewhat lost and confused by the end. I'm here for a story that unveils it's plot slowly before a big reveal at the end, but somewhere along the way The Archive Undying lost me and I never got that 'oh shit' moment.

Emma Mieko Candon is clearly a very talented writer, she's created this incredibly unique world filled with fascinating ideas and intricate characters. The idea of AI Gods who corrupted and ruined the cities they created and kept is what really hooked me. Add in humans who can communicate with these AI and control what I imagined as huge mechs, this is a great book for anyone who loves a complex tale with sci-fi elements.

We mainly follow two characters, Sunai and Veyadi. Both have mysterious pasts and links to AI that are only uncovered in the latter half of the book. Sunai is a very grey character, who makes decisions you're not entirely sure you support but want to see played out anyway. There's also the Harbour, a mysterious government whose motives are never really revealed. At no point did I work out whose side I was supposed to be on, but perhaps that is intentional.

I thought the last quarter of the book was going to be all big reveals and epic moments. But for me it just missed the mark as I got more and more confused, waiting for things to be explained to me. I honestly couldn't tell you what happens in the latter half of the book as it felt like the same points kept being reiterated, but they never became clearer to me. Looking at other reviews it's clear that other readers have followed the story better than I have, which is 100% a me problem generally, and feel well rewarded for their efforts in reading The Archive Undying.

The Archive Undying is filled with intricate, unique ideas that's perfect for the right reader. If the synopsis catches your eye, give it a read, you might find a new favourite book.

If you ask my coworkers what my most anticipated book of the summer is, odds are very good that they would mention Emma Mieko Candon’s The Archive Undying. The Star Wars: The Ronin author hooked me with the cover art alone, and the premise of the book intrigued me. A silly reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion in the description just ensured that I would pursue the book as publication approached.

Sunai doesn’t want to do a lot of things. He’s good at cooking, but bad at making rational decisions, especially when it comes to his taste in men. He’s good at identifying artificial intelligences, especially the older ones, but he’s reluctant to reveal why. He’s good at running from his past, but bad at staying unnoticed by the people who want to find him.

His world is full of robots. Massive artificial intelligences, beings that were practically gods, ruled over the city-states, each claiming territory and protecting the humans who lived there. While they all had different ways of doing things, almost all of them eventually went insane and became corrupted. The people who served as priests (and most residents still in the area) would be killed as the AI purged everything around it. The same thing happened in the city-state of Khuon Mo seventeen years ago, when Iterate Fractal lost stability, but on that day something unexpected happened. Sunai, serving as an archivist-priest for Iterate Fractal, died, but was brought back to life.

Now, Sunai can’t die. Or at least, he can’t stay dead. Injuries that he receives heal fast, and even being killed again will really only inconvenience him for a little while. He’s spent most of the last seventeen years trying to find out why Iterate Fractal sought to save him, and running away from the people he needs most so that he doesn’t hurt them. Plying his knowledge of AI, he’s made a living as a roaming salvage hunter so that he can stay one step (or more) ahead of the Harbor.

The Harbor run much of the world now, scavenging pieces of corrupted AI gods to create their own combat mechs. They want to control even more, but they need relics to do so. Relics like Sunai. After a drunken one-night-stand leads him to the knowledge that the Harbor have managed to make a mech out of remnants of Iterate Fractal, he feels compelled to find a way to stop them, but he’s going to have to face his past in order to get there. And Iterate Fractal is waiting, and hungry.

Y’all, this book is baffling, but I love it. Sunai is a complete disaster of a person. Emma Mieko Candon has crafted a dizzying (honestly at times overwhelming) world. There’s a lot to take in over the course of The Archive Undying, and it can be a trick to keep track of who and what are where, never mind the fact that Sunai isn’t particularly reliable as a narrator. However, I believe that it’s an engaging work with some narrative tricks that remind me of Harrow the Ninth. I feel like I’m not going to have gotten everything I can out of The Archive Undying in a single read-through, and I’m grateful for a text that challenged my expectations of what a sci-fi novel can be.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review, and thanks to Tor for taking a chance on a book this bold. I sincerely hope to see more of Sunai’s world, because a story this unique deserves to continue to be told.

It’s out in the world as of Tuesday, 6/27/23. Get in the robot.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2023/06/28/the-archive-undying-a-review/

The Archive Undying is a departure from the norm, and is a little reminiscent of China Miéville. This story stretched my imagination and kept me guessing. Sunai is a relic, a human killed by a corrupted AI. He spends most of his time moving from place to place, steadily running from him past. Until he finds an teams up with a doctor on a salvage trip that doesn't go quite as planned.
I will be recommending this book to everyone.

The Archive Undying is a brilliant example of exactly the sort of weird science fantasy I love to sink my teeth into. Sunai, with his dry wit and his disaster decision making skills, quickly won me over as he find himself in the middle of a one-night-stand-turned-Harbor-moderated-expedition he has no business being part of. As the expedition complicates and reveals conspirators reaching far beyond a scientific excursion, readers are led into a mind-and-reality bending reconstruction of the past. While this book is fairly niche in genre in content, it's bound to find its people with lovers of jealous and possessive AIs, visceral description, and big-ass bone robots.

The truest strength of The Archive Undying lays with its structure. Candon's narrative reveals very little plainly and constantly overwrites the character you think you know with new revelations. Even reality, as Sunai experiences it, is left with memory gaps and uncertain data. Like Sunai, I found myself trapped in a desire to trust despite unquestionable doubts. It is exciting and frustrating to be so thoroughly taken down the rabbit hole with a character that has every reason to doubt their own perceptions. I also find this feeds perfectly into the themes of being trapped in an unwell (or slowly healing) body.

I would especially recommend this book to enjoyers of Piranesi, Harrow the Ninth, A Memory Called Empire, and This is How You Lose the Time War.

In this story we are introduced to Sunai, a man with a mysterious past, an uncertain future, and a fragmented mind. This is a world where Artificial Intelligence commanded and controlled cities of people, linking them together, guiding them, shaping them, and ruling them. Until they went mad, until they were corrupted and the great AI gods started killing their worshipers, their people. Now, what remains are fragments, walking corpses, giant ENGINES — mechas made of armor and steel with human Relics as their hearts. Ruined temples, where their cities once flourished, are now home to ghosts and grave robbers. This is a heist story (of a sort), with a group of people coming together to undo a wrong that should never have been done.

First, let me say that the world building in this book is very well done. This is a science fiction dystopia where giant robots and religious philosophy combine in an unusual and compelling world. It’s creative, it’s unique, and it felt as though the author’s sincerity and desire to share this world with me bled through the pages. The world felt alive … well, for a world shattered and destroyed. I wanted to know more about the cities, the temples, the strange mech robots which, with their limited sentience, patrolled the broken world. There is so much work done to make this world feel whole and realized.

The characters, however, felt empty and hollow, as everyone sounded the same. They all seemed to speak with the same voice, the same inflections, and the same manner. And it all felt flat and emotionless. Because the book is from Sunai’s point of view, he’s quick to explain things — what people are doing, what they’re feeling, what he’s feeling; there was so much telling. I felt like I heard all about the characters in the book without having ever seen or experienced any of it for myself. People don’t seem to answer questions, but instead we get a brief paragraph mentioning what’s being explained, without having the character actually explain it. Or there is a brief paragraph outlining what a character would have said, without having the character actually say it. Honestly, it felt at times as though I was seeing an outline of where a conversation might have been. And for me, that didn’t work. As much as I love world building, the lack of seeing what the characters were doing or saying really hurt my ability to connect to this book. It was more like listening to a radio play or watching a movie than reading a story.

The plot, too, feels sketched out in parts. While I appreciate that Sunai isn’t always aware of what’s going on and can be taken by surprise when other characters do things, it didn’t feel as fully fleshed out as I would have liked. Because, again, it felt like the kindling hadn’t yet caught fire. There was a spark, but never enough to actually set anything alight.

Then, there’s the writing style. It felt like the author was choosing to emphasize style and I didn’t care for it. Instead of feeling inhuman or clinical, it felt like heavy handed poetry as an alien intelligence told Sunai about how heavy Sunai’s limbs felt, while rhapsodizing about their union.

All in all, of the three things I look for to personally enjoy a book, only one really worked for me. While, towards the end, characters started to take more definition, it was a little too little, too late. That said, the world is creative and interesting. And as much as I’m on the fence with the plot — enjoying parts of if, while still feeling totally emotionally removed from it — and as much as I had trouble connecting with the characters as people, or their relationships with one another, I am actually looking forward to the sequel. I hope that, in the second book, I’m able to appreciate the characters as much as I love the world they live in.

I enjoyed the premise of the book, but I found it difficult to follow. I was thrilled to receive a review copy of this novel, but reading it quickly turned to a drag. The complexity of the book did not lead to a satisfying conclusion. Others might be able to extract more from this dense tome than me, but I don't think this would be a good fit for any of the avid readers I know.

It’s not going to be the book for everyone. Tor publishes the more literary end of science fiction and fantasy and thus is a more complex read than some genre novels. It’s not a fast paced page turner. The author does a good job with the more complex world building but the story does lag in spots. It was good but not great.