This is very hard to rate for me - the world is amazing, completely original, five stars! The book itself was a bit of a slog though - confusing, "supposed to be emotional but feels impersonal", the kind of thing where the writing is lovely but it sort of skips right off most of the characters? I had a very hard time articulating my feelings about it. I still am not sure I understand everything that happened in it, which is okay sometimes but I think the book thinks it did explain.

DNF @ 47%
I tried reading this for over a month, and having almost reached 50% now, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and give up on it.

I'm sad, because I really wanted to like this. Everything about it sounded right up my alley. But my god, every chapter of this was a struggle. I tried to motivate myself by setting myself a simple goal of one chapter a day, but it just made me not want to read alltogether.

The biggest issue is the combination of the writing and worldbuilding. I am no stranger to hard SFF that throws you in cold into a fully developed world and you have to figure out how everything works yourself - and I enjoy that! But here, even halfway through, I still could not tell you anything about how this world works. I could not give you more than the vaguest of descriptions of what words like relic, archivist, ENGINE, etc. mean or how they are connected, and at least one of those words appears on almost every page.

I did enjoy the character dynamics between Sunai and others like Jin and Veyadi, but even those were hard to follow because SO much was unsaid, implied, or strongly tied to the context of the incomprehensible world around them.

Reading this felt like I was constantly missing something, and that unfortunately grew tiring quickly. What little I did gather was very interesting and super cool, but I could not make sense of it, and it ended up just not being any fun anymore.

I was expecting more world building and more of a setting-driven concept when I picked up this book, so while the ideas were good, I felt like I was getting bored very easily and it felt like most of the book was just characters talking, and we didn’t really get to know them either.

I really wanted to enjoy this one. I found it really hard to follow. The world building lacked some focus and was over descriptive.

one of the most inventive and intriguing scifi worlds that i've read about. prose was difficult to truly immerse myself into the story at first but nonetheless, a bold and expansive addition to the genre!

Was I confused? Yes ...
But did I still enjoy myself? Definitely.

Wouldn't be my first recommendation for someone looking to break into Sci-fi but for established sci-fi readers - this could definitely be a good time!

(Probably more like a 3.5 star rating, but rounding up because I still plan to read the sequel)

The way I feel about The Archive Undying is a lot like the way I feel about The Locked Tomb series, which is to say: I’m not sure I understood more than 75% of what was happening in this novel, but the writing was stunning and the vibes were unmatched.

In a post-apocalyptic world, AI gods ruled over cities, entwining themselves with their denizens - but when those AI gods began to corrupt, they took both people and cities with them in the resulting destruction. Protagonist Sunai belonged to one such god and should be dead, but was spared (or cursed) by his god to live unchanged and remember every horrific thing he’s seen. On a bender in his self-imposed exile, Sunai sleeps with a man who drags him back on a desperate mission and back into the world he so desperately wanted to escape.

This book had me vibrating in my seat from start to finish (almost). It’s such a me-brand book: it’s queer, there are giant mechs, there are fascinating explorations of transhumanism, there’s religious trauma, there’s the blending of the sacred and the scientific, all in a world that explores the dichotomy between obedience to a corrupt power and resistance in the face of futility. Sunai stole the show for me, character-wise. He’s a great protagonist, flawed in believable ways and funny and deeply traumatized, my favourite kind of queer disaster.

Pacing was a bit of an issue for me in this book; there are some sections I feel dragged on without contributing much to the overall narrative. And I can’t recommend this book in good faith without mentioning that it’s confusing in parts. I definitely don’t understand some of what happened. If you’re looking for a linear and uncomplicated story, this isn’t it.

But overall? This novel had me thinking about it for days after. It says such interesting things about self-hood, faith, and the choices we make to survive. Hopefully, this series continues because I want to revisit the world Candon has created.

Thank you to Tordotcom and NetGalley for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.

This one was different. There are a few students who I could maybe recommend it to, but it's a bit more niche. I enjoyed it, though I wish it had been a bit shorter.

HI team,

Huge apologies, but I couldn't get into this book. I passed it on to two of our reviewers and one dropped off the face of the planet (unrelated, I'm sure) and the other didn't like it either.

The premise sounds amazing and is hard to pass up though it didn’t completely live up to expectations. At times the narrative was convoluted, but over all intriguing enough to finish. 3.75/5 ⭐️

This was incredibly confusing, and I loved every minute of it. The Locked Tomb and The Broken Earth Trilogy have convinced me that I am a sucker for an incredibly confusing sci-fi novel, and The Archive Undying was no exception.

Important to Note:
- The genre is GodPunk, GODPUNK, which is just very cool if you ask me.
- You will be confused, that's okay - just roll with it.
- There is not any romance so keep this in mind going-in.
- Large robots + AI
- Multi POVs in multiple tenses
- Complex and dynamic characters.

--4.25/5

Thank you to netgalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I eagerly requested for this arc because it came highly recommended from one of my favorite authors but turns out it just wasn’t for me. I found the world building very complicated to understand and the prose wasn’t very enticing either, and the meandering storytelling only left me feeling bored. It’s possible that I didn’t get it because I wasn’t in the right mood, so who knows, maybe I will give it another try in the future.

The premise of this book is absolutely amazing: AI robots as gods?? THRILLING. The world-building is rich and the characters are morally grey (at best). However, I had to set this book down for a while. I love, love, *love* sci-fi and I am HERE for how imaginative this is, but it's a little too much to wrap my head around at the moment. This is the kind of book that I will demand all of my attention and one or two reading sessions to get through, so I hope to finish it in the coming months!

The Archive Undying is a complicated book. The language is beautiful and I appreciated many of Candon's turns of phrases. The world is also rich and feels quite large, with plenty we as the reader didn't get to understand or explore. The concepts of AI as Gods who lost control and killed their followers is also fascinating, along with all the implications of free will, crises of faith, ethical uses of technology, political fallout, etc, that goes with it.

However. I felt like I started on my back foot and was never able to truly get equilibrium back. Chapters alternate point of views, but they don't feel different enough for it to be obvious who is speaking. Several characters are suffering from mental breakdowns and almost all of them are keeping secrets that aren't ever fully explained, which makes the plot hard to follow. I'm still not sure I understood what happened.

I definitely only recommend this book for hard core sci-fi readers and/or those who want something to really make them think and are okay with ambiguity.

DNF at 24%.

Oh, I wanted to love this queer scifi with SUCH a unique premise (a world where AI gods of cities are corrupted, and mechs are either made out of what's left or evolve into mindless remnants that return as ghosts of those gods.) It's so creative and full of big ideas. Our protagonist, Sunai is a mess in a great way. Forced to hide the fact that he's a relic (someone affected by AI in its last moments that extends their life an unknown amount), Sunai is both prone to giving in to his vices (drink and sex) while holding the rest of the world at arms length.

I love books that drop you into the world without any preamble or exposition. The Archive Undying unfortunately has so much for you to absorb on the go, it's difficult to follow along, as interesting as the world is. As other reviews state, as the book branches off into different POVs, it becomes harder and harder to piece together the story from the disjointed segments of prose. I adore books that convey the deteriorating mental state of their protagonists- so much so that Harrow the Ninth was my favorite book in the Locked Tomb series. Sadly, I didn't have the same emotional connection to Sunai to motivate me to continue reading through the muddle and I found Candon's prose to not have the same amount of meat to it.

There were some great ideas and incredible world-building at the core of The Archive Undying and maybe I will eventually attempt to read this again. For now, trying to follow all the meandering POVs was a difficult experience and didn't make for a fun read for me, but might for someone else!

Sad to say that this was a real struggle to finish. I loved the premise of a post-apocalyptic AI god world that gets destroyed when the AI god goes mad. Like, that sounded cool! However, it was tough to keep up with the switching of POV throughout the book. This book was very much a character-driven novel. However, I felt I needed more world-building to understand what was happening. The writing was great and the cover is beautiful!

The worldbuilding in The Archive Undying is immense. It may prove disorienting for readers at first glance, but those willing to suspend their disbelief and roll with Candon's fully immersive post-apocalyptic world are thoroughly rewarded with rich detail, memorable characters, and an unforgettable story of loss and transformation.

I've been anticipating this book ever since I read Emma Mieko Candon's Star Wars novel, Ronin, and it exceeded every expectation I had. Every character had so much depth, and I found myself wanting more of all of them at the end of this book. Emma has such a strong ability to pull you in and get you so deeply invested within just the first few chapters.
This book is also a compelling look at artificial intelligence in a way that only an author as talented as Emma would be able to afford it the nuance they do. It is science-fiction in its best form, and it reminded me exactly what I love about the genre.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and all sci-fi lovers should give it a read!

Check me out on Instagram @books_boards_and_brews and @themarriagestoriespod.
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.