The Archive Undying

The Downworld Sequence, Book 1

By: Emma Mieko Candon

Narrated by: Yung-I Chang

War machines and AI gods run amok in The Archive Undying, national bestseller Emma Mieko Candon's bold entry into the world of mecha fiction.

WHEN AN AI DIES, ITS CITY DIES WITH IT
WHEN A CITY FALLS, IT LEAVES A CORPSE BEHIND
WHEN THAT CORPSE RUNS OFF, ONLY DEVOTION CAN BRING IT BACK

When the robotic god of Khuon Mo went mad, it destroyed everything it touched. It killed its priests, its city, and all its wondrous works. But in its final death throes, the god brought one thing back to life: its favorite child, Sunai. For the seventeen years since, Sunai has walked the land like a ghost, unable to die, unable to age, and unable to forget the horrors he's seen. He's run as far as he can from the wreckage of his faith, drowning himself in drink, drugs, and men. But when Sunai wakes up in the bed of the one man he never should have slept with, he finds himself on a path straight back into the world of gods and machines.

The Archive Undying is the first volume of Emma Mieko Candon's Downworld Sequence, a sci-fi series where AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests with corrupted bodies.

Come get in the robot.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com.

©2023 Emma Mieko Candon (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Giant robots stomp around a lush and tactile world of ruined cities and unknowable AI gods, which is all one could ever need.”—New York Times bestselling author Tamsyn Muir

“The Archive Undying is everything you could want in a mecha novel. Emma Mieko Candon is brilliant.”—Ann Leckie, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of Ancillary Justice

“Candon pours her/their elaborate setting of weird artifacts, monstrous fragtech, and corrupted AI through an intense and intimate emotional focus to create a vivid journey of recovery and reclamation.”—New York Times bestselling author, Kate Elliott

A meditation on interbeing

In this exquisitely strange and well-drawn world, humans and AI’s are intermingled in surprising ways. What it means to be “human”, to feel, to think and to act, becomes complicated (and funny and sad and scary) in ways that most of us never think about. Lucky for us, the author thought about it. All we have to do is enjoy the journey!

AI evolution towards corruption

Emma Mieko Candon’s The Archive Undying is a confusing sci-fi story of a dystopian future after AIs had risen to godlike power such that they were worshipped with archivists serving as priests, only to become corrupted creating a post-AI world where some are hunting for AI artifacts. Individuals who had interacted with AIs retain some abilities and are referred to as ‘relics.’ The political structure is one of competing city states run by mob bosses, many of which have ambitions of creating an ‘engine,’ basically an AI derived entity that is under the control of a relic with an archive (the memory or data). In the hunt for salvage, un unknown AI arises that seems to have been the cause of the original corruption.

Candon’s worldbuilding leaves much to be desired as the current state of the world as well as how it got this way is never fully fleshed out. The whole tale is reminiscent of the 70’s film ‘Zardoz’ with a set of contrived arrangements that permit a story, but without much satisfaction.

The narration is acceptable with some character distinction. Pacing is on the slow side.

Wonderful!

Absolutely loved it!

I'm not usually into mecha/robot stuff (I'm more of a high fantasy nerd) but the book blurb was so wild that I had to read the sample and it hooked me immediately! So much that, despite planning on reading it, I decided to buy the audio book so I could listen to it at work.

The characters are funny, interesting and multifaceted in their motivations. It's difficult not to like any of them even as their motivations clash. I was especially charmed with Jin, I love a little cunning, sassy bastard, especially a non-binary one.

It was a little difficult to follow sometimes (I got a little lost near the end) because it is, at its root, speculative fiction, but by the time the book was nearing the end, everything came together and I wasn't left feeling like I was missing anything (even though I'm sure I did, lol!) It's going to warrant a re-read in the near future, for sure.

The narrarator for the audio book was fantastic as well! The character voices were distinct and it was easy to follow who was speaking and whose POV it was, even when they blurred together. His cadence and voice were a perfect fit for the book.

This can definitely be a stand-alone as it felt complete, but I'm very excited to see that this may be part of a series! Looking forward to seeing what the author writes next. Thank you so much for this book!

No idea what’s going on

Admittedly I’m a pretty casual reader, but the story tries to be everywhere, the world building is really good but is rendered incomprehensible by the un marked perspective shifts; are we in a memory, a vision, who is talking right now? Often I was wondering: where are we? And What is going on? As another reviewer said— don’t hide your world building, want the characters to travel in a huge beast like in mortal engines then take the time to explain how the walking creature works and where they are. Literally spell out this is what happened to the AI, this is how AI society worked, what happened. I’m left super confused at all times and after like 10 hours I just couldn’t keep going as I had no idea where we were, what the characters goals were, and why the things that were happening were happening.

Don’t buy the audio book

Not Sci-Fi and weak.
Note, I am DNF on this one. I also made the mistake of buying the audio book which seemed to amplify its problems.
While tossing out terms like killer AIs who kill cities, frag-tech (bio tech fragments), archives (people), relics (people?), corruption etc. may set a tone, none are defined.
The technobabble is incomprehensible—so this is high fantasy with a weak magic system and incomplete world building.
The word “archive” is misused. The term “neurotransmitter” seems misused too.



<<Spoiler alert >>
The fragments eat people. One is called a “dragon child”. Are there any grown up dragons?