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The Archive Undying

The Downworld Sequence, Book 1

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The Archive Undying

By: Emma Mieko Candon
Narrated by: Yung-I Chang
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About this listen

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
Adventure Science Fiction Fiction Robotics City
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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

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A beautiful concept, but ultimately unsatisfying

Emma Mieko Candon is a genuinely talented writer; she creates a fantastic world and uses language lyrically and creatively; so it's disappointing that this book doesn't quite satisfy. At sixteen hours (longer than "The Hobbit" or "Pride and Prejudice") it would have benefited from assertive editing to cut it down to a more focused form. An editor could also have encouraged Candon to develop some of the interesting, nascent themes that she left unexplored.

I can't sympathise with any of the characters or even fully engage with their motivations. Even after investing hours in the book, I didn't really care what happened to any of them. (Dead? Another one? Oh dear. Shrug.)

I'm not a lover of the voice performance. The actor has some individual pronunciation quirks that, once heard, I can't un-hear.

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