I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko CandonPublished by Tor Publishing Group on June 27, 2023
Genres: Action & Adventure, Fiction, Gay, LGBTQ+, Science Fiction
Pages: 416
Format: ARC, eBook
Source: Netgalley
Buy on Bookshop
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.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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.
