The Archive Undying

496 pages

English language

Published Dec. 17, 2023 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.

ISBN:
978-1-250-82154-6
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4 stars (2 reviews)

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 …

2 editions

The Archive Undying

4 stars

The worldbuilding premise here is that this world previously had cities run by AI gods (yes, exactly that problematic of a power dynamic) who have mostly become corrupted and destroyed. The Harbor builds giant ENGINE robots from corrupted god corpses as a protection mechanism against frenzied robotic fragments of those same gods. Sunai was in contact with Iterate Fractal (the AI of Khuon Mo) when it died, and became immortal and unaging. He's tried to run away and escape, but when he hears that the Harbor has seemingly impossibly built an ENGINE from Iterate Fractal he's eventually sucked back into trying to understand why and maybe kill and/or save what he can of the scraps of Iterate Fractal.

(Yes, all of the AIs have amazing names like Reconcile Elegy, Perish Aflame, and Fun-Sized Exultation in Perpetuity.)

This book asked a lot of me as a reader. It's very dissociative, literally …