
The Archive Undying
The Downworld Sequence, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Yung-I Chang
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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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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After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea "Bennie" Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship, and her reputation to uncover what’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it's right—but also because she hopes this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs. Instead, she brings more questions. The woman called Motheater can't remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain.
By: Linda Codega
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Camp Damascus
- By: Chuck Tingle
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold. Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy. And they’ll scare you straight to hell.
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A Horror That Hits Home
- By P Parker on 11-09-23
By: Chuck Tingle
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Reforged
- By: Seth Haddon
- Narrated by: Gary Furlong
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Since time immemorial the warriors of the Paladin Order have harnessed arcane powers to protect their rulers. For Balen, who has given up his chance at love and fought his way to the top of the Paladin Order, there can be no greater honor than to serve his king. But when assassins annihilate the royal family, Balen suddenly finds himself sworn to serve the very man he abandoned. Now with their nation threatened by enemies both within and outside the kingdom, Balen must fight hidden traitors and unnatural assassins, while also contending with the biting wit and dangerous charm of King Zavrius.
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Pretty good for a debut novel
- By Oinkers on 09-05-23
By: Seth Haddon
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The Sapling Cage
- Daughters of the Empty Throne, Book 1
- By: Margaret Killjoy
- Narrated by: Jackie Meloche
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch—learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy. When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind.
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Hits all the genre tropes with flair and originality
- By Jannik Mennen on 01-12-25
By: Margaret Killjoy
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The Palace of Eros
- A Novel
- By: Caro De Robertis
- Narrated by: Caro De Robertis
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as a woman yet undesirable as a wife. Secretly, she longs for a life away from the expectations and demands of men. When her father realizes that the future of his family and town will be forever cursed unless he appeases an enraged Aphrodite, he follows the orders of the Oracle, tying Psyche to a rock to be ravaged by a monstrous husband. And yet a monster never arrives.
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Beautiful!
- By Jennifer C. on 12-28-24
By: Caro De Robertis
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Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games Is Tough for Mobs, Vol. 3
- Light Novel
- By: 三嶋与夢
- Narrated by: Yung-I Chang
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Leon keeps earning accolades and climbing the social ladder—much to his chagrin. Now other nobles view him as a threat, and his political rivals pull out all the stops to lock him up and throw away the key. But that's just what the Principality of Fanoss wants.
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improperly cataloged
- By Joseph Neeley on 04-23-25
By: 三嶋与夢
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The Last Sun
- By: K. D. Edwards
- Narrated by: Josh Hurley
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Rune Saint John, the last child of the fallen Sun Court, is hired to search for Lady Judgment's missing son, Addam, on New Atlantis, the island city where the Atlanteans moved after ordinary humans destroyed their original home. With his companion and bodyguard, Brand, he questions Addam's relatives and business contacts through the highest ranks of the nobles of New Atlantis. But as they investigate, they uncover more than a missing man: a legendary creature connected to the secret of the massacre of Rune's Court.
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Holy shit that was so good!!!
- By SMC on 10-12-18
By: K. D. Edwards
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Some Desperate Glory
- By: Emily Tesh
- Narrated by: Sena Bryer
- Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity. They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons, she knows she must take humanity's revenge into her own hands.
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YA Space Opera fights fascism but pulls punches
- By Dream Fractal on 06-26-23
By: Emily Tesh
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Radiance Books 1-3: M/M Fantasy Romance
- Radiance
- By: Tavia Lark
- Narrated by: Kai Rubio
- Length: 24 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Necromancer Shae loses more of himself every time he uses his magic. Always cold, always touch-starved, the only thing that helps is human contact. But Shae's dark powers scare everyone away. Even his new paladin bodyguard Arthur keeps his distance. Until Arthur finds Shae unconscious and shivering—and doesn't let go.
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odd narration, wonderful story
- By Odd on 06-11-25
By: Tavia Lark
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In the Lives of Puppets
- By: TJ Klune
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots—fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe.
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Above all else, be brave
- By Tricia Bravener on 04-28-23
By: TJ Klune
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The Incandescent
- By: Emily Tesh
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Walden is good at her job—no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from—is herself.
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My favorite book of the year
- By lsrygl on 05-15-25
By: Emily Tesh
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The Starving Saints
- A Novel
- By: Caitlin Starling
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration. Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin.
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Different
- By Momma on 06-16-25
By: Caitlin Starling
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Swordcrossed
- By: Freya Marske
- Narrated by: Omari Douglas
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Mattinesh Jay, dutiful heir to his struggling family business, needs to hire an experienced swordsman to serve as best man for his arranged marriage. Sword-challenge at the ceremony could destroy all hope of restoring his family's wealth, something that Matti has been trying—and failing—to do for the past ten years. What he can afford, unfortunately, is part-time con artist and full-time charming menace Luca Piere.
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loved this book
- By Anonymous User on 11-05-24
By: Freya Marske
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.
AI evolution towards corruption
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No idea what’s going on
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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?
Don’t buy the audio book
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Good, but not a great format for Audible
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I respect her commitment to avoiding info-dumps. Another reviewer was like, “Please spell out the world-building,” and I disagree with that sentiment. Info-dumps take you out of the flow of the story and often feel very YA. The author clearly decided she would avoid them altogether. That’s great, it’s a laudable goal, but she doesn’t pull it off. I spent 80% of this book saying—out loud—“what? wait…what? who? why?!” There’d be these passages where the narration was like “suddenly it all made sense” or “sunai understood everything” and I was like, “Uhh, I don’t.”
I STILL do not understand almost any character’s motivation, which I think is the central reason it’s so hard to connect with. The main love story is so rushed that it’s nonsensical. Everyone knows everyone or maybe they don’t but they definitely do? Divine convergence, amirite? Who is the Harbor? Wtf do they want? What does ANYONE want? The plot ends up feeling like nonsense, and by the end I was just desperate for it to be over. The last 40 minutes took me two weeks to finish. The ending lacked any sort of emotional punch, both because of the aforementioned complete lack of understanding of why anyone was doing what they were doing, but also because the perspective shifts so constantly that it becomes impossible to tell who is talking.
It’s hard not to compare this to what I think to be pretty obvious influences: Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The Locked Tomb is similar in how it handles world-building, but the writing is nuanced instead of intentionally obfuscated, and you learn about the world in pieces that make sense, like a slowly revealed tapestry instead of jackson pollock painting. Where I think it fails in comparison to Eva is that was a visual medium. The author has also written graphic novels, and I honestly think this would have been waaaay better as one. She could do so much with images that she can’t with words, and I think we’d all be less confused.
I had this on my wishlist for almost a year before it came out, and I was pretty disappointed in the result. I highly doubt I’d return for a book 2, but I might sample the author’s work again down the road once she’s figured some things out.
Hard to connect with
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confused
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The Secret Shouldn’t Be The World Building
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A meditation on interbeing
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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!
Wonderful!
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multiple voices with out multiple audio voices.
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