The Archive Undying is a complicated, complex book with unexpected moments of humor and a certain denseness to its prose. (In the sense that you have to work your way slowly through the narrative so you don’t miss anything important. And also in the sense that there’s richness and poetry in the prose, even when the characters curse like hungover sailors.) This is a book that will take a while to get through because there is so much going on, but there’s never a sense that the writer is just throwing details at you. Instead, the narrative is threaded through with hints of backstory and worldbuilding.
Let’s say it took a while to read it, as I had to stop a few chapters in and start over so I could take notes. (This is not a strike against the book, it’s just that I had zipped through two faster-paced books previously and hadn’t anticipated that the third book would be knocking me upside the head with trippy worldbuilding combined with a post-apocalyptic far-future feel.)
Our Protagonist is Sunai, who is one of the very few survivors of his city-state when the AI running it “corrupted.” (Though, “survivor,” may be more or less a misnomer.) In this setting, artificial or “autonomous” intelligences are considered divine–by at least the people living under their aegis at least. A group referred to as “Harbor” makes mecha (called “ENGINES”) out of corrupted “frag” tech from the dead AI-cities and forces also-corrupted human survivors (called “relics”) to pilot the ENGINES. Harbor is in a cold war (Or maybe a medium hot one) with an AI Empire and also the various independent AIs.
This is a fate that Sunai has been attempting to avoid for a really long time now. Our protagonist has been working as a “salvage-rat” with various crews that go out to the ruins of corrupted cities to retrieve/scavenge from them. This is a job that makes it easy to hide because he’s never in the same place for very long. (Though he does turn out to have a Reputation.)
Because Sunai makes Excellent Life Choices (this is sarcasm by the way. Sunai does not in fact make excellent life choices. He makes excessively terrible life choices. This is because of trauma and various issues Sunai can’t get therapy for due to being a fugitive and simply refusing to acknowledge his issues are in fact issues). he wakes up on a rig, having apparently had a one-night stand after a bender. With his current employer, a man named Veyadi. Veyadi needs Sunai’s very specific help in exploring a mysterious shrine. This leads to a sequence of events that will definitely draw the attention of Harbor, and possibly doom Sunai to having to get in the robot.
This story comes together in slow twists and turns as motivations and relationships are revealed. At the core of the story is what’s revealed to be Sunai’s ambivalent relationship with Iterate Fractal, before, during, and after its corruption and death. Sunai and Iterate Fractal’s relationship is at the core of the story and one of the ones I found the most interesting. (Aside from Sunai’s general inability to make good life choices ever, and his general unreliable narrator about the people in his life and his relationships with them.)
The Archive Undying is a solid novel with engaging characters and amazing worldbuilding. It’s a slow read, but that is not a mark against it given the style of writing and depth of description and characterization. It’s an adventure with a hint of romance and an interesting take on the mech subgenre.
This review is based on a galley copy acquired via NetGalley.
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