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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- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Prince North’s home is in the sky, in a gleaming city held aloft by intricate unknown technology. But North believes his sky island is sinking. Its engines are failing, and the key to saving his home is to venture to the place the engines were first created. Nimh is the living goddess of her people on the surface, responsible for providing answers, direction - hope. But in the midst of the surface’s worst crisis yet, a mist that spreads madness and poison, doubts have arisen among the people about Nimh’s divinity.
By: Amie Kaufman, and others
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Shadow Blade
- Shadowchasers, Book 1
- By: Seressia Glass
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For Kira Solomon, normal was never an option. Kira's day job is as an antiquities expert, but her true calling is as a Shadowchaser. Trained from youth to be one of the most lethal Chasers in existence, Kira serves the Gilead Commission, dispatching the Fallen who sow discord and chaos. Of course, sometimes Gilead bureaucracy is as much a thorn in her side as anything the Fallen can muster against her. Right now, though, she's got a bigger problem....
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Agile Narrator, Fun Story, Realistic POCs
- By D on 02-22-15
By: Seressia Glass
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Breaking Gods
- Godbreaker, Book 1
- By: D. J. Molles
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the beginning, the gods destroyed the world. Five hundred years later, things haven’t gotten much better for humans. The demigods that were left behind to guard over humanity have been using them as fodder for an endless civil war between themselves, and the humans just go on dutifully slaughtering each other, battle after battle. It’s not all bad, though. Perry McGown makes his living off those bloody, stinking battlefields. He works on a crew that reclaims all the spent shell casings. But if anyone found out that he was a deserter from the war, he’d be executed for heresy.
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Why does the author make it so hard to like the main character
- By Teressa Vanda on 10-02-19
By: D. J. Molles
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Tiger Eye
- Dirk & Steele Series, Book 1
- By: Marjorie Liu
- Narrated by: Emma Lysy
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
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The first exciting Dirk & Steele novel by the incomparable Marjorie M. Liu, Tiger Eye is a breathtaking masterwork of paranormal romance - a stunningly original tale of magic, sensuality, desire, and danger, featuring a hero who is the answer to every romance lover’s fantasy. Tiger Eye is the one that started it all, ushering audiences into the Dirk & Steele world of shape-shifters, psychics, and extraordinary beings, showcasing one of the most inventive talents currently working the shadowland where passion and the amazing intertwine.
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Tiger genie and mini Magneto
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 04-24-23
By: Marjorie Liu
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A Thousand Words for Stranger
- Trade Pact Universe, Book 1
- By: Julie E. Czerneda
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This debut science fiction novel is the story of Sira--a woman on the run from the law, from her own people, and from an unknown figure determined to use her for his own ends. Her memory taken from her by a stasis block, she must stay free long enough to regain both her identity and the full use of her telepathic powers. The price of failure may not only be the loss of her own future, but that of her entire race.
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Another GREAT Czerneda book!
- By GraphicsChyk on 12-11-12
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Beholder's Eye
- Web Shifters, Book 1
- By: Julie E. Czerneda
- Narrated by: Luci Christian Bell
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
They are the last survivors of their race, beings who live on and communicate through energy, who are capable of assuming the shape of any other species. When their youngest member is assigned to a world considered safe to explore, she is captured by the natives. To escape, she must violate the most important rule of her kind, and reveal the existence of her species to a fellow prisoner - a human being. Now her race is in danger of extinction, for even if the human does not betray her, the Enemy who has long searched for her people may finally discover their location.
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Julie E. Czerneda on Audible=WIN
- By Marniac on 08-06-12
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The Library of the Unwritten
- A Novel from Hell's Library, Book 1
- By: A. J. Hackwith
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 13 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing - a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto.
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Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover
- By Terry on 01-21-20
By: A. J. Hackwith
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The Never Tilting World
- Never Tilting World, Book 1
- By: Rin Chupeco
- Narrated by: Amy Landon, Anthony Rey Perez, Emily Rankin, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Generations of twin goddesses have long ruled Aeon - until one sister’s betrayal split their world in two. A Great Abyss now divides two realms: one cloaked in eternal night, the other scorched beneath an ever-burning sun. While one sister rules the frozen fortress of Aranth, her twin rules the sand-locked Golden City - each with a daughter by their side. Now those young goddesses must set out on separate, equally dangerous journeys in hopes of healing their broken world. No matter the sacrifice it demands.
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Not for Me
- By Mehlennial on 01-06-21
By: Rin Chupeco
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Trail of Lightning
- By: Rebecca Roanhorse
- Narrated by: Tanis Parenteau
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse have destroyed most of the planet…yet out of these waters, Dinétah, a former Navajo reservation, has been miraculously reborn. Listen along as Tanis Parenteau's impeccable narration, capturing the rhythms of Navajo speech, fully envelopes you into the Sixth World. Trail of Lightning follows our heroine as she walks the land alongside gods, heroes of legend, and monsters alike.
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The person you hire when the heroes fail
- By Cynthia on 08-09-18
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The Damnation Game
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Marty Strauss, a gambling addict recently released from prison, is hired to be the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job proves more complicated and dangerous than he thought, however, as Marty soon gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, his daughter (who is a heroin addict), and a devilish man named Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a Faustian bargain many years earlier, during World War II.
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Damned If You Do
- By Wag The Fox on 04-05-14
By: Clive Barker
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Invasion
- Alien Invasion, Book 1
- By: Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
They are coming. The countdown has begun. First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter's orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with Internet) has already shown the populace what is coming.
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"terrible, absolutely terrible"
- By Andre M. Nel on 08-02-18
By: Sean Platt, and others
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The Good Luck Girls
- By: Charlotte Nicole Davis
- Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Aster. Violet. Tansy. Mallow. Clementine. Sold as children. Branded by cursed markings. Trapped in a life they never would have chosen. When Aster's sister, Clementine, accidentally murders a man, the girls risk a dangerous escape and harrowing journey to find freedom, justice and revenge - in a country that wants them to have none of those things. Pursued by the land's most vicious and powerful forces, their only hope lies in a bedtime story passed from one girl to another.
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Firstborn
- StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga, Book 1
- By: Christie Golden
- Narrated by: Christie Golden
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jake Ramsey - an unassuming yet talented archaeologist - has been given the chance of a lifetime. Hired to investigate a recently unearthed Xel'Naga temple, he knows this latest assignment will open up whole new possibilities for his career. Yet when Jake discovers the remains of a long-dead protoss mystic, his hopes and dreams are irrevocably drowned in a flood of alien memories. Bonded to the spirit of the dead protoss, Jake has become the sole inheritor of the protoss' total history - every event, every thought - every feeling.
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Christie Golden doesn't have a wide enough range
- By Chad Dye on 04-30-19
By: Christie Golden
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Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with. But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret.
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What listeners say about The Archive Undying
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-20-23
A meditation on interbeing
In this exquisitely strange and well-drawn world, humans and AI’s are intermingled in surprising ways. What it means to be “human”, to feel, to think and to act, becomes complicated (and funny and sad and scary) in ways that most of us never think about. Lucky for us, the author thought about it. All we have to do is enjoy the journey!
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- Michael G Kurilla
- 01-02-24
AI evolution towards corruption
Emma Mieko Candon’s The Archive Undying is a confusing sci-fi story of a dystopian future after AIs had risen to godlike power such that they were worshipped with archivists serving as priests, only to become corrupted creating a post-AI world where some are hunting for AI artifacts. Individuals who had interacted with AIs retain some abilities and are referred to as ‘relics.’ The political structure is one of competing city states run by mob bosses, many of which have ambitions of creating an ‘engine,’ basically an AI derived entity that is under the control of a relic with an archive (the memory or data). In the hunt for salvage, un unknown AI arises that seems to have been the cause of the original corruption.
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.
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- Ashlyn Baird
- 09-08-23
Wonderful!
Absolutely loved it!
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!
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- Bailey
- 08-01-23
No idea what’s going on
Admittedly I’m a pretty casual reader, but the story tries to be everywhere, the world building is really good but is rendered incomprehensible by the un marked perspective shifts; are we in a memory, a vision, who is talking right now? Often I was wondering: where are we? And What is going on? As another reviewer said— don’t hide your world building, want the characters to travel in a huge beast like in mortal engines then take the time to explain how the walking creature works and where they are. Literally spell out this is what happened to the AI, this is how AI society worked, what happened. I’m left super confused at all times and after like 10 hours I just couldn’t keep going as I had no idea where we were, what the characters goals were, and why the things that were happening were happening.
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- Frederick Woyach
- 05-11-24
Don’t buy the audio book
Not Sci-Fi and weak.
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?
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- Rio
- 07-10-23
The Secret Shouldn’t Be The World Building
I really enjoyed the characters in this book and you can tell that this writer has a firm grasp on the world they’ve created. They’re just unwilling to tell us ANYTHING for so long that the book is almost incomprehensible the entire way through. Company cats are mentioned before their description or purpose is even implied, the corruption of the AI gods is a vague calamity that doesn’t even have outcome descriptions until late in the book, we don’t even get an idea of what corruption does until chapter 33. There’s very compelling stakes and plenty going on, I don’t understand why the world building is so restricted from the reader. Regardless of that frustration, I really like Sunai and I think if a sequel book comes out with clearer admission of the world, this will make a more compelling read a second time around.
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- Sean_Petrick
- 01-08-24
A personal, but important story in a large, expansive world.
The Archive Undying knows when to hold your hand through world building, and when to let you fill in the spaces on your own. Exposition isn't forced, but is substantial where needed. Less ham fisted than Snow Crash's librarian explaining Mesopotamian myth, but no less thorough, and for a world all its own. This was sold to me as "For your friend who brought a 200 slide presentation on Evangelion to the Presentation Party," and I was left satisfied and hungry for more.
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- Spencer Wilkerson
- 09-07-23
Hard to connect with
I deeply wanted to like this book. Mecha and AI in a weird future-past-present? Sign me up. Especially with a cover blurb from Tamsyn Muir, whom I adore. But alas, it is extremely hard to build any sort of emotional connection to the world or these characters because the author buries everything in layers of obfuscation that feel pretty unnecessary.
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.
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- Nathon
- 09-16-24
great story, performance need improvement
a great tech fantasy story with a decent love story and great characters.
the performance is fine, but with a book who's written form likely utilizes font to help distinguish the many variating perspectives of the characters, the voice artists rarely distinguishes it outside of dialogue lines which makes the book far more confusing than it needs to be
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- Ryan
- 02-21-24
multiple voices with out multiple audio voices.
very confusing. I could not follow the plot. characters descriptions were poor. only finished because of a book club. would not have finished other wise.
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