Review: The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an audio arc of this book via Netgalley, all opinions are my own.

This is going to be  hard book to review, only because it was a hard book to follow.  First off the cover is stunning, which was immediately what pulled me into the book.  The book is filled with amazing ideas and concepts, unfortunately I found it really hard to follow on audio.  I was able to get my hands on the ebook from my library which made it a bit easier to follow along as I could look up things, but the way this is written it jumps around from POV to POV and from past to present.  I had a hard time keeping details straight.  The details are extremely important as the story progresses.  I think the audiobook was very well done and the narrator does a fantastic job with voicing all of the characters.  Personally I had a hard time keeping up with all of the very important details with only the audiobook on hand.  I had a much easier time finishing the book with both the print and audiobook on hand.  

Would I continue on with the series?  Yes, but I would would want both the print and audiobook versions so I could go back and look up references to things I was confused about in this complex story.  This is not an easy book to keep up with, but I still enjoyed the creative concepts.   This is such a unique novel, I don't think I've read anything quite like it.  You've got a bit of everything in here, sci-fi, a post apocalyptical future setting, a strange religious aspect, some horror elements (body horror FYI), and so much more but I don't want to spoil anything.  

Despite this being a sci-fi flavored book, it is very character driven.  I tend to prefer plot driven stories, and this focuses much more on the characters and how they intertwine with each other.  The author does a good job eventually unravelling the twisted story of how they are all connected.  This doesn't have the epic sci-fi robot battles at every turn that one might be expecting from this book.  This book is not going to be for everyone.

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