Ty
I'm sad that I have to DNF (30-40%) and give this a lower rating.
The cover, the concept, that first damn chapter!! I was so freaking hooked and couldn't understand why it had a lower rating. I thought it deserved higher, and I was determined to prove everyone wrong!
Iterate Fractal has corrupted, and it is dying, and in it's divine death, it has killed you.You clutch the root in your breast. It is the largest of veins Iterate Fractal stuck into you, and the least intentional.
My love for beautifully crafted words drank in the opening chapter, hungry and grinning like a wolf for more. I'd found a new gem in the rough. Alas, it was not to be my fate, and my heart began to sink as I delved into the following chapters. I started to feel like I had entered a cave with no flash light. The light dimming the further I went in.
I believe Emma Mieko Candon is going to be great author. One day. As beautiful as her writing is, she fails to remember that us readers can't see into her thoughts. Because that's how it felt to read. I felt like I was getting only half the story. I couldn't SEE anything. Descriptions were vague for the sake of ‘pretty words', it was so hard to imagine what any of the machines looked like, and when I thought I might have finally landed on an concept, Candon seemed to counteract that.
A story of AI gods that created cities and housed it's citizens like it's children, only to fall into terrible corruption and nuke the very people it protected? F* yes. Give me more of that. I wanted in. I want so badly to discover this world of Candon's and learn more about these corrupt AI, relic's, ENGINES and everything else. But that's all I could really get, the names of things.
I am not giving up on Emma Mieko Candon, as long as she improves the clarity and depth of her writing, I will gladly pick up another book of hers. The ideas, and concepts and the worlds Candon is creating are meant to be read, they are too cool and epic not to. But until then, I unfortunately need to put The Archive Undying back on the shelf, and sigh wistfully at the cover until I'm ready to let it go to a tiny library or second-hand book store.
4.5
I'll come back to this once I've gathered my thoughts, but damn, I can't wait for the next one.
Still amazing on the second read. Will come back and give some proper review thoughts. Just know this is wonderful and heartbreaking and something special.
The excessive use of the F slur was completely unnecessary. I understand what the author was trying to go for, but we don't need to use slurs to get our point across. There's also no trigger warnings for it either.
Among other things that bothered me, I dnf'd at 75-80% I was really enjoying the story and the characters and was going to push past the slur use but it just keep being used and other things came up that just went down hill and made me more and more angry.
dnf at 70%, not bad, just not for me.
This one started out quite strong for me, i love a good enemies to lovers and this one definitely had that at the start. But it quickly started falling apart and got really repetitive in the characters dialogue. The ‘I still hate you but i'm confused and you're f* with my head' conversations seem to happen every time the two characters came together and it never really differed that much throughout my reading experience.
I really enjoyed the premise, concept, the beginning and one of the characters; but the writing, pacing and execution just didn't land for me.
Onto the next one!