Review: Archive of Unknown Universes: A Novel

Archive of Unknown Universes: A Novel by Ruben Reyes Jr.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

🌅I received an advance listening copy of Archive of Unknown Universes from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. This novel blends love, war, and the weight of silence through the speculative device known as the Defractor. The story moves between Ana and Luis, Harvard students in 2018, unraveling family secrets, and Neto and Rafael, revolutionaries in 1970s El Salvador, whose forbidden love unfolds amid conflict. Together, their timelines reveal layered echoes of history, love, and generational trauma.

While the premise is compelling, the execution often falters—especially in the audio version🔊. The book constantly shifts timelines and points of view, sometimes multiple times within a single chapter, and without clear markers, it becomes disorienting to follow. In print, distinct fonts or headings might have clarified whose perspective or which era we were in, but in audio, the voices blurred together, leaving me struggling to keep track.

This structural confusion detracted from the power of the story. I found myself drawn far more to Neto and Rafael’s narrative, which was tender, tragic, and politically charged, than to Ana and Luis’s faltering relationship. I often wished the book had focused entirely on Neto and Rafael, as their story felt richer and more emotionally resonant.

The Defractor itself, while initially intriguing, never fully lived up to its potential. Instead of immersing us in multiple alternate histories, it became a muddled device—more distracting than illuminating. The novel’s best moments came not from speculative glimpses of “what if,” but from the raw human connection in the historical storyline.

In the end, Archive of Unknown Universes is a book with a fascinating concept and moving flashes of beauty, but one undermined by structural choices that made it harder to engage with. For me, the fractured format obscured the depth of its most powerful story. I appreciate the opportunity to experience this story; however, I wish I had the written version to tease apart better the confusing parts of who was saying what and when. Thank you, HarperAudio and Ruben Reyes Jr., for the opportunity to listen to this novel.

3 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

#ArchiveofUnknownUniverses #NetGalley

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