Sleeping Giants

For some reason I appreciate the matter of fact interview style of the book. It reminds me of world war z. I immediately borrowed the second book in the series!

I really enjoyed this (wow a book Hailey actually liked from 2020 amazing)!

I found the story to be incredibly intriguing and I absolutely adored the formatting for this book. I am a sucker for unique modes of storytelling and this use of interviews certainly gave me that sense of uniqueness. I was a little wary going into it that interviews would not give enough depth to the novel and leave out pivotal information. This was not at all the case and I was really pleased with how well it worked.

One flaw of the formatting is that you don't know as much about the characters. Which, in a way, I found refreshing. There was no info dump about their lives, appearance, and silly-but-just-you-wait-it-will-one-day-be-relevant childhood stories. You simply received the information you needed at that time. And while it took me a little bit to get used to, I found myself really enjoying it by the end of the book.

The only reason I can't give this 5 stars is because of the movement of the plot itself. I kept trying to think of what was bothering me about this book for the past day and I've finally realized it is this– there is not a strong central plot to this book. Yes, we have our robot and we are trying to figure out how it functions. Great. But that never reached a true resolution in this book. What we did have were mini-plots that had great exposition, great action, and great resolution. I even gasped a few times aloud because of what was going on. I just felt that this needed to be a wee bit more cohesive overall.

I'm emo the bookstores are closed because I want to get the sequel and these books are just too darn pretty. I will 100% be purchasing the sequel's hardcover as soon as I am allowed to step inside a bookstore again.

I listened to this on audiobook which I think made it easier to follow. It's told by letters, reports, recordings etc. I thought it was so very interesting. The characters have pros and cons and it's hard to tell who the good guys are. There's a bit of a cliffhanger at the end.

This was all over the place.
2.5

Scifi / political. Good ending but obviously leading into next book.

5/5, just not gay enough

Outstanding book. Great story line, well-told using the file and report format. My favorite parts were the exchanges between the unnamed man and “Mr. Burns.” Intense, yet humorous. Very well-written book, looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

DNFed the audiobook around page 50 then the hard copy book at page 100. I didn't find the plot development that interesting and the character development (if you can call it that) even less interesting.

Pleasant quick read with giant robots. Interesting cliffhanger.

I was not particular about continuing the series. After hearing the epilogue, I have been sucked in.

OH. MY. GOD.

I got this book as a freebie a year ago, and I'm a little sad it took me this long to get around to reading it. It's written exclusively as transcripts and journal entries which makes it very fast-paced and suspenseful, keeping a lot of mystery going all through the book. Despite being so sparse with words, Neuvel still develops his characters thoroughly and makes a pretty silly premise into a gripping thriller. Plus, giant robots. I do enjoy giant robots. If you are a fan of World War Z style writing and mecha, you will probably like this series, and I bought the next book right away.

Sleeping Giants is volledig geschreven aan de hand van interviews en logs. Hierdoor leest het boek heel vlot, maar komen sommige zaken toch wat geforceerd over. Toch slaagde de auteur er in elk personage een eigen stem te geven en medeleven op te roepen.
Het verhaal is heel interessant, mysterieus en goed opgebouwd. Benieuw naar waar dit gaat.

This is the first part in a series, and it feels somewhat incomplete. There's a conclusion still waiting to happen in the next two books. Nevertheless, the book tells a story with a beginning and an end, of international intrigue, alien artifacts, and personal relationships that's absolutely been worth reading. I saw someone make the comparison with Carl Sagan's Contact, and I think that's appropriate - if you liked Contact, you're probably going to like this book.

Listened to it as audiobook

The audiobook form was absolutely perfect for this kind of story. Very dynamic and immersive. You may vividly see all the settings and fill in the missing info with just a bit of imagination. Hope that the next two books will not disappoint (btw you may actually read it as a standalone, even if it end with a bit of a cliffhanger)

This audiobook is amazing!! It is a full cast production and makes the whole book more real. Between the full cast and the wonderful writing, I now feel like I'm friends with Kara, Vincent, Rose, and the Interviewer. At first I thought the pilot was simple and I wouldn't like it. But I was totally wrong. It is simple and wonderful.
The discovery and science is interesting and the politics seem very real. And we meet the people behind all of these things. It is a fascinating story. I had to rush right out and get the second book. I'm glad all 3 published, so I can get them all quickly. The story is too good to wait on the next one! And I would only read it on audiobook.

1: Sleeping Giants ★★★★★
#2: Waking Gods ★★★.5
#3: Only Human ???

4.5 ⭐️

This was so much better than I could've even imagined, in great part because I listened to the audiobook version. A lot of people recommended the audio as the go-to version and they were definitely spot-on with that. There are different voice actors for all of the characters, which I thought allowed the listener to really separate each of them. I can struggle to distinguish character voices in audiobooks and this really helped me understand what was actually going on.

The characters themselves were great and I enjoyed their interactions for the most part. I thought the romance felt a little forced, but luckily it didn't play too too much into the story. The twists all made sense, but weren't necessarily things I saw coming. I also really liked the writing style, but I was a huge World War Z fan, so that's to be expected. Overall I really loved this book and I highly recommend it.

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I feel like the interview framing device is more detrimental than helpful to the narrative, especially since the interviewer is by far the most interesting character. Still, a decent plot keeps it from getting bogged down in interviews.

There are two ways to look at the quality of this book: standing on its own and as part of a larger whole. Far beyond whether you enjoy the books that the publishers liken it to – World War Z, the Martian, etc. – I think that the perspective you choose will ultimately decide whether you enjoy Sleeping Giants or not.

On its own, Sleeping Giants is a 3 or 3.5 star book. It's premise is fascinating, but the surface is barely scratched. Its interview-style format is engaging, but doesn't quite carry the backward-facing, “what was it all for?” gravitas and confusion that World War Z employed so beautifully (while using the same style). It's dialogue and characters are interesting and feel real (for the most part), but they don't carry the blend of intelligence, wit, and sarcasm that made The Martian's Mark Watney so appealing. Viewed in this light, Sleeping Giants is creative enough to be noticed and fresh enough to avoid feeling derivative, but ultimately comes across like a “half effort” that never quite finds its footing.

However, when viewed as part of a larger whole (read: when understood that it is intended to be part of a series), Sleeping Giants is easier to swallow. The idea that this book serves as a premise to a larger story is intriguing enough to continue on.

I am absolutely not your average reader of Science Fiction novels. In fact, I can safely say that besides about one other book in the past few years it is a genre I've avoided pretty much consistently. It is though significant that the other Science Fiction book I read, back in 2017, was one that has many similarities to Sleeping Giants and that was Illumina by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman and I absolutely loved it just as much as I've fallen in love with this first novel in the Themis Files series.

Reading any new author can be daunting but reading one who is also a writer of an unusual genre for you is a bit like going on holiday to a new destination, you can have heard great things about it before you go but you never really know till you get there if it's going to be a holiday of a lifetime or you are going to be begging to go home. Sylvain Neuvel has impressed me no end with this novel which is written entirely in transcripts of interviews and meetings with the key characters and players within the narrative. There is no traditional storytelling, instead, we are given first-hand accounts from different perspectives of the action that is taking place. This does the wonderful thing of giving this book incredible pace. You cut right to the heart of what is going on and the result is that you literally cannot put it down. You want to devour it, you tell yourself just one more interview, one more file to read and before you know it you are another 20 pages through.

The story itself is unusual, it begins when a young girl falls down into a crater whilst riding her new bike and finds herself being cupped in the palm of a giant metal robotic hand. There is a huge cover-up and not until many years later when the same girl is a qualified scientist do we find she has been recruited to help find the other pieces of what will eventually be a 20 storey high walking metal person with potential weapons capability.

There are a number of aspects to this story, firstly we have the political elements that we follow as countries around the world scramble to be the one to claim ownership of this new technology. Those who don't have it are terrified and want to see it safely contained whilst others will spend billions to develop it and find out as much as possible about how they could use it.

As well as the political element of the story we have the one that questions where the technology came from initially, tests show it is around 6,000 years old and contains elements that suggest it is not of this planet. This means that every evolutionary scientific finding is called into question and mankind must question everything we know about our origins and whether we are in fact alone in the world.

The first in a trilogy of books this is an incredible novel that I fell for absolutely within the first 30 pages. It isn't an overly long novel, coming in at 303 pages it is modest and it's format makes it feel much less dense than may other books you may pick up. I adored the characters, even though they are narrating through a mysterious central figure that connects all the players we learn a lot about their individual quirks and personalities and we really root for them. We don't miss the normal writer's techniques to tell us as a reader about every intricate detail they see and touch in order for us to understand their emotional journey.

We are also left with an interesting twist in the end of this book that will definitely bring readers back for more with novel number 2, Walking Gods and the third and final book in the trilogy, Only Human, which was only released this month. I had heard a fair bit of praise about this book before going in but this was absolutely worthy of every good review I've read. It challenged me by making me read something new but it won me as a reader by making it relevant to the world around me. It never failed to make it accessible and real world whilst still opening my mind to new ideas. An absolute triumph.

Want to read a book involving giant mecha and have it actually make sense? Want a story about an ancient mystery? Want it told in an unusual way? Want a spanking good story?
Well, here you go.

At some point months ago I listened to a book-related podcast that basically said, “Read this as soon as it's published.” And it grabs quickly too. A young girl rides her new bike into the woods and falls into a large hole in ground. She's found and is okay, but she's sitting in the palm of a giant metal hand that carbon dates as older than thousands of years. It's in a shaft surrounded by glowing runes of unknown origin. The story is largely told in a series of interviews. But don't let that put you off, it was a very fast read with several good surprises and was just plain wicked cool and lots of fun. First of a trilogy called The Themis Files.

The plot of this one is fairly clichéd with mysterious artefacts being discovered across the planet but where this was distinguishes itself from the rest is how it tells the story, using only interviews and reports with no external narrative at all. Once you get used to it it's surprisingly effective.

The premise was unique and contrary to a few other reviews I've seen on here I loved the format (the interview format is a great way to not have to reveal anything without hamstringing characters' POV) and I'll probably read the next one but I felt that as the story went on many of the characters became more flat versions of themselves rather than fleshing out more (like there was the Bad Girl Who Secretly Wants a Relationship and the Quirky But Strangely Necessary Nerd Boy Loved By Beautiful Women and the Mad Scientist &c - like the only character that I felt got more interesting over time was the interrogator character) and like maybe the reason for it will become more apparent in future installments but I felt that the reproductive violence was unnecessary.

I didn't realize this was a book about giant robots. It's a book about giant robots, though. So, right up front, I should tell you: I'm not a fan of giant robots.

Why do people make giant robots in the shape of any organism when the engineering effort behind a giant robot could produce a robot of any shape at all? Why should a giant robot be piloted by a single (or pair) of individuals who might be incapacitated in battle by some chance accident? It seems like a whole crew would make sense.

You know what makes more sense than a giant robot? A regular ol' spaceship. Star Trek style. I'm not even a big fan of anime that runs on giant robots. Pacific Rim? Meh.

So, yeah. The whole premise of a giant robot puts me right off.

Giant robots aside, the storytelling technique is interesting even if inconsistent. It's told in a series of reports and recordings. But it's not always clear who is making the report or recording nor why they would record some of the things that have been recorded. But, if you can get past nit-picks like that, it's an interesting approach even though it all but completely lacks descriptive prose. I missed some of those sensory markers.

Some of the characters are sort of interesting. The audiobook performance is really good. But the story is pretty flat.

And there is a giant robot.