Thank you NetGalley and Ballentine for the ARC of this book.

I liked this one. I thought the Sci-Fi elements were so interesting. The characters have a really great depth of personality. I constantly had to be kept on my toes to figure out what was going on as I had no idea.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. This book is an exciting adventure. The plot is outstanding - the characters are well developed. I will be recommending this book!

This wound up becoming a 100% skim read. I tried multiple times and over the course of multiple years. While the original felt new and inventive, this felt a bit repetitive. It also felt like there was more commercial. I am not even sure if that makes 100% sense.

I got a little further each time I read, but I felt like I was constantly starting over and over.

While the first book was more of a sci-fi mystery sort of vibe, this one is much more sociopolitical and I didn't much care for the change in tone. The dialogue felt clunkier and more unnatural than in the first book and it got even more confusing to follow conversations and figure out who the heck was talking. All the answers we got were unsatisfactory (to me anyways), as the questions themselves and asking them were so much more fun and interesting than the answers we were supplied with. Some characters get killed off, and I don't see them coming back for book 3, and since specifically one of them was the main driving force behind my interest (other than the giant alien robots themselves), I don't know that I even want to bother finishing out the series.

I'm clearing out books that I requested ages ago and have been on sale for years! I really enjoyed this title.

Note - sorry that my review is 3 years too late here. However, I wanted to go ahead and post it. I did post this on my blog right away but did not get it here on time.

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Although I have had this book to review for a while, I was never in the mood to read it until recently when I craved something light, fast, and fun. Sleeping Giants definitely delivered on all three fronts even if I had a few issues with it.

A little girl, Rose Franklin, was riding her bicycle one night when she fell down what appeared to be a deep ditch. Before she fell, however, she noticed a strange green light coming from the ditch. It wasn't until after she was rescued that she learned that the object she had fallen into was actually a large metallic hand. Seventeen years later, Rose is now a physicist who is tasked with understanding what happened that night and what that object is because yet another such site had recently revealed itself, this time with a metallic forearm.

Thus starts a search for more such metallic objects. A team has been quickly put together by our mysterious narrator - two pilots, a geneticist, and a linguist race to assemble the parts together and understand who buried them and why they are revealing themselves now.

Right from page one, Sleeping Giants hooked me. The idea that someone several millennia ago may have planted these devices was surprising but the team had no proofs - they were proceeding on guesswork. I initially figured this book was more alien fiction but it turned out to be more military science fiction halfway through.

This book is written in epistolary format - each chapter is either an interview with the narrator or a journal entry or a news item. It made for fun reading. But for all the intrigue it built initially, the book started falling flat halfway through. One of the main pilots, Kara, has a brash temperament and several failed past relationships. Both the male protagonists, however, felt very compelled to protect her or woo her. I guess I have a tough time with characters like that, who feel women need protecting. To me, the whole love triangle felt too distracting and I would have enjoyed the book more with less of that romance. I did like that there were several women in power but all of them had authority issues. I was tired of how often Rose Franklin was cited as being "motherly" and caring for her employees. Nothing wrong in being motherly but middle aged women surely would like to be known for their professional characteristics, especially among their own colleagues.

Ultimately, I enjoyed the book for its twists and turns but didn't care much for its characters or their relationships. Still, I am curious enough to follow the series (yeah, this is book 1 in the series) - the ending was dramatic enough to hold my attention.

This was one of my favorite books of the year! The two sequels were amazing as well. Sylvain's new book about the space race was also excellent. Waking Gods involves an archeological mystery that spans the globe, as well as alien technology. It's well worth a read.

A continuation of an amazingly developed series that I can't seem to put down or forget about. I ended up purchasing my own copies of these books and will be reviewing them when I revisit them all in 2021!

This series leads the reader on a journey. You might think you know where it's going, but then Neuvel will throw a twist in right where you least expect it.

The premise of this series is so intriguing. I am absolutely loving this series so far. This one has ALL the robots. In the last book we discovered Themis, in this one we meet the people who we think made Themis. This one was so sad at parts. There are definitely some casualties. I have now finished 2 of the 3 books and I cannot wait to start the final one. So that I can finally see what happens next.

Really good! Exciting, well-written, and thrilling. This author is going to go far, and I look forward to reading more of their work.

An Exercise in Telling: Sylvain Neuvel’s Themis Files (AE, 10 Jul 2019)

I’m a sucker for non-traditional narrative forms. If you really want to get my attention, tell your story in a fashion that doesn’t rely on the first- or third-person limited point of view. That can mean the epistolary novel, based on correspondence, diary entries or other documents (or Flowers for Algernon’s progress reports). Or Dos Passos-influenced novels that intermix factual-seeming documents with nonlinear narrative, such as John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, Joe Haldeman’s Mindbridge, Frederik Pohl’s Gateway or Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2012. Or mosaic novels that are built up from several distinct, standalone pieces.

At their best, non-traditional narrative forms are all about verisimilitude and subtext. Verisimilitude, or believability, can be greatly enhanced by a story that sounds like a work of nonfiction, like a piece of long-form journalism that comes from an alternate reality in which these things are actually true. (See, for example, Catherynne M. Valente’s “Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica,” told as a series of auction catalogue items, or Howard Waldrop’s “Passing of the Western,” which collects reviews of movies about a fantastical event.) But what really drives stories like these is subtext: what isn’t on the page. Neither of the stories above say outright what they’re about. In Jo Walton’s Among Others, told in the form of a 16-year-old girl’s diary entries, the story’s most momentous, traumatic events have to be inferred from what the protagonist pointedly does not talk about. And The Islanders, the most ambitious of Christopher Priest’s Dream Archipelago books, takes the form of a travel guide to the Archipelago’s various islands: many of the entries are in themselves bracingly normal, but taken as a whole, the many unexplained contradictions between each entry paint a deeply uncanny portrait. Whatever the precise form these stories take, the reader is expected to do some of the work: the story does not tell itself, at least not completely and certainly not straightforwardly; we’re supposed to figure the rest of it out.

Which brings me to the Themis Files, a trilogy of science fiction novels by the Montreal-based linguist Sylvain Neuvel. Two books have seen print so far: Sleeping Giants (Del Rey, April 2016), and Waking Gods (Del Rey, April 2017). Both are entirely made up of documents—interviews, transcripts, recordings, journal entries, news articles—organized into “Files” rather than chapters. Hence, presumably, the name of the series. (A third book, Only Human, came out in May 2018.) Now, given my enthusiasm for books organized in this fashion, you’d think I’d be all over this series. And you wouldn’t be far wrong: that structure got my immediate attention. It sounded, as I’m wont to say, neat.

Sleeping Giants is the story of the discovery of an ancient alien artifact told somewhat indirectly through these files. As a child in South Dakota, Rose Franklin stumbles across a giant hand. As an adult, she is tasked with leading a project to recover the other pieces of what turns out, once assembled, to be a giant, 200-foot-tall alien robot of incredible destructive power. Joining her are U.S. Army helicopter pilot Kara Resnik and Québécois linguist Vincent Couture, who are soon dragooned into figuring out how to operate and pilot this killer robot of unknown origin, which comes to be known as Themis. The plot unfolds largely through transcripts of interviews conducted by a mysterious and colourless person about whom very little is known but whose power to operate in the shadows appears to be limitless, and whose machinations appear to be aimed at keeping the world from tearing itself apart over the robot while keeping it out of the wrong hands (as he defines them).

Waking Gods takes place several years after the first book, and opens with the sudden and unexpected appearance of another giant killer robot in the heart of London. Themis, piloted by Resnik and Couture, is at the core of the new Earth Defense Corps, and after years of public relations tours and research is finally pressed into the fray. As before, no one knows what is going on: not the resurrected Franklin, who leads the Corps, not even the anonymous Interviewer. Things go badly. Millions die, and the matter of finding out where all these robots came from and how to make them stop killing everyone and go away becomes a matter of extreme urgency.

The interviews form the bulk of the narrative; the story’s action takes place in the spaces between, as it should be in a story using this structure. At least at the beginning, this has considerable narrative effect. Our characters are operating in the dark, partly because so little is known about the giant death robot, partly because they are being kept in the dark, both by the Interviewer and forces even more powerful than he is. The Interviewer’s tone is level, even and thoroughly humourless, with absolutely zero affect—in diametric opposition to the global freakout taking place around him, as governments come to terms with the existence of a 6,000-year-old giant death robot. That too, has an impact. That clinical, latter-of-fact tone is also effective when dealing with events that are traumatic or even deeply horrific, particularly during a scene where the order is given to perform a grisly surgical procedure.

But this is not the same as subtext. We see the characters getting ready for something, or cleaning up after something, or doing their best to explain events that the novel has chosen not to dramatize directly. This is an exercise in telling rather than showing: the book explains after the fact instead of inviting the reader to fill in the blanks. It’s indirect and roundabout, but it’s straightforward.

And in the end it’s unsustainable. Toward the end of Sleeping Giants we start to see a shift in the files from debriefings to mission logs: real-time transcripts where there is a lot of noise and shouting in the background. This continues and worsens in Waking Gods, whose narrative structure becomes even more precarious as the events they depict become even more intense and chaotic, and all pretence of reserve and self-control evaporates away.

The problem is that a narrative structure like the one Neuvel uses in this series is all about subtext and mystery, whereas the plot of the Themis Files is one of revelation. This is a method for concealing secrets, not revealing them. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes and between the lines. But for it to work some mysteries must remain mysteries. You cannot explain too much. Once you’ve done that—at a crucial point two-thirds of the way through Waking Gods, for example, we discover who the Interviewer is, or at least as much as we’re ever going to know about him—then you’re done. The artifice loses its storytelling power and becomes mere artifice. The more the reader knows, the less effective the form becomes.

There are risks to attempting a atypical narrative form, risks that compound themselves in longer works. There’s a reason we see narrative experiments more often in short fiction; that Neuvel has attempted an entire trilogy this way, not just a novel, is absolutely audacious. And it’s not to say that there’s no value in how Neuvel tells his tale. Voice matters. Style matters. Whatever I may have to say about the structure of these narratives, the characters—particularly the Interviewer—are engaging and the plot just zips along. But I can’t help but feel that had these books been written in a more straightforward, third-person manner—that default science-fictional voice—they would have been a lot more ordinary. But they weren’t, and they’re not. These books are proof that even in our field, which often disparages style in favour of idea, the execution of that idea—how you tell that tale—does in fact matter.

I enjoy the format of this series as much as I enjoy the story itself. I feel like you have to really follow along and pay attention to completely understand what's going on though so I think some people are going to love it and some are going to hate it for just that reason. I personally love it and I think Waking Gods was a very strong follow up to the first book.

Thank you, Netgalley, for the opportunity to review the second book in a series I have come to love.

From the Publisher:

As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she’s dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers—and even more perplexing questions. But the truth is closer than ever before when a second robot, more massive than the first, materializes and lashes out with deadly force.

Now humankind faces a nightmare invasion scenario made real, as more colossal machines touch down across the globe. But Rose and her team at the Earth Defense Corps refuse to surrender. They can turn the tide if they can unlock the last secrets of an advanced alien technology. The greatest weapon humanity wields is knowledge in a do-or-die battle to inherit the Earth . . . and maybe even the stars.

This description, while accurate and succinct, does not do these books justice. The books are written in a memo/email/transcription format, so you get a little of everyone's perspective as this monumental event is going down. Rose, Kara, Vincent, Eva, and our unknown interviewer end up holding an even bigger place in your mind and heart due to their candid feedback in the various chapter settings. As such, as the world slowly crumbles around them, with giant robots touching down on earth and people dying, this is a pretty stressful read. I for one had to put it down for a little while after a particularly trying moment. This book is action-packed, thrilling, and chilling, and not for the faint of heart. It is science fiction at its finest, and all the more chilling due to its Earth setting.

The sequel was definitely a lot more action packed and fast paced than the first book but I still couldn't get through the long political fillers with people voicing opinions, over-wrought metaphors and unnecessarily extended dialogue at times. And I love a good plot twist but this book had way too many of them placed too close together for me to appreciate them individually and many times it felt like that was the only way the plot moved forward. As for the characters, they sound interesting enough but the unique format makes them a tad unrelatable and I wasn't able to appreciate them fully, I wish at this point of the series we could have gotten a bit more insight into the alien species' intention but no dice. (Also I don't get why the 'alien' robots have to have genders). This series definitely has some great potential with some of the seeds that have been planted throughout the two books and its because of this that I might just give the next book a try.

Having read "Sleeping Giants" I had very high hopes for "Waking Gods." I was not disappointed. Not only does this second book surpass my expectations, it takes them and runs. The emotional depth of "Waking Gods" is where the heart of this story lies and it's allowed a full breadth of exposure for the reader here. I was captivated from beginning to end. I want so much more to learn about the other giants now and how those teams began. What happens after the events in this book? I am very excited to see what comes next for Mr. Neuvel.

I love this book and it was even better than the prequel. I was seriously troubled by the death of one of the main characters and there is no way I am going to miss the next book!!

I need to grab book three immediately! This book is set about 10 years after "Sleeping Giants" and several of the side plots in book one are still in play in book two. All the characters you grew to love and hate are back. The author threw several curve balls at you. These plot twists were so unexpected; it was fantastic. I hate being able to predicate story lines. I can't wait to see what happens in final book.

Great series with an interesting concept and a unique narrative style. Really enjoy this series. Sylvain Neuvel is definitely an author to keep an eye on.

I would rate this a smidge better than Sleeping Giants because it had more exciting action to make up for the extremely basic setting descriptions and plain dialogue. Again, highly intelligent people conversing with very narrow vocabularies was making me twitch. This book has a lot of twists and turns, but I guessed them all, except one, before they happened. So the story was too predictable for me. Then the convoluted "answer" to what would make the aliens stop came about. The idea of it was okay, but the translation of what to do from that idea made no sense, seeing they were dealing with beings who were of super intelligence. Also, the plot was overly simplistic for Adult Fiction, in my opinion as a serious Science Fiction fan.