Thursday, June 30, 2016

Sleeping Giants

Sleeping Giants
By Sylvain Neuvel
Random House, 2016. 373 pgs. Science Fiction

On her eleventh birthday, Rose Franklin leaves her home in Deadwood, South Dakota to go for a bike. Rose suddenly falls through the earth and accidentally discovers the most important artifact of all time – a giant metal hand. Seventeen years later, Rose is an accomplished physicist at the University of Chicago when the artifact finds its way back into her life. Now, with the help of a renegade military pilot and an conceited linguist, Rose must unlock the mysteries behind this artifact and decipher what it might say about those who left it behind.

Sleeping Giants is Sylvain Neuvel’s debut novel, and it is fantastic! This book has already been compared to The Martian and World War Z. The story is told through mission logs, journal entries, and most often through interviews between the main characters and a mysterious interviewer. Because of this format, the reader finds out about key plot points after they've already happened. Despite this removal from the action, the story is extremely compelling and thought provoking. Neuvel kept me guessing right up until the end, and left me anxiously awaiting the sequel -- Waking Gods.

CNC

1 comment:

Fahey said...

I really enjoyed the interview style storytelling of this book. It made the book more mysterious, and really moved the plot along in a way I wasn't expecting. I really enjoyed it, which was nice, because I didn't like World War Z as much, and that is what this has been compared to in a lot of reviews.