Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

"What's going on? Turn on the television. What channel? Any channel. An unknown vessel, not of this world, materializes in London. A colossal figure towering over the city, it makes no move. Is this a peaceful first contact or the prelude to an invasion? Every child has nightmares. But the only thing scarier than little Eva Reyes' dreams - apocalyptic visions of death and destruction - is the habit they have of coming true . . . Scientist Dr Rose Franklin has no memory of the last few years. The strangers she works with say she died, and was brought back to life. The question is not just how . . . but why? Kara Resnik and Vincent Couture fell in love during war, and have found peace since. They are the thin line of defence against what is coming. But they do not know they have been living a lie. And a man who claims to have the answers has his own agenda. There are things he cannot say - and others he won't. All pieces of an epic puzzle- one we have been trying to solve since the dawn of time . . ."

Solid follow-up to Sleeping Giants. Neuvel's style is fast-paced and reads like a high stakes disaster movie, this one even more so than the previous. And yet, it doesn't have the characterization issues often faced by disaster movies and other popcorn type entertainment. It's a solid story, and while the narrative occasionally suffers from everything having to be a transcript or a journal entry, overall, it works.

4.25 out of 5 stars – see this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Last year, Sleeping Giants made my Best of 2016 list and I'm fairly confident Waking Gods has secured a spot on the 2017 list. While Sleeping Giants dealt with the discovery, assembly, and control of Themis, the buried robot relic of unknown origin – book #2 shows how a newly emboldened Earth deals with a threat far beyond what they are prepared to handle. Author Sylvain Neuvel takes the overall story in a bold direction that sees our returning protagonists confronted with a dozen new giant alien robots with unclear aims. Waking Gods is larger in scale, yet more personal in nature.

I love the continued use of interviews with shadowy characters who know much more than they are letting on. By slowly feeding crumbs of intel to the protagonists (and to us, by extension), they're able to guide them into finding solutions for seemingly unsolvable problems; this serves to drive the narrative forward in a compelling way.

The epistolary format combines with Neuvel's sharp writing to make for an infinitely readable sci-fi adventure that twists and turns its way to a big cliffhanger ending. I'm excited to see where the series goes from here.

This science fiction series really gripped my attention earlier this month when I fell in love with the first book in the Themis Files series, Sleeping Giants. I sometimes can be a bit lax in immediately continuing with a series, sometimes leaving it for months or years, but in this case I literally could not stop myself from immediately requesting the next book from my library.

So following on 9 years after the first novel we are back following the characters we were all gripped by in Sleeping Giants. The EDC has been continuing its investigations into where the giant robot appeared from and just who left it buried on earth. Their investigations have proven limited and instead Themis is displayed around the world as an attraction, designed to demonstrate the highest weapon we now have on earth but that we all share together.

The story-line of this second novel is much more high stakes than novel one when an even bigger robot suddenly appears in a London park. It stands there for days doing nothing and the world goes into panic, everyone wants to know where it came from, why 9 years later has it suddenly appeared and why is it just standing there. Mass panic ensues and everyone has a different approach for what to do next. Perhaps unwisely the display of military might we decide to show is the wrong move and we are left with over a million dead as it wipes out much of London. It's up to the team at the EDC to try and fight might with might by sending in Themis but how will they fare against a newer, more high tech robot piloted by the people who actually built Themis and know properly what it is for.

Things continue to spiral when a year later 13 more robots appear in the biggest, most densely populated cities on earth. With the warning shot in London having being fired and us now knowing how deadly the robots can be the human race is suddenly faced with potential extinction and we have to find some way to ensure our survival against a smarter, more resilient and deadlier race.

I love the format these books are told in. The interviews, press coverage, meetings in restaurants are all wonderfully engaging and because of the format it makes it a really quick read and you find yourself slipping through the pages almost without realising it. I am really not a science fiction fan, these are one of a handful of books I have read in the genre and I find the format makes it easier to digest the story and to not become too bogged down in the scientific bits.

Neuvel also does a wonderful job of relating his stories back to real life scenarios that we are familiar with. Real world news events that he links in to raise moral and ethical questions along the way and they are hugely impactful when they are used. He is an intelligent and well informed writer on his subject matter and I learned quite a bit in this book about subjects that I otherwise wouldn't have read up on such as genetics and DNA.

Another triumphant book in the series. Book 3, Only Human was released a month or so ago and it is now on my TBR shelf having acquired a copy from my local library so it will definitely not be too long before I conclude this wonderful series. I can't wait.

This entry into the series keeps the same file format as the first but definitely throws some curve balls. I'm enjoying this almost no frills style of story telling.