Sleeping Giants

I was really excited to read Sleeping Giants, a novel by Sylvain Neuvel. The book, out in April 2016, summary compares Sleeping Giants to the “tradition of Michael Crichton, World War Z, and The Martian”. I enjoy a good Michael Crichton and I loved The Martian, so I was ready to really enjoy this new story. And, for the most part, I did.

The premise is, per Amazon’s website:

A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.

Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.

But some can never stop searching for answers.

Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?

So who, exactly, are our cohort of heroes? A strong, flawed military pilot. A genius with a skewed sense of humor. A would-be hero who must learn to adapt after injury. A government figurehead with a who’s-who list of benefactors and a closet full of other people’s secrets. A number of supporters – technicians, therapists, military personnel, and others who are sworn to secrecy and anonymity. And, from the beginning, a physicist who literally fell onto the first of the puzzle pieces as a child.Pit

Pieces of something are buried deep in the ground, almost as if someone sprinkled them around the globe like giant pieces of metal confetti. Rose discovers the first piece by accident as a child, but now the rush is on to find the rest. When all the pieces are recovered, they can be assembled into something – hopefully. The pieces have inscriptions in a language nobody knows and are made by a technology nobody has seen before. Once assembled, the pieces just might form the most complex and devastating weapon humanity has ever seen. Now there is a new question: should we even use it?

The characters are completely believable and, given their backgrounds and goals, acted just as I imagined they would. I believe some scientists are really driven by the idea of discovery and problem solving and are willing to do whatever it takes to find answers. The idea of individuals in government doing whatever it takes to push their own agenda or realize their own goals (professional or personal) is, not shockingly, completely believable.

I only had two almost-dislikes. I say “almost” because they weren’t enough of a detractor to make me stop reading, and generally didn’t take away from the story itself.

  1. Almost-dislike #1: some aspects were just a little too far fetched. If our government – or any government – really acts like this behind the scenes, we’re in major trouble.
  2. Almost-dislike #2: Ruth, the physicist, is portrayed as an expert with a strong professional reputation and excellent academic credentials. She is also portrayed as someone in her 20’s. I just had a hard time understanding how someone so young could have so much professional stature.

I had one almost-disappointed moment. The “sleeping giant” in this story seemed, to me, to be very similar to a component of Meljean Brook’s Kraken King, published in 2014. [Side note to self: re-read the Iron Seas novels and do reviews of them; they are excellent.] Some of the concepts between the two books are very similar and it was hard to overlook at first.

Overall, I’d recommend this. This is a fun read; it was quick and easy and a good way to spend an afternoon.

Score: 8/10.

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