Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

Title: Sleeping Giants
Author: Sylvain Neuvel
Publisher: Penguin
Audience: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Taken from Goodreads
Deadwood, USA. A girl sneaks out just before dark to ride her new bike. Suddenly, the ground disappears beneath her. Waking up at the bottom of a deep pit, she sees an emergency rescue team above her. The people looking down see something far stranger…
“We always look forward. We never look back.”
That girl grows up to be Dr. Rose Franklyn, a brilliant scientist and the leading world expert on what she discovered. An enormous, ornate hand made of an exceptionally rare metal, which predates all human civilisation on the continent.
“But this thing … it’s different. It challenges us. It rewrites history.”
An object whose origins and purpose are perhaps the greatest mystery humanity has ever faced. Solving the secret of where it came from – and how many more parts may be out there – could change life as we know it.
“It dares us to question what we know about ourselves.”
But what if we were meant to find it? And what happens when this vast, global puzzle is complete…?
“About everything.”

I had no idea what to expect going into Sleeping Giants, and I think that was the best way to go into it. I hadn’t ever heard of it before picking it up, as it was a recommendation from a friend, but I definitely think that it is an underrated science fiction book, and would urge everyone to pick it up if you love science fiction.

Sleeping Giants has a kind of mix-media format to it, as it is primarily told in interviews with a mysterious man. This does make it slightly tricky to get attached to the characters, but once you do get attached, you become drawn into the story quickly and are willing them on. Because the main character of the story is the mysterious man, you are learning as you are reading, and everything you know is to be distrusted immediately. This was probably my favourite part of the story as he is the definition of an unreliable narrator, which makes you want to rethink everything that happens throughout the book.

The plot of Sleeping Giants is so complex that I’m not even sure that I understood most of it. It is definitely a technical based science fiction, but none of the elements felt like they couldn’t ever be true in the future. This is something that I do love from my science fiction books as I always want them to be based on reality, so I can quickly grasp the concepts. I also particularly liked how it related to Greek mythology, which is something that I never expected even though the overall series is called The Themis Files, and Themis is the goddess of wisdom and counsel.

The plot twists within Sleeping Giants just keep coming, and they get more extreme the further in the story. I thought that this might start to become a bit stupid, but they get more dramatic and well thought out throughout the book, so you get used to them. That, combined with the unreliable narrator, makes it one of the best dramatic science fiction books that I have read in a while.

My only small issue is that I would have loved it to have been even longer. I would have loved to have seen a bit more character development, and been able to have had some more time spent in the locations, as the ending did feel slightly rushed. But hopefully, it will be better in the sequel.

I highly recommend that you pick up Sleeping Giants if you love thought-provoking science fiction books, that continuously leaves you guessing. I can’t wait to pick up the sequel, especially after the bombshell that was dropped in the epilogue.

If you would like to purchase a copy of Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel, you can find it at: Bookshop.org — Amazon UK — The Book Depository — Waterstones

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