Well! Waking Gods certainly doesn't waste any time, I'll tell you that much. Despite taking place about ten years after the first book (Sleeping Giants), everything is as urgent and immediate as ever. Global cooperation is tenuous; scientific advancement is not as far along as anyone would like; and another giant robot shows up in the middle of London.

Themis, the giant alien robot whose assembly and function consumed most of the first book, has been accepted as a global peacekeeper more as a combination of resignation and acclimation than any sort of futuristic idealism. She's* an indestructible robot that can destroy huge swaths of land (or population) with little effort, and she's piloted by two people who literally cannot be replaced. She can't be stolen, hacked, or defeated. And because the world is in relatively decent shape, she mostly does photo ops. Pragmatism rules the day.

The robot that appears in London, dubbed Kronos, disrupts this fragile order. It almost doesn't help that Kronos doesn't do anything once he arrives. It would almost be easier if he attacked: nothing unites people like a fight with only two sides. But Kronos only observes, and the world is of fractured mind when it comes to what to do about it. Some are thrilled: the opportunity to engage with aliens, at long last! Others are fearful, and want to evacuate or even attack. And yet still more--strangely but, let's admit it, very realistically--look up at the stories-tall titan, go "huh," and just want to get on with their days. It's the whole range of humanity on display in this book, not just its best and worst elements.

Yet despite the general population's insouciance, never have delicate, complicated geopolitics felt so swashbuckling. We get just enough information to understand that the nations of the world are just as heterogeneous as they've always been, full of infighting and competition as they've always been. Transcripts from Parliament show coalition leaders jockeying for more power, putting British--or the own--interests ahead of the good of the world, and even a bit of name-calling. Humans are still being human, in other words.

Being human, we get ourselves into some less-than-ideal situations once we start responding to the aliens. And the aliens, despite being more technologically advanced, respond...let's say less than ideally as well, since I don't want to spoil anything. Waking Gods manages to do this without adhering to the more popular optimistic/pessimistic dichotomy, too--this is neither Starfleet utopia nor dystopian plague-y ruin. I would say that it's realistic with a large dash of hope. Things do get dark, though. Very dark. There are moments of humor, but parts of this book really broke my heart. Not that it stopped or even slowed my reading. Like the characters, I didn't dare stop until the solution was found. It's that engrossing.

Neuvel is able to do this because of his continued use of the "found document" style of writing that cuts down on any extraneous descriptions or transitions. Once again his book is lean and precise, getting to the heart of every matter with private diary entries and teaching the background science and politics with Socratic dialogue. Everything else is presented as a "transcript" so we get to-the-moment dialogue pared of even the usually requisite markers of "he said" and "she went." This format doesn't always work, but when it does it enhances both the immediacy and the stakes, since we have the implicit understanding that all of this was recorded for future reference because it was already acknowledged as critically important. It cuts right to the chase, and the whole book is one big chase: chasing knowledge and chasing time, both of which are in very short supply.

The knowledge part is also a slam dunk: the explanations and solutions are so much fun to read because Neuvel is so adept at writing about a broad array of scientific topics for laymen. We have a lot of scientist characters who have evidently taken the (wrongly-attributed) Einstein quote to heart: if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough (he didn't say that, but it's still true). A xenolinguist, a geneticist, and a physicist are all hard at work trying to ensure the survival of the human race, but through them Neuvel gives some excellent explanations to his non-expert characters--and to us as well. I don't know if you would classify this as "hard SF," but the distinction doesn't matter so much when the explanations are so thorough but straightforward. The non-scientist characters get to be experts, too--in warfare, espionage, population management, and even hand-to-hand combat. This book has everything! And--as a cherry on top--we finally get the story of the nameless spook who orchestrated the whole first book. I'm still not clear on how Neuvel fit all this in.

The overall message isn't overly complicated, though. Communication, research, and the scientific method will save the world; military action will doom us. Can't say I disagree with any of that. It's nice to see scientists saving the world with generals and world leaders finally deferring to their expertise. Even if their expertise is, in one critical moment, hilariously dependent on Google Maps. But that's what genius is, isn't it? Using what you have. Your brain, your cell phone, your megaton mecha--this whole book offers up the ingenuity and insight of the human race, as weird and wonderful as it can be.

Waking Gods is book 2 in Sylvain Neuvel's Themis Files. I received an ARC from Netgalley. The book officially comes out on April 4, 2017. I highly recommend reading Sleeping Giants and Waking Gods back to back. Book 1 basically sets the scene for a full-on alien invasion that the earth deals with in the second book, and I think the story flows much better and makes more sense when the books are read close together.

The sequel just like the first book is written as a collection of interview transcripts, news broadcasts, letters and journal entries. Unlike Sleeping Giants, this book is action packed. It starts out with a giant robot materializing out of thin air in the center of London. We also finally learn the identity and background of the anonymous all-powerful man who manages and largely orchestrates the activities surrounding the Themis project. However, I personally thought his back story was not compelling enough and was frankly hard to believe. Overall, I enjoyed this installment slightly better than the first book simply because we learned more about the characters and background of the events, and a lot more was happening in terms of action. I did however, feel that the first book did a much better job relaying the politics and the international diplomatic situation surrounding the discovery of Themis. The second book that deals with a global catastrophe dedicated an abysmally small amount of attention to the international politics. We get snippets of information about actions undertaken by various governments, but there isn't much about the debate or panic at the global level that was done so well in Book 1.

Now that I finished the second book, it is clear that the author might right more books in this series as the set up for the next installment was clearly revealed at the very end of the book. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.

I was eagerly anticipating this sequel to Sleeping Giants and was so happy to get a ARC of this thanks to NetGalley. Written with the same style of interviews as the first book, Waking Gods reunites us with familiar characters, Rose, Kara, and Vincent as they continue to work with and understand Themis, ten years in the future. But when another alien robot suddenly appears in downtown London, the game changes from research to war. This series is sci-fi blended perfectly with a thriller attitude. Full of new subplots, secret government organizations with mysterious men, and some of the best twists in the series so far, Waking Gods is definitely making me go crazy for the next installment in this exciting series.

Definitely faster paced than the first book and just as good.

In my experience, usually a sequel doesn't top the original ... but in this case I'd have to eat my words. Waking Gods ROCKS! Answers old questions and poses new ones ... and in many ways, is even clearer and more of an adventure of the original. (And I really liked the original, too.) Five stars!

The second installment of the Themis Files does not disappoint! The story unfolds in the same format as Sleeping Giants - news reports, journal entries, and interview transcripts from our favorite mystery man. Game of Thrones meets Arrival in a book where the plot twists start at the beginning and the action never stops. While readers could most likely appreciate Waking Gods on its own, it would be a good idea to read Sleeping Giants first. I'm already looking forward to book #3!

Book Title: Waking Gods
Author: Sylvain Neuvel
Series: The Themis Files #2
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: Del Ray
Source: I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

⇝Add to Goodreads⇜

♪♫My Pick For Book Theme Song♫♪


♫It Has Begun by Starset --If a book or series has anything to do with outer space, aliens, or just persevering…than Starset wrote the soundtrack for it. This lyric video is awesome…like Themis herself is stomping around.♫



⇝Ratings Breakdown⇜

Plot: 5+/5
Characters: 5/5
The Feels: 5/5
Addictiveness: 5+
Theme: 5/5
Flow: 5/5
Backdrop (World Building): 5/5
Originality: 5+/5
Book Cover: 5/5
Ending: 5/5 Cliffhanger: …you could say that.

Will I continue this series? Umm…YEAH! This is a must read series for anyone, at least I think so.


OVERALL RATING: 5+/5 STARS

⇝My Thoughts⇜

I wished for this on Netgalley, right after I did that; I thought I really would rather listen to this on Audio. Since I listened to the first book in the series, Sleeping Giants, on Audio and it was one of the best audiobooks ever. I figured I wouldn't actually win the chance to read this one, and I was okay with that…guess what…I won. I never win anything.

I missed the full cast of characters giving each person their own voice, but I still was freaking totally engaged in this story. It Rocks! I'm fairly certain I will still have to listen to this on Audio, maybe, right before the 3rd book comes out. Overall, I'm not disappointed I won this and had the opportunity to read this before it releases in April 2017.

There is some buzz out there about Sony Pictures adapting this series to film. I really hope it happens, because it will rock as a movie series. I also fervently hope they make it everything that it can be…

Unnecessary and forceful

Just as in Sleeping Giants, the beginning is extremely intriguing, drawing you into the story with the first sentence. It introduces an unknown character, and that was a little fun, until this unknown character comes back into the story and you realize that you know basically nothing about her and she has no character. She's supposed to be 10 years old, but talks like Rose, and is having prophetic dreams. That's all there is to know about her, which got fairly boring fairly fast. Later into the story, her character got more and more cliche, and I just really couldn't stand her.

And again, just as in Sleeping Giants, the relationships are basically shoved down your throat. It's really forced, although not as bad as the love triangle in the first book. That comes back into this story as well, which was completely unnecessary. This is hard to say, but also accurate: this whole book felt unnecessary. The formatting becomes redundant half way through the book, and when that happened it just got infinitesimally more boring. It's one thing to have a novel told entirely through files and recordings . . . but when the last half of the book is just dialogue because of a "plot twist", I can barely stand it. Even more when more than two characters are speaking.

Same thing as the first

Maybe not exactly the same, but fairly close. Starts with some new revelation (Themis for book 1, "new character" in this one), and then there's a bunch of science jargon, and then some Twist!! (Vincent's accident in book 1, the "plot twist" I mentioned before), then there's the "climax" and the cliche and abrupt ending.

I thought a lot of it was either repetitive or unnecessary. I enjoy most of the characters, although some of them can be annoying. I don't like how certain creepy characters were brought back from the first one, because with the new character, I was hoping it would move on.

Neuvel also tried to hook in the shock value with the middle twist, but it was frankly just a horrible choice. It slowed the book down, mainly because I was no longer interested after killing off the only characters that I liked.

Final Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Overall?

I seriously don't know why Del Rey granted my wish. I rated Sleeping Giants three stars, and was fairly critical. Maybe they wanted a critical view of Waking Gods, but more likely it was just a random choice. This whole book was a disappointment. I was critical from the beginning, but then it just went downhill from there, and I was just finishing the book to finish it.

Would I Recommend?

If you liked Sleeping Giants, you might like this one. It was disappointing and cliche, and I seriously disliked the ending. The Bookavid's review, found here, says that this series would be good for transitional readers that don't read that much sci-fi. So, since I read too much sci-fi, I would say that lovers of SF/F should skip this one.

Good book but it has the awkward middle bookness. The new and exciting stuff was revealed in the last book and the resolution is yet to come. I really do love following on the journey though.

This review is in exchange for a free e-galley from netgalley.com.

I was a huge fan of Sleeping Giants, so I was beyond excited to receive Waking Gods from Netgalley. It's a solid followup! The character development isn't as strong in this one and some of the plot elements seem a little forced, but it's definitely worth picking up.

I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey. Thank you.

The first book in this series is "Sleeping Giants" and I highly recommend you read that book before you begin this second book. Even though Sylvain Neuvel has sprinkled some backstory information throughout this book he did not try to re-create the first book. If you don't know what happened before, it will take you longer to fully appreciate what is happening as you get into the body of the new material. I can say I absolutely raced through this book. Because the 'files' (instead of chapters) are short it seemed entirely possible to keep saying just one more, no, really, just one more. The style in which the book is written takes no time at all for the reader to adjust to something a little different from standard narrative. Each file is a report or a conversation and those conversations are only between two characters so you don't need quotation marks. There is an unnamed individual and his portions of dialog are shown in a lighter color to differentiate him from everyone else. You find yourself falling into a comfortable rhythm as you read and this, plus the fact that the action moves very quickly from one area of the world to another, makes the story pretty nearly impossible to put down.

In the first novel the pieces of a giant robot were discovered all over the globe and assembled into a huge robot christened Themis. Speculation ran rampant as to why this obviously advanced technology was on Earth and how it could be made useful. Now two pilots have learned how to use Themis, but suddenly a robot that looks slightly different from Themis has appeared in the middle of London. How will the countries of the world react if they feel threatened by this robot that simply appears? What if there are others? What do they want? How should the Earth Defense Corps react to something obviously not from this world?

I enjoyed this second book, perhaps even more than the first and that's saying something. The questions raised about how humans might react to something so foreign was great fodder for conversations with other fans of science fiction. I don't know how many novels have been planned for this series, but there is no way it can end here. Why? Well, because there are still unanswered questions but most of all because I want to read more.

This book continues the giant robot saga from "Sleeping Giants"- you should read that one first!

This book ups the stakes for Themis's crew. She's no longer the only giant robot in town! Others land around the world and their activities make it necessary for Themis to go into action against them. But she's thousands of years old, with an inexperienced crew who don't even know the extent of her abilities, and there's only one of her against a whole team of more modern robots.

This book's strength is in its characters. They have attached themselves to my heart, and Sylvain Neuvel knows what to do when he's got you there. The action isn't the main purpose of the book, which seems like an odd thing to say about a book with giant robot combat. But I think the author is also riffing on what makes us human, how the everyday juxtaposes with grand events, and it looks like he's nowhere near done with the story he wants to tell. I am more than ready for the next in the series!

Last year saw a large break-out success in the science fiction genre in the form of Sleeping Giants, by Sylvain Neuvel. For a spoiler free summary: the book told the story of a young girl who falls through the earth onto a giant's hand. This young girl grows up to assemble a team of scientists, military, and government officials who set about digging out the giant - tracking down the missing pieces - and assembling them. This is arguably a huge achievement for science, and an incredibly bad/good idea depending on your point of view. Our second book picks up ten years after the first with a new threat looming on the horizon - other giants have arrived on earth.

The main sell of Sleeping Giants was its innovative (yes I know it has been done before, but it still felt fresh) style of using only dialogue to tell the story. The chapters are interviews, conversations, phone calls, radio broadcasts etc. and they keep the book moving at a very fast pace. Dialogue is a lot of fun, and often my favorite part of stories. With the entire story told through talking you can expect lots of great one liners left and right. However, as we move into Waking Gods, the second book in Neuval’s trilogy, the appeal of only dialogue is starting to grow old for me. There are some inherent issues that arise with only dialogue storytelling in the second novel. For starters, the first book lent itself to mostly research, explorations, and discussion - something that dialogue does really well. Book two on the other hand, has a lot of combat and action. And frankly action scenes told only through dialogue, are pretty bad. The idea of two giant colossi duking it out in downtown London gets me hot and bothered, but when it happens in Waking Gods the scene only lasts a few seconds and you can barely tell what is happening. However, that is not to say the book isn’t exciting.

The conflict is successfully elevated from book one, and follows an escalating mystery with the answer preventing human extinction - so the stakes feel high the entire time. The puzzle feels both captivating and well planned, and kept me burning through the book straight until the end. The answer to the mystery was not the greatest reveal of all time, but nor was it disappointing - falling somewhere in the middle of the two. If I had one request it wouild be that I wished the escalation through the book was a little more gradual, as we went from mild concern to pants-soiling terror in a very short period - something I usually like more slowly build up. In addition, the characters range from lovable, to getting on your nerves. The best characters still tend to be the two who we know nothing about, the shadowy government worker conducting all the interviews and the mysterious Mr. Burns. While we know little about them, they have huge personalities and brighten up Waking Gods (which is severely needed as it is not a particularly happy book).

In the end I don’t have that much more to say about Waking Gods, other than if you liked the first book you will likely enjoy the second. I am starting to tire a little of the style, but Waking Gods definitely delivers more of that punchy dialogue I liked in Sleeping Giants with some new mysteries to solve. I would recommend Neuval avoid combat though, unless he comes up with a more interesting way to talk about it. If you enjoyed Sleeping Giants, I recommend you continue on with the series with the next installment, Waking gods.

Rating: Waking Gods - 6.5/10

Waking Gods es la esperada continuación de Sleeping Giants, primera novela de Sylvain Neuvel, que consiguió partiendo desde el más absoluto anonimato vender los derechos de su debut para su adaptación al cine y su traducción a varios idiomas.

Waking Gods es una novela continuista, ya que utiliza la misma estructura inusual que la primera entrega, con excelentes resultados. Por lo tanto comparte los mismos puntos fuertes y las mismas debilidades.

En el apartado positivo, el envidiable ritmo de la novela. Mediante pinceladas en forma de informes, diarios personales, noticias de la televisión vamos viendo cómo se desarrolla la trama. Además, las escenas de acción también están muy logradas, con un dinamismo que empapa cada página. El libro, como dice @mertonio, prácticamente se lee solo.

Los personajes mantienen su idiosincrasia propia y hay alguna incorporación que puede dar mucho juego en el futuro. Esperemos que lo dé, porque al autor tampoco le ha importado prescindir de los servicios de algunos de los pilares fundamentales de la novela anterior, y por ende, de la serie. Esperemos que esta arriesgada apuesta le salga bien. Yo al menos aplaudo la valentía del canadiense.

En el apartado negativo, hay que tener la suspensión de la incredulidad presente en todo momento. Me puedo creer que haya robots gigantes lo mismo que me creo que Spiderman se pegue a las paredes, pero necesito que me expliquen los sistemas de teleportación lo mismo que me pregunto de qué material están hechos los visores de la máscara del superhéroe arácnido para que pueda ver. Es decir, estoy dispuesta a admitir cierta laxitud en las explicaciones científicas pero también requiero cierta coherencia. Y eso que el autor no iba muy desencaminado cuando habla sobre la herencia del ADN de la humanidad (recordando a Nancy Kress con su Yesterday’s Kin) pero otros aspectos de la historia no me los puedo creer.

En definitiva, si te gustó Sleeping Giants te gustará Waking Gods. Y te quedarás esperando como yo la siguiente entrega, porque el final no puede dejar más cosas en el aire... o en el espacio, como tú prefieras.

I am a big fan of the first book and was really looking forward to this one. I found this one to be a bit boring and unbelievable at times. I was in no rush to finish it. For me, this is not a good thing as usually, if a book has captured my attention, it is usually hard for me to put down.

I was disappiinted by this sequel, to be honest. I feel like what I liked in the original book got a bit lost in this action/full on sci-fi plot that seriously reminded me of the 5th Wave series, and not in a good way.
The death roll and the open ending didn't help matters for me.

This novel is book two of the Themis Files. If you haven't read book one, Sleeping Giants, go directly to the library and pick it up (do not pass go, do not collect $200). This series is absolutely fabulous, but really does need to be read in order. I listened to Sleeping Giants on audio and adored the full cast treatment and will pick up the audio of Waking Gods as well. But, I read this one in ebook format and found it to be just as compelling. It is difficult to review either of these books without giving away spoilers, but the first edition opens as an 11 year old girl falls into a hole in the woods and into a giant metal hand. Years later, that girl has become the physicist in charge of the group trying to understand this find and others like it. Wonderfully put together and imaginative science fiction ensues. At the end of book one, some things are resolved, others aren't and book two picks up with a new discovery. Very entertaining. Would make a great family read (appropriate for junior high ages and up) as well. I think this series has a wide appeal factor and would be entertaining for many readers, not just those who regularly read science fiction.

I was super excited to get Waking Gods because I'd enhaled the first book in one day. This was took me a little longer but it still has the same great pacing, and unique writing style (all of the chapters are transcripts of conversations or diary entries, etc).

I almost wish I'd re-read Sleeping Giants beforehand because I was a little lost for the first bit of this book but once we started covering new ground it was all good. It seemed like this one had way more scientific conversations happening but lots of action too. I was a bit upset about the death's of two characters but totally get why it had to be that way and I cannot wait for the 3rd book based on the final sentence of this one!

I thought the first book was fairly impressive. I did not expect the second one to outshine it!

It's been 10 years since the events of the first book.
Still told through recorded interviews, file reports, and documents we see what's happened to all the characters as time has passed. While the first book can be argued as somewhat slow in pace due to no external forces pushing them, the same cannot be said of the sequel. Here you really want them to get a chance to understand what's going on, to hope they figure out the end game before it gets too far. The ending was great, and the post ending makes me really want to know what happens next.