Only Human is the third and final book in the Themis Files Trilogy by Sylvain Neuvel. The first book, Sleeping Giants, has been on my Kindle and on my TBR for entirely too long, so when I found myself with access to Only Human, I was sufficiently motivated to read all three, back to back.

As I find is frequently the case for me when reading a trilogy, the first installment was interesting enough to read the second, the second was better and left me no choice but to read the third, and the third was not exactly what I had in mind.

The premise of the books is thus: a little girl accidentally falls into a large metal hand that has been buried for millennia, left behind by an advanced alien species that had visited, leaving behind a few of their own who had mixed with the early developing human species. Years later, that little girl would become a scientist tasked with finding the rest of the parts to go with the large metal hand (parts that would make up a robot designed on an alien planet), and to discover why it was left behind. The outcome of that mission will change Earth and its residents in ways no one could have fully imagined.

Sounds intriguing, right? Conceptually, it definitely is. However, I had issues with the approach. First, the story is told via chapters that are entirely discussion (with minimal clarification as to who is actually talking) and chapters that are written in journal or report form. The chapters written entirely in dialogue grew increasingly frustrating for me. Sometimes the different speakers dialogue would be differentiated by italics or angle brackets, but not always. And you still had to figure out who was saying what. Irritating.

The characters’ behavior was relatively predictable. Character development seemed to fall by the wayside in the third book, and while I did like a few characters in the series – namely Rose and Kara – I didn’t feel connected to their experiences. The situations they found themselves in were often devastating, stressful, heart-wrenching, and even wondrous. But I never felt any of those things. I didn’t like Vincent or Eva one bit.

Finally, while I believe the author and I are very like-minded in terms of our morals, ethics, and political beliefs, the message in the last book was so blatant it annoyed even me – even though I agree with what he was saying! When it comes to overarching messages, subtlety is more effective in my opinion.

Ultimately, the concept was unique and compelling, there were some really interesting developments throughout the story, but the series just felt…thin. Still, it’s a series I’ll remember. Clearly, there is an audience for this trilogy, I’m just not it.

A decent ending to the series. Eva, Rose, and Vincent manage to return to Earth on Themis. But in the ten years since the left, things have gone downhill. The USA has managed to activate and crew Lapetus which they use to bully the world. Now Themis is in Russian hands and everyone is looking for a confrontation. Plus the concentration camps for various degrees of people of various degrees of alien heritage sends Rose into a panic. Will the world implode? Will aliens return as friends this time? And just what effect did Eva and company have on the alien world? Read and find out!

A fitting end to a great series. I waited to read this until publication because the audio editions turned out to be SO GOOD. I'd recommend this series on audio over the print honestly. I so feel like book 1, Sleeping Giants, was the strongest of the trilogy, but I don't say that to take away from my enjoyment of books 2 and 3. They were all engaging and refreshing.

THis series was interesting to me. I thought the first book was only okay, I liked the second book better, and the third was by far my favorite. The characters and story develop and I really enjoyed this last installment.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this book. I have loved this series up until this point; I never minded the back and forth of the timeline, however in this book it was very difficult for me to follow along. I also didn't like where the characters were at both mentally and physically (being on the other planet and coming back was just now here I saw the story going). It was too slow for me. I would love to try to read it again in the future and push myself to finish it because I really do want to see how the stories end and where the characters end up.
-Brittney Books

I adored the first book in this installment, enjoyed the second, but may not have even finished this one if it wasn't to complete the trilogy.

The robots have come. The robots have left. But when they left, they took some passengers with them back to their home planet. Sylvain Neuvel picks up Only Human where Waking Gods drops off. At the end of Waking Gods, a group of humans finds themselves trapped in Themis, heading back to the robots' home planet. After a decade there, they are headed back to earth.



Only Human switches perspectives between the human's time on the alien planet, and their return to earth. They find that in their absence, the U.S. managed to repair an alien robot and is using the technology to bring other countries under their control. Russia, with the threat of nuclear weapons still viable, has held of the U.S., and it thrilled when Themis shows up in Russian territory.



The humans navigate the threat of impending war between the robots, try to navigate the racial and genetic territory of the robots' world, and navigate their increasingly complicated human relationships. Neuvel brings together the themes and storylines from the first two novels in the trilogy, but this one was not as enjoyable to read as the others. Light on action, heavy on the "messaging," it ends up sort of sterile and unengaging.





Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

I think I liked this one the least of the three books but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. We're thrown right back into the chaos and I felt a little lost at first! Wait, how did they get THERE?! I thought I didn't remember it from the end of the second book but alas, all is revealed in this book. I thought the ending to the trilogy was satisfying. I still loved the format but dang, I'm so curious about the minutiae! The background happenings! Books of only dialogue do leave something to be desired. But this trilogy is a must-read!

“There is decency in this world. We just need to look for it. Given enough time, I have absolutely no doubt it will flourish again.”

Welp. He did it. Sylvain Neuvel, in his own words, “wrote a yokits trilogy.” When I started Sleeping Giants two years ago, I had no idea it was going to be a trilogy. I was both elated and frustrated when I came to the end and found out there was going to be more, but I was going to have to wait.

I am not necessarily the most patient person, but Only Human was worth the wait. Waking Gods ended pretty abruptly. In the third book, we find ourselves nine years later, and Rose, Vincent, and Eva have all been living on Themis’ home world for nine years. When they finally make it back to Earth, it’s not how they left it, and we’ve got some catching up to do on their time away as well. As with the first two books, Only Human is very much “found footage film” of a book. We read only recorded interactions, letters, and documents.

This format could have gone very wrong. It could have been confusing and or just plain boring, but it’s not. It’s exciting and put together in such a way that both ends meet in the middle and somehow come back together at the beginning again. The juxtaposition of the unfolding current story line on Earth and the previous nine years on another planet weave together to give the plot ample room to unfold.

I was also pleased that Mr. Burns returns in this book. Besides Rose, he has been my favorite character in the series. In some ways, he’s just an ordinary, old man who likes to tell stories, but in other ways, he is so much more. The whole series, I have pictured him as Ed Asner, and the more I get to know him, the more that initial impression became cemented in my head.

I love how the trilogy comes full circle, and though we lose people along the way, it’s a great world that Neuvel has built, and, no lie, I’m going to miss these characters. I’ll probably start a new book soon, don’t want to get in a slump, but I’ll be thinking about these people for sometime to come. If you haven’t started this trilogy yet, or have started but have yet to complete it, what are you waiting for?!

This series is gorgeous. From start to finish, we followed Dr. Rose Franklin and Vincent Couture from alien tech discovery to saving the world from another planet's problems. It stayed close with its human cast and that level of intimacy between the reader and characters ends this series on a hopeful note. Where after so much tragedy and confusion, there is a chance for a sense of normality.

Unlike the previous two entries, this one took its time. I loved the approach Neuvel took to landing on an alien planet. Instead of our main characters trying to get right into battle, the attention to detail of normal things that are different from earth, not just the language, but home set up as well. I also liked the examination of what the world could look like in peril. The deep divides between "normal" humans and those who could pilot the robots took my breath away. This was where Eva shone as a character and her growth from the beginning to the end of this book was so well-rounded. Her relationship with Vincent was a good amount of strained and the discourse around what makes a hero tugged at my heart strings.

If there is something to dislike, it was Katherine Lebedev as a characters. She read more like something right out of the <i>Borderlands</i> series in a tonally dissonant way that didn't work for me. Vincent tended to be a hot head and I found myself taking his side in most of their exchanges. In addition, the plausability that so many of the interviews and audio logs could be collected from Vincent and Rose seemed a bit unrealistic. The content was fascinating, but every so often I would find myself wondering how anyone could have collected it. But it still worked as a narrative vehicle and it consistently impressed me how vivid the scenes were, given only character dialogue.

For fans of giant robots and every day people responding to the impossible, the interview and document format of <i>The Themis Files</i> makes it a must-read for sci-fi fans.

NetGalley ARC

While I have enjoyed this series overall, I felt let down by the final installment.

Rose, Vincent and Eva return to earth after 9 years on another planet. The earth they return to is very different from the one they left

The epistolary style I enjoyed in the other books started to wear thin. I think this book was too dependent on recorded conversations and didn't utilize interviews and diaries enough, the fact that Rose and Vincent were able to record their conversations on an alien planet took me out of the story. Also, I didn't enjoy the new interviewers quite as much as our nameless friend from the previous book.

I did find the state of the world Rose, Vincent and Eva return to quite believable. This is one area where Neuvel consistently succeeds, his understanding of geopolitical politics. The scenarios he proposed throughout the series about how the world would react to an alien invasion make complete sense.

It would be too easy to discount the Themis Files series as nothing more than a fantastic story about alien giant robots and how humankind handles the knowledge of their existence. Yet, you would be wrong. While it is about the alien giant robots and human's reaction to them, it is so much more than that. (If you need a hint, just look at the final book's title.) As a finale, Only Human sums up the overarching themes and provides excellent closure to this story that is much more than it seems.

One of the things I continue to love about this series is the format. I am a fan of the epistolary format if only because it is different and more personal. However, Mr. Neuvel continues to take it one step further with his use of transcripts, official reports, journal entries, and other third-party "sources." I find it a fascinating method of telling a story as well as one I imagine that is quite difficult to write. After all, he has to go beyond telling a story. He has to structure the story in the context of something else. Each reporting method has to read differently with a different target audience while remaining true to the actual story. To me, he is very successful in this endeavor, and it remains one of my favorite aspects of the series.

If the first novel was about human greed and the second novel about human violence, the finale is exactly what it says it is - a study in what it means to be human. We see this from those on Earth struggling for power in the world left after the loss of hundreds of millions of people and the disappearance of the giant robots from outer space. We especially see this in Rose and others' experiences on the alien planet and their reactions once back on Earth. Being human has always been difficult to define, but when adding the knowledge of and interaction with an alien species, this takes on a whole new meaning.

I realize that all this makes it sound as if Only Human is much more introspective than its predecessors. It is and it is not. Yes, there is plenty of soul searching as Rose and others struggle to figure out what to do, both on the planet and on Earth. However, there is plenty of the same action that makes the previous two novels so enjoyable. After all, Mr. Neuvel means for the series to be fun and action-packed, so there is plenty of robot-on-robot fighting that is still as entertaining as it was the first time we experienced it.

The Themis Files series remains as impressive in this last book as it was in the first book. Moreover, it keeps its originality to the end. Plus, it never pretends to be something it is not. It pokes fun at its genre while proving to be an excellent example of its genre. I am sad to end my time with the giant robots but cannot wait to see what Mr. Neuvel will do in the future.

A nice culmination to the series. I now want a Themis inspired VR game. I think that would be awesome, to have your Oculus on, and be controlling this giant robot! Look into it Sylvain!

Hmmm... I hate to damn with fain praise but this is a very lukewarm three stars. This is one novel that needed to sit and sink in before I was entirely sure how I felt about it. It's obvious that Sylvain Neuvel never does what you think he is going to -- or even what he might possibly do. He heads in entirely new directions with each successive novel, but I can't say that it worked very well for me in this last of his humans-meet-aliens trilogy. The first novel was an unparalleled success but neither of the followups matched that original level of imagination meets execution.

For a finale, specially for a series like this -- one that has been so creative and unpredictable... this was kind of underwhelming, I am not going to lie. This series started out so strongly and then.. kinda petered out more and more with both sequels. They each weren't bad taken on their own merit, but both Waking Gods a year ago and Only Human now definitely didn't have the vision and creativity of Sleeping Giants.

This is a beautiful book. If you're not familiar with the series, explaining that it's about giant robot-like shells that are used as weapons of war by humans that have alien DNA will not remotely do it justice. Themis and the other "robots", while larger-than-life, take a backseat to the very human characters that populate this gripping story. The challenges they face and how they resolve them is a deep and timely commentary on social and political issues that are facing us today. I fell in love with some of them and I hated others, but there's no denying that they were forged with great care and skill.

I was disappointed with the ending of this trilogy. I wanted more action. I did, however, enjoy the hopeful tone of the ending.

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Having read and liked the previous two books in the trilogy, I was interested to see how the story would get wrapped up. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in the book.

Like it's predecessors, it's dossier style that's a mix of interviews and diary entries. The book has notably less action and build up than the previous books, but there's not a sense of tension that's required to keep you invested. You're curious about what's happened to the characters in the interim, but the very nature of the dossier style keeps the characters at arms length. While the first book wasn't necessarily action packed, following the mysterious figure going around plotting everything was definitely something that was intriguing enough to grab the reader. There's no such character in this book.

This book is more a family story with some geopolitics thrown in. Unfortunately I found the daughter to be a bit grating and the more compelling characters who were built up in the first two books to be more faded in the background. I'd rather have more with Dr. Franklin than Eva. And Vincent as a father figure came off more two dimensional than he should have. We're introduced to a new character, Katherine Lebedev. Her dialogue was weird, her character never came together, and all she needed was a mustache to twirl in every scene she was in.

The biggest letdown involved Esat Ekt and the aliens. The two book build up on these aliens sort of never quite clicked. While obviously this book became more introspective towards humanity and what what makes us tick, there seemed like a missed opportunity with the Ekt story line. Specifically, an Ekt citizen who is introduced and gotten rid of pretty quickly; and done for no other reason than to drum up drama between the humans. The aliens never really felt like more than plot devices for the humans to react to as opposed to a real species.

The climax of the book was a bit of a letdown. While everything tied itself up in the end, it was all a bit too easy.

2.5/5 rounds to 3/5.

Excellent wrap-up to an excellent trilogy! Only Human delivers, taking the story so far into new territory, and bringing all the pieces together in the end in a way that's completely satisfying. Plenty of surprises, lots of action, and most of all, the intricate human interactions that give heart to the overarching story. Highly recommended!

Well, I hate to say that I didn't really love this one. It just did not have the same oompf! as the last 2.
I'm gonna try to keep this spoiler free so I'll just say that without certain key characters, the other characters were less interesting.
We didn't get any time to get the connection between Vincent and Eva so all the sudden it's 10 years later and Eva is a giant bitch! I just could not connect with her. Then Rose is really annoying and basically a non character. Also, there is a lot of politics which the book calls for, but with everything going on in the world I've just got a serious case of political fatigue.

All that being said, the book is smart and we'll written. I mean it kept me turning pages when I normally would have just put it down. I hate that I didn't love this, but it doesn't ruin the trilogy for me though. It's been a great ride.

Only Human starts with the four passengers of Themis being transported to another world. They were there for almost 10 years and started to assimilate in the culture there. When they do make it back to Earth, it is definitely NOT as they left it. Earth has decided that anyone with alien dna could be a danger to the entire planet and they start rounding them up in concentration camps. Rose, the scientist, takes it upon herself to try to find a solution to this injustice. As in previous books, there is a lot of jumping around in time. Details are filled in as and when the author wants you to know them.

So, what I love the most about this book is the writing style. I really like how the book is written in conversations and interviews. In addition, this author is an actual linguist, so I felt he did a very good job of bringing Vincent to life. I loved the first two books. However, this one fell flat for me. It just felt like it was a commentary on human prejudice and injustice instead of a sci-fi book. I loved being able to revisit with the characters, but felt it was lacking the action and suspense of the first two books. I am glad I read it and if the author decides to revisit this story, I will read some more. This one gets a three out of five stars for me.

Thanks to Del Rey and Netgalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.