Review: Sleeping Giants

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm frustrated by this book. I like the core concept. Alien artifacts buried throughout the world for us to find once we reach a certain level of technical maturity. No indication of the intent of the machine. Is it a tool of peace, construction, wonder, science? What frustrates me is how the story is told. Each chapter is an interview between a nameless mystery agent and one of the characters directly involved in work on the giant. For me, it drains a lot of the potential color from the story. In many cases, the conversations feel forced or contrived instead of genuinely interactive. Interviewees go into long expositions on their experience in response to fairly mild prompts.

We're left with a major tease in the epilogue, and I enjoyed it enough that I'll pick up the next episode. Even so, I'll be bringing some reservations with me as I talk it up with fellow readers.

View all my reviews