Book Review: Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

This is such a marvelous series! I read the first book when it came out, and have been eagerly waiting for the sequel – there was a rather huge cliffhanger (handled very well), and if that wasn’t enough, I was just plain curious to see where the exceedingly talented Mr. Neuvel would take his story… Well, he took it in a startling direction – startling, but not entirely unanticipated. That isn’t to say that it was at ALL stereotypical or predictable. Rather, that if one gave thought to the assumptions generated by the first book (sorry to be vague, but spoilers are the death of great books, and I won’t risk them), the direction of this one would be one of a number of likely options. But the fact of that direction/the major plot line here is not the point – the point is entirely in the execution and the details, and that is where this series is so exceptional…

If you are not familiar with the series, check out the book blurb for Sleeping Giants, the first in the series. Given how things ended, I was not sure what on earth (that’s a rather silly pun, if you’re familiar with the series at all) to expect – but it wasn’t this. Things have heated up rather significantly between books one and two – years have passed, seemingly in the blink of an eye. That’s rather how time passes in these books all the time – there are no benchmarks for time, no sense of whether Themis was found in the past, present, or future, no sense of how much time elapses between the various “files” that comprise the story. This is one of the things I like – and also find frustrating. I do think it’s smart, especially in a series and in science fiction, to avoid dating your story (hello, 2001: A Space Odyssey…) since that can create expectations (and disappointments) when the “future” comes and goes. It is challenging, however, to keep things straight without any explicit internal timeline in a complex and ever-developing story like this one. The text of each file does always explain the time-lapse, but the jumps are often uneven in duration and the timeline can be difficult to maintain if you read speedily like I do (I flip back and forth a bit in these books). Still, it’s not at all a distraction – it contributes to the feeling of authenticity in the “series of files” format.

Interestingly enough, this format has never been an issue for me. Generally speaking, I do NOT like epistolary or non-traditional narratives – I usually find them jumpy and difficult, and rarely am I able to really lose my self in the story when it is presented that way. Not so at ALL here. Despite the unusual format and varying styles of each “chapter”/”file”, somehow the whole thing comes perfectly together into a coherent narrative that tells a most compelling story about a brilliant and extraordinarily well-developed cast of characters facing a set of wild circumstances utterly beyond their control.

This is an excellent series – beautifully crafted, insightful in its exploration of the dark side of humanity (and its responses to dark events), and utterly original. I’ve read alien stories before. I’ve read discovery stories before. I’ve read end of the world stories before. I’ve read “let’s learn who we are through strife and conflict” stories before. But I’ve never read a story that comprises all of those concepts into one unified tale full of science and miracles, despair and possibility. And wait until you get a load of the cliffhanger THIS TIME… If you haven’t read Sleeping Giants yet, start the series right away. Then rush out to get this one. You won’t be sorry.

My review copy was a granted wish on NetGalley.