Book Review
Title: Sleeping Giants (Themis Files Book 1) by Sylvain Neuvel
Genre: Sci-Fi
Rating: 5 Stars
The opening to the first book in the Themis Files, Sleeping Giants was very interesting. We are introduced to Rose Franklin, who as a small girl feel down a hole into a giant, glowing metal hand. Years later as a physicist, Rose in working on an NSA project to uncover what the hand is. The novel at the moment is told in a series of interviews where the identity of the interviewer is unknown. Rose explains her connection to the hand and how no one seems to know much about it when she had a revelation. The hand was found in close proximity to a mine where they detected the presence of argon-37 and she believes that the hand responds to this specific isotope and if she can figure out how to make and dispose argon-37 safety they might be able to find the rest of the body. We are also introduced to Kara, a military pilot who unknowingly discovers the forearm in Turkey while looking for unauthorized nuclear activity in Syria. As Rose mentions they will need pilots to find and collect the rest of the pieces of whatever the hand belongs to, I believe Kara's interview is for her to be a pilot on this mission.
We are also introduced to Ryan Mitchell, Kara's co-pilot and someone who has a much better personality despite his obvious crush on Kara. As the project takes off, Rose has develops the technology she needs now called ARCANA and it's Kara and Ryan's job to fly the helicopters and find the pieces. For a time everything is going great as the locate six pieces, however the final one they found resulted in deaths. The pieces was buried beneath a small town called Flagstaff and one of the eight victims was a little girl. Everyone in the team takes it hard but it seems to hit Kara more than most as we see in her personal journal which are obviously being monitored given the nature of the project. Rose firmly believes whoever made the pieces didn't come from this planet and they are trying to prove that. Everything they know about the composition of the pieces doesn't match the way they react but the most promising section concerned Vincent. Vincent is a young man brought into the role of linguist although he doesn't have any formal training or qualifications to decode the language used to mark the wall sections where the hand was found. We know that the President of the United States is aware of the situation through Robert Woodhull’s conversation with the interviewer. They realises they will have to search the entire globe for the rest of the pieces which might involve and a lot more death and the appropriate people need to be onboard with that. Meanwhile, Rose knows that the pieces are pieces of a giant robot that has to piloted by two people but the equipment was clearly made for someone that isn’t human for they are trying to adapt it. When they send Kara to try the equipment related to the upper half, everyone is excited until Kara puts on the helmet and screams. It appears that it repaired the damage to her eye when she put it on but they don’t know what else it has done to her. The helmet stopped working after that so they have other issues to deal with and they are running simulations for it but I have a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better.
Kara isn’t good at listening to instructions because as soon as she is feeling better she is back in the robot and trying on the helmet again because she thinks its imprinted on her. It still hurts but she manages to make it work in a fashion and it seems they are making progress when we get Vincent’s interview. Vincent’s interview reveals he learns the symbols aren’t letters but numbers as we have maths in common with the race that built the robot. For months, Kara and Ryan have been doing simulation for moving the robot which obviously led to more happening between them much to Ryan’s delight but Kara doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with him. One day Vincent tries on the other headset and it links to him the same way Kara’s did so he accidentally replaces Ryan. Ryan does his best to help Vincent get the hang of everything he has spent months working on. Vincent and Kara also have a lot of sexual tension and they act on this one night and after things get wild. As they are leaving the base, Ryan is waiting for them and he drive into Vincent. Vincent manages to get Kara out of the way before getting ploughed by Ryan’s truck crushing his legs making him useless on the robot now and this has thrown a wrench into the entire project as the helmets can’t be unlinked from the human using them or they haven’t figured out how to do that so they need Vincent and Ryan’s actions have put him in hospital and Ryan in jail but they need to replace Vincent urgently.
In the hospital we learn that they plan to amputate Vincent’s legs because of the damage and the interviewer prevents the doctor from doing this. He goes as far as it constructs fully mechanical legs for Vincent which will be encased in his own tissue through the same process as a small joint replacement but with even bone in his legs. He also provides a second knee joint so Vincent’s leg will fit the anatomy of the robot when he wakes up but he every waking moment will be agony. Alyssa Papantoniou, the geneticist also has issues with the way the project is being conducted and she mysteriously gets deported back to Greece. Meanwhile, Captain Demetrius Rooke is sent to retrieve an object the Russians are guarding in a sub with Kara onboard in an assumed role. The object is the head of the robot and the final piece they need but even after getting it back they don’t attach it straight away because they need to understand the control panel. The interviewer agrees with this but Kara points out he is essentially torturing Vincent and he seems close to a full mental breakdown and she is worried because she cares for Vincent. The interviewer has never been a good person from what we have seen of him but I believe he has the best interest of the project at heart and Vincent is the key to that unless they can unlock the reason the helmets bonded to him and Kara but Rose doesn’t think that is possible in their lifetime.
Things take a drastically different turn when Vincent and Kara decide to move the robot around after the building is complete. Before this they did uncover some weapons capabilities of the robot but the most exciting thing for everyone is to get her moving. Vincent with his new joints gives it a spin and it works amazingly but he overextends himself and his legs give out causing the robot to fall. Kara steadies it but Vincent accidentally pressed several buttons on the console and things get strange. It seems that the robot teleports to Denver airport, during this 312 people are killed including Rose which devastates the team especially Vincent. As the robot is now public knowledge the decision is made to admit it is alien technology and dump it in the deepest part of the ocean for a few years and retrieve when the technology is available. However, I don't think Rose is dead because she has been central to the novel but it seems that I am going to have to wait for the answer. The team has been disbanded for now but the interviewer is sending Kara to Bosnia to call in a favour for him and find a woman named Fata. For Fata to avoid the interviewer detection she must be very smart or dangerous or potentially both.
Things get interesting again when we learn more of the history behind the robot’s arrival on Earth and the reason it was sent there. It makes us believe that there might be people descended from the aliens on Earth that look just like us. However, the project is being picked up again primarily by Russia, Japan and South Korea and they manages to build a new facility and retrieve the robot in around 6 months. The interviewer gets Vincent back onboard easily and Kara too but Alyssa is also brought back to lead the project in Rose’s place which doesn’t go down well especially when she is treating Kara and Vincent like Guinea pigs. This isn’t made better when they are sent to the North Korean border because they obviously aren’t happy with South Korea’s involvement in the project and the robot gets taken out for a spin. They are fired upon and Kara ends up refusing a direct order from Alyssa probably because of her dislike of the woman. This isn’t going to get better as the interviewer informs Kara that Alyssa has found her backup pilots, one being a woman from Iraq and the other being Ryan. This makes things difficult as Alyssa is expecting Kara and Vincent to help train the replacements and given Ryan is responsible for Vincent’s current physical state that definitely isn’t going to go down well. With just over 100 pages left in the novel, I am not sure how it is going to end but it’s going to be cliff-hanger since this is the first book in a trilogy but I can guarantee that I will be continuing this series in the future.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, I wasn’t sure what to expect from it but I really wanted to see Vincent kick Ryan in the face for what he did and if it does happen I will enjoy it immensely. The final section of the novel was amazing, I am not going to talk about it much because of the numerous reveals but it answers some of the questions but gives us a ton more and one of the my theories was proven to be correct. I will definitely be getting into Waking Gods and Only Human in the next month because this series seems so bingeable. Highly recommended!
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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