Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel is absolutely brilliant. Told in interviews, journal entries, transcripts, and news articles, Sleeping Giants is creative, thrilling, and surprising at every turn. The audiobook version is narrated by a full cast. This is a format that I’m fast falling in love with. If you haven’t tried audiobooks yet, I definitely recommend them.
The book begins with Rose Franklin retelling how one day when she was a girl she was riding her bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she fell through the earth. She woke up in a perfectly square hole. The walls around her were dark but covered with beautiful, intricate carvings shining with turquoise light, and underneath her, holding her, was the palm of a giant metal hand.
Rose is now a highly trained physicist and in charge of a team researching the hand. Where did it come from? What does it do? What do the carvings say? Are there more? And if humans couldn’t possibly have made this, who did?
Throughout the book Rose and her team are being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and goals are equally enigmatic.
As a reader, you get the chance to see the point of view of different characters while they ponder the origin the giant hand and find out how it works, while also pondering questions yourself. The execution is fantastic and a pleasure to read.
The ending was the perfect mix of unexpected and anticipated. I immediately started the sequel and put the third book on hold. The sequel is called Waking Gods and it’s just as good if not even better. If you like speculative fiction, science fiction and mysteries, this is definitely the book for you.
Ariana Galeano is a librarian with the Richmond Public Library
