Friday 4 September 2015

Sleeping Giants- Sylvain Neuvel

This sci-fi/fantasy book was available as an advance copy from Netgalley.
Rose Franklin made a startling discovery on her 11th birthday when she snuck off to test her new bicycle and fell into a deep hole-she landed on a hand. A giant metal hand that radiated turquoise light. Seventeen years later Rose is a physicist and is about to embark on one of the strangest experiments she will ever encounter. Assisted by pilots Kara Resnik and Ryan Mitchell, linguist Vincent Couture and geneticist Alyssa Papantoniou, she and her mysterious benefactor will attempt to find the other parts that belong to the hand and try to piece it together. If they succeed what will this mean for the future of the world?

Cleverly written in the form of non-sequential interviews, journal entries and records, the style forces you to concentrate on the words and the jump between characters, and really reiterates the feeling of a military operation. The characters were developed to a point-considering the scope of the book it was not really necessary to delve into their pasts too deeply. The contrasting personalities played against each other well. The enigmatic interviewer was kept just that-an enigma wrapped in a mystery shrouded in secrets-who is he and why? I am torn between wanting to know the answer, to leaving it a riddle. An interesting proposal too as to what would happen between the nations of the world when each believe they have the right to ownership. The copy I received stated that it was an uncorrected proof so the incorrect fonts between characters and the missing quotation marks should all be corrected in time. I really enjoyed the concept behind the book and loved the weaving in of numeric linguistics, Greek mythology and metallurgy. Something happens too easily which leaves you asking questions, and then the cliff hanger bangs you in the face with it-you eagerly turn the page and find out that you need to wait for the next book-gutted! Highly recommended.  

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