Sleeping Giants: An Intriguing Tale Watered Down by a Very Distant Form of Storytelling
Sleeping Giants by Sylvian Neuvel
One of my favorite authors is Michael Crichton. And I read most of his books multiple times. But I really do wish he was still on this Earth to create new work, but sadly he’s not here. Then I heard rumors about this new book Sleeping Giants. And people claim it’s similar to Michael Crichton. So I’ve been keeping an eye out for it. The moment it went on sale I snatched it up. And here is my review by Sylvian Neuvel.
The book begins with a nerdy young girl riding her bike through the woods. She falls into pit and lands on top a giant robotic hand. The hand is a mystery. No one knows what it is or where it came from. As an adult, Rose has become a scientist doctor and puts together a team to find the rest of the pieces of this robot and study it. But least to say things don’t go as planned with the government and various special interests at hand.
The good? Well this book is original. The story is good. The cast of characters is well defined and unique. The story at its core is a great concept. It’s almost like someone watched Pacific Rum one day and said, I kind of like this giant robot idea but want a version with no monsters and more science. And that is exactly what this is.
The bad? This story is told mostly (I would say 95%) through interviews between the cast and a government official. So the story is revealed as each character answers questions during interrogations. The book feels much more like a screenplay than a book with this super unique form of storytelling. The issue is, this form of storytelling makes books soulless. Because it’s literally telling and not showing, it has no emotion. People die and it’s just stated and not shown. There’s betrayal but its never shown. It’s told. And this removes the reader what is happening. There seems to be no weight to any consequences. Also it leads to a huge lack of detail. The reader has to fill in huge blanks here. I would dare say, the reader has to fill in up to 50% of what is happening at a lot of points and that causes a disconnect too. And this method of story telling is just dry and dull. Even though the core story was good, the method it was told in was visual Ambien. I struggled to get through it.
Overall, this story is a great concept but it is a snore fest in execution. Which is a shame because if it was written in a traditional fashion I would have loved this book. But it wasn’t. It’s not terrible, just boring. I can’t recommend this to anyone unless you enjoy dull reads. I’m giving it 2 smoothies out of four.
2 smoothies out of four
Overall Rating: An Intriguing Tale Watered Down by a Very Distant Form of Story Telling
