Thank you NetGalley and Del Rey for providing an e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.
Release Date: April 26th, 2016
Synopsis: A girl named m ed Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down at something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved–its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted, theories floated, then rejected
But some can never stop searching for answers.
Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery–and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?
This debut novel is told for the most part through conversations between an unamed interviewer and the book’s other characters. Interspersed throughout the story are newspaper articles, government memos, and the journal entries of the main characters. In one way it’s a clever and creative format, although fans of World War Z and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff may initially have a case of deja vu. Reading it made me feel as though I was putting together a puzzle much in the way the characters were putting together the mysterious robot. The format also allowed the pace to move quickly and it only took me a couple of days to breeze through it. There’s even a nice little tie-in to Greek mythology. The problem I ran into was that I never got a sense of who the main characters were. I think this is partly because the narrative tells you what’s happened rather than shows you. These huge events take place, but you never see them. You’re only told about them afterward through the journal entries and the interview sessions. This was so frustrating because although I found the story interesting, I had this feeling of disconnect right up to its intriguing cliffhanger ending. I’ve heard Sleeping Giants has already been picked up by Sony for adaptation to the big screen so there’s a lot of people out there who like it. I can’t even say I disliked it. I was just hoping for more.
By Hook Or By Book 
You must be logged in to post a comment.