ARC Review: Waking Gods

Title: Waking Gods
Author: Sylvain Neuvel
Genre: Science fiction

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Goodreads Summary:As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she’s dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers—and even more perplexing questions. But the truth is closer than ever before when a second robot, more massive than the first, materializes and lashes out with deadly force.
Now humankind faces a nightmare invasion scenario made real, as more colossal machines touch down across the globe. But Rose and her team at the Earth Defense Corps refuse to surrender. They can turn the tide if they can unlock the last secrets of an advanced alien technology. The greatest weapon humanity wields is knowledge in a do-or-die battle to inherit the Earth . . . and maybe even the stars.

SO GOOD. SO SO SO GOOD. I LOVED THIS, I'M GRINNING AND I CAN'T STOP.

Sleeping Giants was one of my favorite sci-fi books of 2015, and I had really high expectations for Waking Gods. This book had everything I loved about the first book, but everything was even better the second time around. Definitely no second book slump here!

Waking Gods picks up a few years after the events of Sleeping Giants, with many of the same narrators. There are a few new voices and I loved seeing how they fit into the larger story. Even though the story is mostly told through journals, reports, and interviews, which can seem a bit emotionally distant, this book was a huge emotional roller coaster. I was grinning, crying, shocked, freaking out...let's be real, I was freaking out for a good 90% of the book because everything was so intense.

This book pulls no punches. None of your favorite characters are safe. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I don't want to say too much about the plot of this book because so much of it is a surprise; even just the first few chapters leave you reeling with new revelations. I guess the most I can say is how much I love the characters in this book. They all have grown so much since we first met them in book 1, and I love how their relationships with one another also continue to evolve while they struggle to prevent the end of the world. This story is as much about humans and the people they love as it is about giant alien robots and the end of the world.

I love how this book is so tightly plotted and intelligent. It's rare that a book is a suspenseful page-turner, a profound meditation on human nature, and a hard-science sci-fi story all at once, but that's exactly what this is. Just when you think you know how this story is going to go, it completely up-ends genre tropes and goes in an entirely new direction. I cannot wait to see where book 3 will take us!

A free eARC was provided by Del Rey via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review