Sylvain Neuvel

Only HumanYear: 2018Author: Sylvain NeuvelLength: 352 pages While I was not actively looking forward to finishing this trilogy, I’m glad I finished it for the sense of closure it brought. I still think Sleeping Giants had such an intriguing concept in how it relayed information to the reader, but that you could only really make that work for a single book. With a cliffhanger in each book of the series, I was hoping Only Human would wrap up everything and provide a satisfying conclusion. It certainly did its best to answer all the questions that came up during the previous books, but the ending didn’t particularly wow me. The difficulty of maintaining a narrative through reports and journal entries is only exacerbated here because the human characters are the only ones who can convey what it is like to live on an alien planet. The jumping back and forth between the past and present was an OK way to hide some of...

Sleeping Giants Year: 2016 Author: Sylvain Neuvel Length: 307 pages After my slight disappointment with Mecha Samurai Empire, I was pleased to find that a book that actually knows how to do "mecha" right already existed years before Mecha Samurai Empire was released. Taking a somewhat unique approach in its narrative structure, Sleeping Giants uses a series of interview transcripts to tell the story of discovering the parts of an ancient, giant robot and learning how to pilot this unique piece of equipment. There aren't any dialogue tags. There aren't any direct action sequences. There are just words describing the events as they happened. Somehow, it totally works. I seriously couldn't get enough of this book and basically devoured every word. I was a little disappointed with the semi-cliffhanger ending, though. Just as everything was starting to finally come together, it just kind of ends. Sure, many of the large plot movements reached a momentary conclusion but now I really want to know what happens...

Tag: Sylvain Neuvel

BOOK: Only Human (2018)

BOOK: Sleeping Giants (2016)