Sleeping Giants by Sylvain NeuvelBook Review

Hi everyone. I'm Rincey and this is Rincey
Reads. Today I'm going to be doing a book review on Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel.
This is a pretty new release. I believe it came out in May of 2016 and this is a science
fiction novel.

The reason why I picked it up is it was getting a pretty decent amount
of buzz. It was getting a lot of comparisons to like The Martian and World War Z. I haven't
read World War Z, but I did read The Martian and really enjoyed it. And so I was like,
OK, that seems like something that I would be interested in.

So I decided to pick it
up. In the beginning of this story, there is young girl named Rose who was riding her
bike after she got it as like a birthday present and she falls into this giant hole. But then
when she is discovered and saved by the firemen, they realize that she has fallen into this
like gigantic metal hand that no one has ever seen before and is like buried deep into the
earth. So it's some sort of like artifact.

But they're not really sure what it is, how
it got there, even what it's made of. Fast forward a good 15 or 20 years and Rose is
now a world winning physicist who is now on this case to try to figure out what this hand
was. And so her and like a team of people basically go on this quest to figure out like
what this hand is made of, where did it come from, why is it here, why did Rose happen
to stumble upon it or like how did she happen to stumble upon it. I mean, obviously it was
an accident but like why was there a giant hole in the ground with this hand in it.

And
then the mystery sort of just moves forward from there. The way that this book is set
up is its mainly written as a series of interviews. You don't really know who's doing the interviewing,
which is part of the fun of the book, going through and trying to see if you can ever
figure out who the person is asking all of these questions. There are different people
being interviewed in every chapter.

And some of the chapters are actually reports. Like
an event happened and you see like the report afterwards describing what actually happened.
So it's this really interesting way to set up the story. Instead of like a typical prose
novel, it's just like a series of interviews, and like a series of reports that you're reading
and you are trying to figure out what exactly is happening. And obviously there are like
things to take into account like biases that each individual has that's, you know, part
of the interview, as well as like things that are hidden from certain reports and all of
this stuff.

A really fun way to structure a novel and the fact that it is written like
that makes it feel really, really fast paced. This is a book that is just all plot. Like
there is very little character development in my opinion. It's just supposed to be like
a fun romp of a ride, kind of like The Martian.

But I think The Martian had a little bit more
depth to it, which is why I probably liked it more than I liked this one. But this one
is like the perfect, fun, fast book. Sabrina at unmanginedmischief described this as being
like book candy, which is like the perfect term for a book like this. However, I have
to say that book candy is not necessarily my favorite thing.

I like my books to have
a little bit more bite and a little bit more depth to them. Even if they are fun reads
I like a little bit of character development. Another thing that was really hard for me
is that by the end of the book I actually started to get kind of exhausted with the
format of interview style. The person who is doing the interviews in this book is one
of those people who like keeping secrets or like only revealing certain information and
is asking certain questions to make the people like reveal certain things.

And after a while
I feel like that style just got really, really exhausting. I don't know if it's because I
read this book so fast or I read it so continuously that I was just like so worn out by the style
by the end of it. But I found myself like towards the end just like skimming sections,
just trying to pick up on the questions that seem like the most important and, you know,
were the most relevant to the plot. Cause there's a lot of conversational pieces in
here that aren't 100% relevant to the story but they're like necessary because that's
the way that conversations actually happen.

I feel like this book could've just been developed
a little bit more or it could've been expanded a little bit more. I mean, it's a pretty short
book, it's not really that long, so I feel like if it was expanded just a little bit
more, created a little bit more depth, and maybe just add a little bit more prose in
there for my own brain in between some of these interviews I probably would've made
this like a 3 and a half star, maybe 4 star book. But because of the way that it was written,
I think it's only like a 2 and a half. I rated it 3 stars on Goodreads but it's possibly
closer to a 2 and a half.

Really it was just because by the end I was just like worn out
and I could feel myself starting to care less and less. This book is, I believe, supposed
to be part of a series. The way that it's categorized on Goodreads, it has the like
series designation. So I'm assuming there are more books going to be coming out that
take place in this world, which might help significantly with like character development
and even just expanding a little bit.

But at the same time, if they're all written in
this style I don't know if I can handle it. Sabrina, again, at unmangedmischief who's
review is the only one I actually watch, she actually listened to this on audiobook and
she said that it was really fantastic on audio because they get a full cast of characters.
I think that would've helped a lot more. I. Kind of wish that I had listened to this on
audio over reading it.

Because, again, I don't know if it's just because my brain was getting
worn out from the style, but I feel like a lot of the character interviews, the voices
all sound the same in terms of the way that it's written. They all kind of speak kind
of similarly. A lot of times I had to flip back to the first page of the chapter to make
sure I was thinking of the right character in my head. And so sometimes I would get a
little bit confused and be like, wait, which character am I reading about now? And sometimes
you can pick it up based on context clues cause they all have very distinct things that
they are talking about.

Like the way that they're written isn't really that different,
they all kind of talk the same way. So yeah, in the end, I gave this a 3 out of 5 stars,
although it's probably closer to a 2 and a half out of 5 stars. Will I be picking up
the rest of the series? Maybe? Maybe I'll try them on audio if they continue to be written
in this style. I think it's just like an OK.

Book. If you want something that's fun, fast
paced, this would be a really great book to read for like a readathon because you get
through the book really, really quick. But is it like the best book ever? Not really.
Is it as good as The Martian? Even that I. Don't think really it is.

So yeah, those are
my quick thoughts on Sleeping Giants. If you read this book, feel free to leave a comment
down below letting me know what you guys thought of it. Or if you have any questions about
the book, feel free to leave that down in the comment section as well. So yeah, that's
all I have for now and thanks for watching..