Sleeping Giants is a really cool book in a lot of ways. I’m generally not a big fan of novels that are not written in a traditional manner. The whole experimental style is usually not my thing since I think often times it is a gimmick being used because the writing is subpar, but that is clearly not the case here. The book is written as a series of news reports, journal entries, and interviews by a nameless, faceless, yet very powerful governmental agent. It’s done in a clever manner. An easy comparison for this novel is World War Z, but I thought the way this story was told was far superior to the way World War Z was told. With World War Z it wasn’t a continuous narrative that you could follow from beginning to end. It felt more like bits and pieces scattered. In this novel, I could follow the story entirely, despite the non-traditional narrative style.
The novel had an interesting and unique premise. Various parts of a giant robot, far technologically superior than anything we have is scattered around the world. The US puts together a team of scientists and military to find these pieces, put them together, and learn how to use this robot, all in a way that threatens a world war. Despite the lack of a traditional narrative style, the characters are well developed. There are about four or five main characters, and they are all distinctive and have strong personalities. There are also some interesting twists and turns along the way.
All in all, this is a refreshing and creative novel that I would recommend.