I really enjoyed the first book in this series. With the bar set high, Waking Gods, did not disappoint. The book takes place a number of years after the end of the first book. It starts with the robot giant, Themis, touring around the world, and preparing just in case aliens invade the planet—and they do. This book features robots coming to Earth, and Themis engaging them in fights. It’s readily apparent that Themis can’t possibly fight all of them. As people die by the millions from these robot encounters, the humans need to find an alternate way of dealing with the situation—a way to prove to the aliens that humans are worthy of surviving as a species.
The quality of the writing in this novel is strong. Although most of the time I didn’t mind the nontraditional storytelling method of using mission logs, journal entries, and interviews to tell the story, sometimes it gets a bit wonky. Like when there is a life and death situation, and the person is narrating real time what is happening. That makes absolutely no sense, and it is clearly a vehicle used to tell the story. In a real life situation, that would never happen. But the story telling is good enough to overcome that. Overall, it was a fun read, with some good twists and reveals along the way. The author is also not afraid to kill off big characters, which can be very risky for the author, but it also often pays big dividends. This is a good novel that I would recommend.
