A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.
But some can never stop searching for answers.
Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose …
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved—its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.
But some can never stop searching for answers.
Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand’s code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What’s clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history’s most perplexing discovery—and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?
Great audio cast. A lot of this seems like setup but that's fine with me, I'll read the next one. Enjoyable.
Excellently written, and marvelously narrated. I look forward to the next book in the series.
Engaging fun book in the style of World War Z only with giant mechs instead of zombies. Definitely recommend this to anyone who likes fun sci-fi or giant robot anime.
My only criticism, and I'm seeing this a lot in modern series, is that it is not a complete story. It just feels like a long book was chopped in half. Al least the sequel is coming out soon.
I found this to be an intriguing read right from the start. After my - slight - initial irritation that the book is completely written in an interview style interspersed with a few diary entries, I enjoyed this particular format. And after all this is "Themis Files" - so why was I surprised?
An interesting and sometimes mysterious cast of characters work together in this military near-future secret science-fiction parallel history with aliens? It's a bit of everything. All those bits come together and make a very interesting, fun read. There are a few nice twists and turns that I do not want to give away.
Once you get used to the way the interviewer operates though the showdown won't be the biggest of surprises though. But sometimes that is exactly what makes a good book, that the reader can anticipate and appreciate a few pages before the showdown what …
I found this to be an intriguing read right from the start. After my - slight - initial irritation that the book is completely written in an interview style interspersed with a few diary entries, I enjoyed this particular format. And after all this is "Themis Files" - so why was I surprised?
An interesting and sometimes mysterious cast of characters work together in this military near-future secret science-fiction parallel history with aliens? It's a bit of everything. All those bits come together and make a very interesting, fun read. There are a few nice twists and turns that I do not want to give away.
Once you get used to the way the interviewer operates though the showdown won't be the biggest of surprises though. But sometimes that is exactly what makes a good book, that the reader can anticipate and appreciate a few pages before the showdown what is going to happen?
It's absolutely worth reading if you enjoy the genres I named above.
There was only one disappointing moment in the book - the moment when you find out that second part of this series is still four months away...
Excluding above it was nearly perfect reading experience for me. I'm glad I managed to stumble upon something this interesting.
This was a fast, breezy read, the story of the discovery of a giant robot, millennia old, and the consequences of that discovery. It's told interview-style: most chapters are recordings of conversations between an unknown person and one of the characters, with a few chapters being newspaper reports, radio transcripts, and the like. The book suffers a little during the action set-pieces at the end -- the structure doesn't really allow for much of an "action scene" as such, but the author did what he could.
I enjoyed this. The characters all felt real to me, well-drawn, each with their own quirks and foibles. It's part 1 of a series, so it ends with the inevitable "let's set something up for book 2", but even that was OK by me.
I've seen it compared to The Martian, which was another breezy, fast SF read with no small amount of wit. …
This was a fast, breezy read, the story of the discovery of a giant robot, millennia old, and the consequences of that discovery. It's told interview-style: most chapters are recordings of conversations between an unknown person and one of the characters, with a few chapters being newspaper reports, radio transcripts, and the like. The book suffers a little during the action set-pieces at the end -- the structure doesn't really allow for much of an "action scene" as such, but the author did what he could.
I enjoyed this. The characters all felt real to me, well-drawn, each with their own quirks and foibles. It's part 1 of a series, so it ends with the inevitable "let's set something up for book 2", but even that was OK by me.
I've seen it compared to The Martian, which was another breezy, fast SF read with no small amount of wit. I'd say it's pretty accurate to compare the storytelling, but certainly the stories are very different.
Enjoy!
It opens sci fi fun in the first act and I was hooked, but is less sci fi as the book goes on, and I was a bit bummed by that because that was the most interesting part. The series-of-interviews storytelling format was interesting but it's too bad the book committed to that for the entire duration (hard to imagine it transitioning, it would be jarring, but after a couple hundred pages I would have been fine seeing it go away.)
Still, all that being said, I'll definitely give the second book in the series a try when it comes out.
It opens sci fi fun in the first act and I was hooked, but is less sci fi as the book goes on, and I was a bit bummed by that because that was the most interesting part. The series-of-interviews storytelling format was interesting but it's too bad the book committed to that for the entire duration (hard to imagine it transitioning, it would be jarring, but after a couple hundred pages I would have been fine seeing it go away.)
Still, all that being said, I'll definitely give the second book in the series a try when it comes out.
3.25-3.5..
I've never read a story that was not really narrated at all. This book is an assembly of files. In some ways I really liked it. I thought to myself if I had to start writing, this might be a nice way to get into it. I don't have to worry about bridges, story lulls, or a narration that goes off the bend. Even though we do have a pretty consistent voice most of the reading, Mr... X?
The idea in the story is a nice thought. Simple entry, not too fantastical to need to suspend disbelief too far and a far amount of modern culture to keep it in sync with a mindset of today. I liked how the characters come together, a little dive into some science--then a bit more of a dive into psychology--would have liked far more time in the alien study--maybe to come?
As …
3.25-3.5..
I've never read a story that was not really narrated at all. This book is an assembly of files. In some ways I really liked it. I thought to myself if I had to start writing, this might be a nice way to get into it. I don't have to worry about bridges, story lulls, or a narration that goes off the bend. Even though we do have a pretty consistent voice most of the reading, Mr... X?
The idea in the story is a nice thought. Simple entry, not too fantastical to need to suspend disbelief too far and a far amount of modern culture to keep it in sync with a mindset of today. I liked how the characters come together, a little dive into some science--then a bit more of a dive into psychology--would have liked far more time in the alien study--maybe to come?
As I continued reading the interview style started to chaff. Maybe it's just I wanted some more consistency in the story, or more depth that was closed over with a case number and a time skip. Maybe it was my pining for more details, or to know more of these some psychopathic characters and what's up. Regardless, I began to want more, and for a moment I thought I had lost all momentum, and then the end began to appear. With that a few nice plot lines came to a conclusion and some teasers of ideas to come. So we finished on something of a good/high note with only a residual memory of this style in my head.
If the story goes on I hope we find the author branching more into a normal dialog. Or at least pick up and put down the case/log/interview style to a more peppering to help montage or skip time. Otherwise I'd like to hear more of what's in the heads of people than just following along through a verbatim narrative.
Good idea, fairly large universe being constructed. Are we at ground zero? I hope to find out more in following Neuvel.
