"Waking Gods" by Sylvain Neuvel

Waking Gods is book 2 in Sylvain Neuvel's Themis Files. I received an ARC from Netgalley. The book officially comes out on April 4, 2017.  I highly recommend reading Sleeping Giants and Waking Gods back to back. Book 1 basically sets the scene for a full-on alien invasion that the earth deals with in the second book, and I think the story flows much better and makes more sense when the books are read close together.

The sequel just like the first book is written as a collection of interview transcripts, news broadcasts, letters and journal entries. Unlike Sleeping Giants, this book is action packed. It starts out with a giant robot materializing out of thin air in the center of London. We also finally learn the identity and background of the anonymous all-powerful man who manages and largely orchestrates the activities surrounding the Themis project. However, I personally thought his back story was not compelling enough and was frankly hard to believe. Overall, I enjoyed this installment slightly better than the first book simply because we learned more about the characters and background of the events, and a lot more was happening in terms of action. I did however, feel that the first book did a much better job relaying the politics and the international diplomatic situation surrounding the discovery of Themis. The second book that deals with a global catastrophe dedicated an abysmally small amount of attention to the international politics. We get snippets of information about actions undertaken by various governments, but there isn't much about the debate or panic at the global level that was done so well in Book 1.

Now that I finished the second book, it is clear that the author might right more books in this series as the set up for the next installment was clearly revealed at the very end of the book. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars.