The Book Depository Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel
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Price: £9.99
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: Only Human : Paperback : Penguin Books Ltd : 9781405935708 : : 19 Jun 2019 : The gripping final instalment in the Sleeping Giants trilogy - perfect for fans of Ready, Player One, The Martian and Transformers. We always thought the biggest threat to humanity would come from the outside. We were wrong. The Book Depository Only Human by Sylvain Neuvel - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9781405935708
MPN: 9781405935708
GTIN: 9781405935708
Author: Amazonian Customer
Rating: 5
Review: How do you review the final instalment of a series without giving anything away? Well, first and foremost, all three books of the Themis Files have been excellent. From the very first moment a girl named Rose fell into a hole in the ground onto a giant metallic hand, this tale of alien robots has been intriguing and thought provoking. This final chapter has a lot to say about how we define and segregate ourselves and others, whether by means of race, religion or nationality and its ultimate message is that there is far more that unites us than divides us. As the trilogy's name suggests, the story is told as a series of files: personal journal entries, mission logs, interviews and letters. This structure allows different viewpoints to build up into a narrative that is very personal despite the global (or universal) events described. At the start of the book, Dr Rose Franklin, Vincent Couture and his daughter Eva return to earth after spending nearly nine years on an alien planet. They've been so fixated on their own concerns however, it never occurred to them that our world might have changed drastically while they'd been away. The stakes are high as humanity seems to be gearing up for a third world war, leading to conflict and some difficult choices for the team. Only Human is a gripping end to a thrilling trilogy.
Author: JSA
Rating: 1
Review: Firstly, nobody in this book speaks or behaves like an adult. This gets tiresome very quickly. Secondly, whereas the other books moved along nicely, this constantly stalls. The characters spend a lot of time in tedious and rather whiny introspection, and telling each other how they feel, and after a while I was just speed reading over it all to see how the trilogy ended. Similarly, there is a lot of space wasted on a fairly juvenile discussion of the nature of morals, power and democracy, which is also tedious. I'm sure the author has something to say on these matters, but it really slows the book down and it begins to feel a bit preachy in this context. Whereas masters such as Jack Vance (I know - unfair comparison) can evoke a complete alien planet and race with just a few well-chosen phrases, in this book we never really get to experience the alien planet, and the aliens are just like us. In short, we never really leave Kansas, although we might have hoped to do so. It is a real shame, because the first two books in the trilogy were OK, but this one is a stinker. More emphasis on narrative arc and less introspection and philosophising please.
