Waking Gods

"Please do yourself a favor and listen to the audiobook. The production is off the charts amazing for the whole series. 10/10 would recommend to a friend."

"Fun read. If you like robots this a book for you"

"Second book from The Themis Files, beautifully written and a wonderful continuation to Sleeping Giants."

"3.75<br/>I didn’t like this as much as the first one, but it was still good. The audiobook is an engaging way to hear this story. The only complaint I have about that is the ten year old girl sounds like she’s played by a middle aged woman which made her harder for me to enjoy. Other than that, I liked everyone who was a returning character, and I think all their performances were nice. <br/><br/>The way they treated Kara in this wasn’t my favorite. I wish we heard more from her directly about why she was scared of getting married and having kids rather than hearing it from Vincent. I don’t think he was lying or wrong, but it would’ve been stronger and easier to believe if she was the one who admitted it. I also think the idea was being forced on her (even after other characters knew that was wrong, the book itself started doing it), and I couldn’t figure out how I should’ve felt about it.<br/><br/>The interviewer was my favorite character again. I think he was really interesting in this book, and I loved hearing more from him, but he had a low point. I never thought in Sleeping Giants that he was stupid, but I did think that in this one with the torture scene. And yeah, the scene I’m talking about kinda makes sense because he was scared and desperate for answers, but it seemed like a really dumb thing to do, and that disappointed me. He always feels very smart and calculated, and I like that even if he’s not kind, but the torture wasn’t really a smart and calculated thing to do.<br/><br/>The mystery elements of this story that I enjoyed are still there even if some of them were used up in the first book. Sleeping Giants had an advantage because everything was new and being set up, so we were left with more specific questions to answer in the second book. The science and politics of this story were still cool for me. I liked learning more about what happened and the aliens. There were times when I thought “There better be a very good reason why we’re not getting straight answers to anything,” and I believe there was, and it had enough internal logic that I’m not too mad at it. <br/><br/>I ended up thinking about a lot of philosophical stuff reading this, especially when it came to their discussion of what we are if we don’t have a soul. It reminded me of the Ship of Theseus even if that wasn’t the same idea. I liked the conversation about how if we’re just made of atoms and electricity, you could replace specific atoms with identical atoms without becoming a new person. So how many atoms could you replace before you are a new Ship of Theseus? This book suggests that you wouldn’t become a new ship at all, and that was an interesting topic to use in combination with sci-fi.<br/><br/>Some of the action suffered because of the format since we only know what’s going on through dialogue. It didn’t happen often, but one or two big moments had to be about one character verbally walking us through the scene step by step, so that robbed it of some of its potential, in my opinion. Adding details outside of dialogue could’ve made the end feel more epic and emotional.<br/><br/>75% of the way into it, so much happened that would’ve been very strong “everything is terrible” cliffhangers that I was clueless about what else we’d be doing for the last fourth. I didn’t see anything in this coming, and that was good, but the plot twists weren’t as shocking to me as they were in book one. I hope the next one is satisfying and brings more interesting ideas and answers with it."

"This was a great sequel, and did not decrease in quality from the first book. It still has the same action, twists and giant robots from the first book, but the characters’ emotions seem more present here. This book was so unpredictable, but it was enjoyable to read, and it was interesting to see who the characters are becoming."