Waking Gods

Canadian author Sylvain Neuvel’s science-fiction novel Waking Gods (2017) is the second installment of his Themis Files trilogy which begins with 2016's Sleeping Giants and concludes with 2018's Only Human. Waking Gods concerns the arrival on Earth of giant metallic robots of a mysterious origin.

The protagonist of the series is Rose Franklin. As detailed in the previous installment, Sleeping Giants, as a child Rose accidentally fell into a perfectly square hole in the Earth surrounded by bizarre carvings. In the hole is a colossal metallic hand. Seventeen years have passed, and Rose is now a 28-year-old physicist who devotes her career to uncovering the mysteries of the hand. Over time, other giant metallic body parts are uncovered until a huge humanoid robot named Themis is constructed. Rose learns from an ancient alien soldier living in the guise of a human body that his civilization left the robot pieces there to determine if humanity is worthy of the technology. Because the robot is powered by nuclear fuel, it is only in the post-atomic age that humans can operate it. At the end of the novel, the United States gives the robot to the United Nations’ newly founded Earth Defense Corps to serve as a key deterrent against alien invasions.

At the beginning of Waking Gods, a giant robot similar to Themis descends from the sky over Regent's Park in London. Themis, controlled by Earth Defense Corps pilots Vincent Couture and Kara Resnik, rushes off to London to do battle against the new robot. Unable to pierce the rival robot's shell, Kara blasts a crater into the ground. The enemy robot falls inside causing its defenses to malfunction. Themis pummels the other robot into submission, and Vincent asks Kara to marry him.



A year passes, and Themis goes missing with Vincent inside. Because Vincent and Kara possess specific genetic abnormalities that make it possible for them to pilot Themis, the Earth Defense Corps embarks on a frantic search to find a new pilot. As it turns out, this isn't necessary because ten years ago, former Corps geneticist Alyssa Papantoniou cloned a daughter from Vincent and Kara's DNA and hid her in Puerto Rico. Upon learning of her daughter's existence, Kara rushes off to Puerto Rico. Amid all the chaos, another giant enemy robot descends on London, joined by 12 others at locations spanning the entire globe.

Suddenly, Vincent returns with Themis. The disappearance, he says, was caused by Vincent accidentally activating Themis's teleportation device, a capability no one realized the robot possessed. In the interim covering his disappearance, Vincent figures out how to control the teleportation ability himself. Meanwhile, in London, white gas emanates from the enemy robot, killing four million people in an instant. Strangely, a minute percentage of humans are unaffected by the gas. Having exterminated a sizable portion of the London populace, the robot teleports to Madrid. At the behest of Spain's leaders, NATO drops a massive bomb on the robot, destroying it before it releases the gas and causing many casualties— though likely a fewer number of casualties than would have been caused by the gas.

Following this move, all 12 other robots release their gas simultaneously. This includes a robot in Central Park, just a couple of miles from the Earth Defense Corps headquarters where Rose is currently stationed with the incognito alien soldier from the previous book. As the gas approaches, the alien tells Rose to take over his job observing and documenting humanity's use of Themis. When the gas enters the headquarters, the alien dies instantly while Rose survives. At this moment, Kara and her daughter, Eva, arrive in New York where they meet Vincent. The three of them race to Themis so they can teleport away from the gas. Kara dies in the escape attempt, but her sacrifice allows Eva and Vincent to survive. When Eva asks Vincent to teach her how to use Themis, Vincent argues that it is too dangerous. He revises his opinion after reading a letter from Kara.



After gassing the cities, the robots wreak no further havoc on the world. Based on this, along with the alien soldier's death from the gas, Rose reasons that the objective of the robots is to rid any being with alien DNA from the planet to pave the way for humanity to discover the secrets of the universe on its own. However, because aliens lived on Earth 3,000 years ago and interbred with humans, most humans currently on Earth are descended in part from these aliens. The robots cease gassing cities upon learning that so many humans are dying from the extermination effort. To neutralize the robot in New York, Rose releases a bacterial strain that disables its legs. In celebration, the Earth Defense Corps has a party inside Themis. At a certain point during the party, however, Eva observes that Themis has somehow teleported far away from the Earth with all of them inside.

Kirkus Reviews calls Waking Gods "pure, unadulterated escapism."