Sleeping Giants - Sylvain Neuvel
This science fiction book has a narrative style similar to Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir : in the sense that instead of having a normal narrator type of approach, each chapter is supposed to be a log entry (and that provided a bit of context on time/location/characters).
The story is triggered by the finding of a giant hand that was buried underground but somehow "called" to one of the main characters when she was still a child.
Then, the story continues through finding other body parts, a military secret project to unearth them and assemble them in a massive warehouse close to an airport. Sure, there are some adventures when the parts are buried in a different country and a military operation is required.
At some point they realize the robot they are building is actually a weapon, with some astonishing destroying ability, and that it's older than any civilization on earth.
The conflicts arise when some accidents happen and through greediness of a specific scientist involved at some point during the project.
One of the things I didn't like about the book is that the main character (the one who lead the project of assembling the robot) seems omniscient, and extremely powerful (to manipulate people, to gather resources, etc.) But it falls short in all the descriptions around, it's not a human character and it's not part of the narrative arch.
The way situations are resolved is very childish. "Let's create a corporation with this hidden clauses so the US wins over everyone". "Let's drop the robot to the bottom of the ocean."
It's a book written by someone who: 1. does not understand human nature. 2. Does not understand politics. 3. Does not know anything about international relations.
The trigger for the story, finding remains that are older than humanity itself, is definitely fun an intriguing, but the executions is quite poor. At some point a mysterious character appears and explains the entire story of the robot, that there were 12 at the beginning (hinting to the 12 that appear in different mythologies), but because of conflicts took away 11.
The introduction of this character to explain a background story that is not at all necessary to know points to the lack of risk the author took. It ended up americanizing the story, where details must be introduced because people don't like not knowing something.
Interesting approach to narration, interesting story, too bad the execution was so poor.
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