In last year’s Sleeping Giants, author Sylvain Neuvel introduced us to Rose Franklin who, as a child, discovered a giant metal hand buried in the earth. As a adult she led a team that scoured the planet to search for more metal body parts and pieced together Themis, an enormous robot left on Earth thousands of years ago by alien visitors.

In Waking Gods, the story picks up ten years later. Rose now leads the Earth Defense Corps, a NATO-sanctioned organization tasked with continuing to research Themis, maintaining world peace, and protecting the planet should the aliens return. Kara Resnik and Vincent Couture, the only people able to pilot the robot, still work with Dr. Franklin. And the unnamed government operative who made possible the discovery of Themis and the founding of the Earth Defense Corps is still secretly pulling strings from behind the scenes.

When a second giant robot appears, standing in the middle of London’s Regent Park, Earth’s worst fears are realized. Things get even worse when it unleashes a deadly gas, killing millions of Londoners. Then, more robots appear all around the globe, threatening to wipe out humanity.

Like in Sleeping Giants, Neuvel tells the story of Waking Gods through a series of interview transcripts, mission reports, and news stories. It’s a race against time to discover the motivations of a truly alien species, unlock Themis’ advanced technology, and discover why a small percentage of those exposed to the alien’s poison gas survive unharmed.