Review: When the past comes back to conquer
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 17, 2011
Deep in our mythical past, angels occasionally mated with humans to produce monstrous offspring called the Nephilim. In a distant future, the Nephilim have again made themselves known and have conquered the earth. Mankind has been enslaved. Only pockets of human resistance remains.The setting of "Age of Giants - awakening" is a good one. Immediately, I was drawn into a future world where small clans fought for survival with small raids against a more powerful force. The book starts with such a raid and accelerates from there. This moving from crisis point to crisis point without too much downtime keeps the interest up. However, there's a bit more moving under the surface of the plot and as the adventure continues, discoveries and revelations become more intriguing. I had enough of a hint to guess some of the major revelations beforehand, but I always wanted to continue to see those hunches play out. I wasn't disappointed.As for the Nephilim themselves, they are crucial to the plot, but don't actually make as much of an appearance as one might expect. Although the first encounter with one of the beasts was an exciting one, I didn't feel let down that they stayed in the background. Along the way I was educated more about how the Nephilim rose to supremacy and what happened to the human civilization as a consequence. However, it was the human adventure that remained in focus.Although the premise of the story is obviously fictional in nature, there is a certain plausibility to the telling which made suspension of disbelief a fairly easy thing; immersion was not interrupted by absurdity. And although some forms of technology were introduced at various points in the story, the author didn't belabour the story with excessive technical details.There's only really one focal character - Nora. Through this character, we get to understand the psyche of the small clans of human raiders and it is through the eyes of Nora that we see this post-apocalyptic world with the skeleton of civilisation still showing as she and her comrades travel through a devastated future America. I can't say that over the course of the novel that I developed an affection for Nora. She is a single-minded, duty-bound warrior who is so intense in her sense of responsibility that it is hard to relate. However, I think this is a strong point. In such a future, we don't expect to meet the next-door neighbour. We expect people that have been brought up in a desperate and completely hostile environment. This is Nora without a doubt.Despite the premise, this novel is not a religious fantasy. The back story of angels mating with humans seems only to be an excuse to populate the earth with fearsome giants who have conquered the human race. So if the thought of angels and angel-spawn on earth gives pause, I'd still give "Age of Giants - awakening" a chance.I would highly recommend this book to science fiction lovers and fantasy lovers if they don't mind their stories to be told with a tone of realism. The story completes in a second episode which is not released at the time of this review, but I'll be waiting in line to see where Nora takes me in her struggle against the Nephilim.