Received from Books Go Social and Netgalley for honest read and review.
I really like the premise of this book,but I could not really engage with the time travel aspect of it , seems to have been done before..
Thought that the main character was a bit meh and could not really feel anything for him, a bit confusing and disappointed.

Another one that wasn't for me. Loved the cover artwork; very enticing! Unfortunately, the story fell flat. I like fantasy fiction and the thought of someone living two parallel lives was intriguing, but not enough info in my opinion. Story just didn't work and maybe it should have- great plot idea. maybe it needed more thought, or maybe a longer book to work out the kinks. Idk. Sorry. I gave up without finishing as I had what I hoped were better stories to catch up with.

The book description and the cover are what initially drew me to this book and sounded full of potential but unfortunately for me this book just didn't deliver so I was left a little disappointed.
I hope book 2 will be what i was hoping this 1 would be.
Sorry

This fantasy novel starts off quite intriguing The main character works in an office in London and suspects himself to have a bit of autism. He is not good in group and a real loner.

One night he dreams so be in a kind of medieval land and finds out he is the ruler there. It scares him to bits.

He is glad to wake up but the next night he dreams he is back there again and the next.

He wonders what is causing those weird dreams. They are quite draining because he is not the man who likes to be the centre of attention of have to lead.

Then he gets the feeling he is followed during the day and to his horror discovers that wounds received in his dreams are still there in the morning. So those dreams are also real!

So far quite good.

However towards the end the story becomes quite "magical / fantasy" and that is a bit overdone for my taste.

There was one weird thing though: he does not ask people what is going on or sets of to do research. Who was the prince before he started dreaming? What happened to him? Does he look different in his dreams?

And when all the pieces are set and one expects to find out what is really happening the book suddenly ends :( You do not have to cut fantasy stories or even whatever other novel in separate books. I have read novels that were 1000 pages.

So good start but would suggest some rewrite towards the ending.

This review is a bit all over the place, so I'm going to apologize for that right now.

The premise of this story itself is unique and the alternate sleepers world, quite interesting. The execution, however, was not as well done as I hoped.

I noticed the author's definite inclination towards shorter sentences and that annoyed me a bit. Sometimes it was a bit jarring to read. The author also had a tendency to tell you how the main character felt rather then showing you. It may have been on purpose as a writing style choice, but I did not like it at all.

Something else that bothered me right at the start was the opening sentence.

Opening Sentence:

I was as tired as a homeless dog.

Being tired as a homeless dog? What does that mean? Are you saying that homeless dogs are always tired???? Some homeless dogs are slow moving because they are starving to death and move less (sleep more) to conserve energy and not die. Why are you comparing yourself to poor starving animals??? Are you starving??? You are obviously not starving.

Kyle (Aka Prince Kyleb and the man who compares himself to starving animals) is an normal, average, unnoticeable office worker who seems to like blending in. However, he gets bitten by a snake in a strange man's body while on the train and when he goes to sleep he wakes up in a fantasy world. He hops back an forth between these worlds while alternating between being awake and asleep, making his mundane life far more interesting. That said, he undergoes something of a personality change between these two worlds and it honestly makes me wonder, if you are living two separate lives (one as an office worker and one as the ruler of a country potentially heading to war), wouldn't your personalities kind of meld together??? You are the same person...in theory.

This book honestly reminded me a bit of reading a fan fiction...It had some lovely descriptions, some beautiful sentences, and then it had overly repetitive things like saying nothing happened or Kyle fell asleep with his tv on or whatever it might be. Why are you being so repetitive? We get it, please stop and just skip over to the actual story bits.

I feel like I'm tearing this book apart a bit, despite sort of liking it for its premise, so I am going to stop now. But I will say that I honestly feel like if the author takes some of these criticisms constructively the next book in the series could be phenomenal.

In Conclusion

While this book could use some alterations (better development of the main character, a clearer understanding of how the split personalities exist separately between the two worlds when it's one dude, less repetitiveness, less stilted sentences, etc), there is potential for the next book in the series to be a one sit read for sure. instead of a two week marathon of short sittings. The premise of this book is extremely interesting, but the actual execution of it needs a little more work in order to excel.

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Milou Breedveld's review Feb 06, 2018 · edit
liked it

Note: I received a copy of this via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion on this book.

I really like the premise of this book, but sadly it fell short for me in the execution. Mainly, I would have liked to see more consequences of this connection, the possibilities. These start to come forward to some extend, but only towards the end of the story. For most of the book the main character is leading two separate lifes.

Something else that lacked for me were answers... there were none. Maybe this is discussed later on in the series, but some sort of progress towards a resolution would have been nice. About the whole Sleeper situation the main character, and the reader, is just told 'you are a Sleeper now, deal with it', which is wholly unsatisfying. There are also many loose plot threads which seem to just die away without ever being resolved or even being connected to the main story.

The last issue which was quite bothersome was the massive amount of grammatical errors and plot holes. The character falls asleep at the table, yet wakes up in his bed (and no, no one moved him). Every few pages there is a sentance like:

"How things are going?" I asked.

"Where I will meet them?"

"I had no any knowledge of those things."

"Could it belong to one of my Rehen relatives of my Rehen relatives?"

"The mirror told that me I needed a shave."

You get the idea... When this happens ones or twice I understand. But it happens so much in this story that it really bothered me.

There are some interesting characters in this book, and I wish we could have seen more of some of them. Because, sadly, thr main character is fairly boring. I know this is what the author intended him to be, describing him as a grey office rat. It does make for a greater contrast with the role he falls into in the dream world and allows some nice character development. However, it also results in every other chapter being very short, mainly consisting of:

Nothing worth mentioning happened on my way home.
or
The journey home was uneventful, as was the rest of the evening.
And something like him eating a pizza, which he does every day, is eventful enough to mention...

So this book has quite a few issues, yet somehow it was still enjoyable to read. It is written, between the grammer mistakes, quite well. It is easy and direct, but sucks the reader in and speed through the story. The dream world is a quite standard fantasy world with princes, politics, creatures and magic... made interesting by the fact that our main character plays a leading role in this but has no memory or knowledge of the world around him.

Overall, this was an okay read. I might pick up the sequel someday, but am in no hurry to do so.

*** I was provided this book for an honest review and the thoughts expressed are my own***

In this debut book by Zdan, we are introduced into a world of the Sleepers and the place that we go once are asleep. Honestly, it was the cover that pulled me in. I mean who wouldn’t want to read a book that features a Griffin soaring across what appears to be London? Especially a huge Harry Potter fan with a vibe of Buckbeak the Hippogriff and the lure of a magical setting in the background? Well, I soon found that this book was nothing like I was hoping for and I did not love it.
I struggled through most of this book because of the style of writing and the not so great analogies that the author chose. Plus, the prose felt very choppy and incomplete with one-word sentences or very short sentences but did not convey any type of message. The premise was boundless, but the deliverance was worse than lacking. There was a disconnect from the present world into the realm of the sleepers and I could not for the life of me come up with a proper scene of what the realm was supposed to look like. This comes from the vague descriptions and subpar imagery through both the character’s point of view and the message that the author was trying to deliver.
I did not connect to the main character Kyle who is a cubicle-bound introverted, uninteresting person living in London. Unfortunately, his whole character even as Prince Kyleb was uninteresting and uninspiring. I cannot get a proper connection from this everyday lack illustrious person to a war-hardened general and prince. His sisters were more interesting than he was and even they were lifeless.
I don’t believe I would continue this series or recommend it to anyone -Unless (as the Lorax says)- there were some major improvements made and character flaws have been corrected. I commend the author for putting his work out there and creating a world that is new and completely original. I also want to thank Netgalley, BooksGoSocial, and the author for allowing to read/review this title. So overall, I give this book a two-star rating with the hopes that the author and publisher can work out the issues that lay within.

I didn't like the way this was written: too many short sentences and paragraphs consisting of just one sentence gave the writing a jerky choppy feel which quickly began to grate on me. And some of the similies used were affected and spoiled the flow of the prose, such as it was. For example "The crowd oozed through the front door like a ruptured boil..." I mean no, just no.