Thankyou to NetGalley, Troubadour Publishing Limited, Matador and the author, Mark Reece, for the opportunity to read a digital copy of The Dreams Of The Eternal City in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.
I was initially intrigued by the premise of the storyline. I have to say, on the whole, the author delivered a fascinating book. It did drag in places whereby the plot seemed to really slow down, but I ended up with a good read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I decided to put this book down for now because I know that I will not give it a fair chance if I forced my self to finish the book.

I like the idea of the book, but so far I do not love it, it’s just fine, it’s not gripping my attention, I don’t care about the love in the book, but I love Mohammed, and I’m reading the book for him.

I will come back to the book later and write my final review.

Also, Like no, thank you don't force me to sleep at certain times, LEAVE my sleep alone.

Thank you Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I liked this book, I really did. But at some points I really wish it had that extra oomf that would leave me thinking about it more after I finished. I felt like I was just waiting and waiting, for Ethan to do something. The book was interesting and I really liked the idea. The mystery and paranoia was good but I wish it had extra oomf.

The ending of the book wasn't what I really expected. It kinda, just sort of ended. I kind of expected more at the end.

Overall I did like this book and the writing style. I will be looking forward to other books by this author!

I received a free copy of this from NetGalley in return for an honest review and for the first time in my short NetGalley history, I am obliged to give a truly negative review. This long, turgid tome is quite simply awful. The premise is interesting enough, a near future with a big brother style "sleep code", but there is a desperate lack of exposition on how the situation arose. The pace is constantly plodding, characters are one dimensional and the ending ridiculously abrupt. The only way this makes sense is if the author intends to make a series out of it, but I certainly won't be picking up volume two.

A study in banality crouched in speculative fiction. However, Reece hasn't written a sci-fi novel that confounds or delves into some strange future fantasy, rather his world is painful ordinary. It is one we can see happening now. Reece succeeds in having his prose beautiful mirror his content--that is, it is difficult to maintain interest or attention because a novel about bureaucracy is never engaging. There is a touch of Orwell and Ballard to this novel which certainly be attractive to many readers

‘The Dreams of the Eternal City’ by Mark Reece was like seeing food coming in a restaurant and it’s not yours - that initial excitement only to be left feeling disappointed.

Ethan works for the Sleep and Dreams Monitoring Agency (SDMA) where he is on the front line of protecting society. It’s 2040 and new laws have been introduced to regulate sleep to ensure the United Kingdom’s economic growth. This means it is against the law to sleep out-with the hours 11pm-7am, the aim is to achieve more productivity, less free time and ultimately more time at work creating a more successful nation. If you happen to have a nap, miss work, act suspiciously you will be arrested and punished.

The premise of ‘The sleep code’ got me so excited but unfortunately it was poorly executed. There was no character development, the relationships that existed were transparent and lacking, the plot was boring and empty, there were so many loose ends that it came across really messy and so many characters were introduced but shortly forgotten about.

I want to scream when I think about how great this could of been.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC in return for an honest review but it’s a NO from me and out of sheer spite I’m going for a nap out-with the hours 11pm-7am.

If The Dreams of The Eternal City had been a bit snappier and sassy, it would have been so much better. As it is, I found it too slow and stagnant. I wanted this or that to happen, but nothing serious actually happened. The characters were not fleshed out because they had no opportunity to grow and show who they are. I was disappointed with this story. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book!*

Not sure what to think about this one: The year is 2040 and sleep is regulated by the UK's government to enhance the productivity of the country. Ethan wholeheartedly enforces these laws. After receiving a new, big project dealing with subversives, Ethan must choose between work, his girlfriend and the 'Sleep Code'.

I waited and waited for things to actually happen, for Ethan to doubt the system...

So many great ideas, yet so little execution. Characters remained somewhat blunt, their relationships unbelievable, sub-plots were never finished, not enough world-building, not enough backstory, a disappointing ending.

2,5 stars because I liked the tone of the novel and the general ideas!

I was excited about this title from NetGalley. It had an interesting dystopian premise, offered a debut novel from a new author, and intrigued me immensely. Unfortunately, the execution of this novel was not fantastic.

The story of a society in which sleep is regulated should be full of information about sleep and why it's important. Or maybe about how an over-reaching government can end up harming its citizens in unexpected ways. Or about an uprising of the people to shut down such an institution. This book didn't really address any of those topics, at least not deeply enough.

Mark Reece has published many short stories, but this is his first novel. While I may struggle with reading short fiction, I tend to enjoy longer fiction from short story writers. Maybe it is the part of me that enjoys Hemingway. There is a lot to be said about concise writing, even in fiction that can tell a wonderful story. Unfortunately, I did not get that from this novel.

While the opening pages presented a big, exciting scene, the majority of the first half of this book was slow. I found the characters to be largely flat and had very little interest in their well-being. The dialogue was boring and there was a lot of focus on the mundane. About half-way through, the story picked up and the slow suspense that had been simmering came to the forefront. Where the beginning was somewhat slow, the pace of the story became much faster as we hurled toward a lackluster ending.

Overall, I would have a hard time recommending this book to other readers. I did see some promising elements and will likely read future offerings from this author, but this book as a whole just did not do it for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a free copy of this ebook.

The Dreams of the Eternal City is a sci fi novel set in the UK where sleeping hours are rigidly enforced by the Government. Unfortunately, I found majority of the book repetitious where the main protagonist, Ethan Thomas travels to work, jokes with his work colleague Mohammed, travels home, converses with his girlfriend and tries to sleep. It is only during the final third where things get interesting but even then, nothing worth reading the previous two thirds to get to. And then it ends.
On face value it is an interesting premise but as you read through the book the more it becomes less convincing. There does not appear to be any opposition apart from the Ilkonian shadow terrorist group (Ilks) however it is confirmed that people voted for sleep enforcement however the enforcement reads like a dictatorship, but this is not confirmed.
Mark Reece is a good writer and this would have worked better to set up a world for a sequel or even a trilogy however it would have required a large part of the book to be cut down and maybe extend the ending which just ends without any resolution.

I really wanted to enjoy this book as I thought the premise was very interesting, however it failed to draw me in. I couldn’t connect with either of the main characters, I felt I didn’t know enough about them. I persevered as I thought I just needed to “get into it” but I still felt that it was going nowhere, so eventually decided not to finish the book as I wasn’t enjoying it.

The premise of The Dreams of the Eternal City is a really unique one. The story is set in the near future when people live by the Sleep Code. People’s sleeping is being regulated. How crazy is that? They have sleep licences for example pregnant mothers so they could have different sleeping times.
The lead character, Ethan, works for an organisation called Sleep and Dreams Monitoring Agency. He investigate breaches of the Sleep Code.

But the story is so slow, nothing really happens that could keep my attention. I feel sorry for that because I loved the concept of this book.

I really wanted to get on with this title - I loved the premise of the near future, as I think this genre is all the more prevalent in the unstable times we live in. However, I just couldn't quite get in to the writing style - the author writes well, but the narration style just wasn't my cup of tea. Promising

I wanted to like this book, the premise sounded good and I always find it interesting to read books on alternate future/present situations. The writing style itself was good, I liked the sense of mystery about the inner workings of the agency the main character works for, the sense of paranoia he develops with his illicit sleeping patterns and his contact with the clandestine organisation. I really wanted to find out more about why the sleep restrictions were introduced, find out more about the clandestine organisation, see more of a conclusion to the story not just of the main character but what changes were occurring in his world. Unfortunately I don't really feel like I got that, so for me, this isn't a book I'll be recommending.

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I thought it had a great concept and I loved that it was set in the near future (rather than in the far future which is more common). However, I couldn’t get into it.

I didn’t enjoy the narration style. I thought that the dialogue was unnatural (as in, they didn’t feel like real people - I never forgot that they were characters) and it drove me nuts that the author kept referring to ‘one’ (when one notices such things, one gets annoyed).

Thank you to the publishers for sending me the DRC for review via netgalley. I truly wish that I could have immersed myself in it but unfortunately, I could not.

Promising debut with a fascinating premise. The story itself does get off to a roaring start, and while I admittedly, found some parts of the book plodding in places, there was more than enough going on to keep my attention throughout. Definitely an author to keep an eye on.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked the premise of this book. I could tell the author wrote short stories because this was an imaginative idea that often is not found in longer pieces. Elements of 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 all were present here. The chief concerns I had with the text is that, in making this a full-length piece, I felt the dialogue was a bit too pedestrian. It felt like the author recorded too many casual conversations in full rather than in brief. Also the ending was too abrupt for me. Then again, if he is writing a sequel, then I am totally on board.

Thank you Netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is an interesting futuristic novel. Ethan is tasks with investigation people who break the sleep code. In this time period people are required to only sleep a number of hours a day and work longer hours. The author, through Ethan's point of view, shows us what a sleep deprived world looks like. The world building is good but the pace is slow. I had to read through about 50%of the book to get into the action. Other than that it's a good novel.

I took a chance on reading a single-idea dystopian novel just in case the author managed to make it work. While this one might've had enough of an idea to carry itself on, it reads too much like a first novel to really work for me. The author knew to have an attention-grabbing Chapter 1, which he does, but after that it trailed off into trivialities and got tiring fast. I don't need five pages of walking to work, for example. Hopefully there were some lessons learned in writing this one that will be applied to the next book he decides to write.