I suck at languages. My memory is awful so I can never remember vocab for any length of time. Ask me to tell you my favourite joke and I literally go blank. So as a kid I decided that rather than picking a useful live language that I was guaranteed to fail at I was going to spend 6 years at school studying Latin. This did two things: – it allowed me to have a dictionary (more of a blow by blow word list) in exams and it made me completely and utterly obsessed with ancient Rome.

To this day I couldn’t translate any Latin for you (except to tell you that Canis is dog!) but I am still completely obsessed with the ancient Roman period, so Echo Cycle by Pa

trick Edwards was exactly my bag.

In the near future (2050) Winston Monk is on one of the last trips permitted to travel abroad as Britain becomes ever more isolationist. He is hoping to make his escape more permanent before Britain shuts it’s borders for good, but he receives devastating news causing him to go on an epic bender taking out his class bullies while he’s at it.

Then while nursing his hangover and trying to build up the courage to face the consequences of his actions, something insane happens: Monk falls through a time rip, landing him in the Ancient Rome he has long obsessed over. But no matter his knowledge and instinct for survival he is a fish out of water in a brutal and unforgiving time.

Jump forward 20 years to 2070 and Monk’s only friend from school, Banks, has made it back to Rome as part of a diplomatic mission tentatively feeling out the possibilities for reopening the borders. While beginning to question the choices that Britain has made he bumps into a vagrant bearing an uncanny resemblance to the friend who disappeared 20 years earlier and with a wild and improbable story to tell involving slaves, gladiators and ancient magic.

There is so so much going on in this book that I was worried it would be too much. There’s futuristic utopias and dystopias; a heavy handed post Brexit political critique; time travel; Ancient classics; history lessons; magical realism; power mad villains; strong LGBTQIA representation; political rhetoric on refugees and environmentalism and echoes of ancient legends as well as a couple of main characters that should rightly be unlikeable. Monk is fairly arrogant and well satisfied with himself, and Banks is a drippy middle aged man who’s self-pity is not the most attractive quality…and yet: all these things are blended and swirled together so beautifully and expertly that what emerges is a mad-cap insane belter of an adventure that sweeps you along from the first page and which you are never entirely sure where it’s going to land or what’s going to happen next – even with only 20 pages to go.

Monk’s arrogance gives just enough leeway to make him a possible unreliable narrator – causing enough uncertainty that you are never sure if his crazy story is possible or if he’s, as Banks comes to believe, delusional; but it also gives him enough force to make his story compelling and possible.

Banks’ limp and apologetic presentation and transformation under the gentle encouragement of foreign nationals serves as an allegory for Britain itself as it begins to look more outward after a dark period of stubborn denial of its own flaws.

And Sporus is…cruel and loyal and mad and ethereal and completely and utterly captivating.

Echo Cycle is insane, and it’s not going to be for everyone (If you believe that Britain and America are beyond reproach and are absolutely making the right decisions at the moment, this book is not for you.). But it’s a beautiful mix of Blade Runner meets Gladiator and a ridiculously enjoyable ride.

⭐⭐⭐⭐