Giving up at page 106 (so a quarter of the way through) because bored. I'm not attached to any of the characters: Tom the street brat is rootless and relatively generic; Tylus the kite guard is suffering from rich white boy ennui (oh, but, did he really want to have one of the most privileged and respected positions in the city?) and could do with a smack in the face; Magnus the villain is terribly cliche, and while I did think for a little bit that I might like his risen-from-nothing assassin underling, that was before said underling decided that in addition to information, his prostitute contact would also freely provide him with sex. (Ugh, fuck off.) When I put the book down, we have just met Kat, the only girl in the city apparently, but she's not got a lot of fascinating about her, and certainly not enough to keep me in it.

I hoped, from the title, that the concept of dreaming would weigh more on the story. That there would be uncertainty about whether you were awake or asleep. But it seems to just be a metaphor. (Maybe I didn't give it long enough to develop. There are certainly ~Mysteries~ around the city; maybe one of them plugs into that concept, given more time.)

But the real kicker, for me, was a prose style that just didn't engage me with the characters. For me, the best example and worst offending paragraph is one where Tom has just been offered a helping hand by a non-human creature:

Tom stared at the hand, uncertain. Some instinct was telling him to trust this strange, talking flathead, yet he couldn't think of a logical reason why he should. After the briefest hesitation, he gripped the proffered hand...

Well, if that isn't the most boring moment of story-turning indecision I've ever read, it's because the others were so boring I've wiped them from my memory. Some instinct is a lazy, aggravating motivator, and this could have been so much more interestingly delivered. Tom's been raised to be wary and fearful of these creatures. But this one has been calm and friendly and far more open and honest than anyone, human or otherwise, Tom has ever met. But no one does anything for free down in the depths of the city. But this might be his only chance to survive the forces that are after him.

Nothing book-throwingly wrong about this, but my to-read list is too long to spend time finishing it when I'm so very uninterested. ( )

If I could give this 2.5 stars I would. It had a lot of elements that I like. Magic, constructs, monsters, intrigue but it didn't really gel for me. My biggest problem, right from the start was that I couldn't picture the city. It sounded like it was some very unique construct of "rows" that were stacked on top of each other but the description didn't make sense to me. So I was distracted for a long time trying to figure out how a character could fall off the wall and pass by other "rows" which I guess were levels like the different floors of a building but I'm not sure. I really wanted to be astounded by this "cool/original" idea for a city but I couldn't be so that was disappointing.

Then also in the beginning the main character's name is Tom, but another important character's name is Thomas. That helped add to the confusion of things.

I liked the multiple bad guys/intriguey thing. I liked the frantic pace of characters being chased around.

I didn't like the kind of deus ex machina of the Blade and the ending seemed to take too long wrapping things up. I also wasn't a fan of the cliffhanger left at the end for one of the characters. ( )

...City of Dreams & Nightmare is mostly a quick, fun read. It is not particularly a challenging read and in terms of worldbuilding, I feel Whates leaves a lot of aspects of the city and the world surrounding it a bit underdeveloped. He doesn't quite fulfil the potential his creation offers. That being said, there will be more books in this series and obviously there has to be something left to explore. Tom and Kat's flight through the City Below, trying to keep a step ahead of the nameless players that would see them killed is a thrilling experience. One that has convinced me to see if Whates can put a bit more meat on the bones of his story in the next volume.

Full Random Comments review ( )

On the back cover of Ian Whates’ debut novel, City of Dreams and Nightmare, it says “FILE UNDER FANTASY”, but I’m not convinced. City of Dreams and Nightmare is certainly genre fiction, but its best fit would be science fiction. Yes, there are bits of steampunk in there, and the whole has something of the feel of a fantasy. But too much of the book’s furniture is out of science fiction’s store for Angry Robot’s advice to ring true.

Which is not to say that readers of fantasy won’t enjoy it.

Tom is a “street-nick”, a member of a teenage street gang formed from orphans and abandoned kids. Tom has been dared to visit the highest levels of the city, ostensibly to steal a “demon’s egg”. In Thaiburley, the “City of a Hundred Rows”, social classes have been made physical – the higher the Row, the higher the social standing. Tom and the other street-nicks live in the City Below, the lowest part of Thaiburley. The “demons” live on the city’s roof with the Masters.

Rest of review here: http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/2010/05/25/city-of-dreams-and-nightmare-ian-whate... ( )