Echo Cycle

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

One day, a boy fell down a hole in time and banged his head. When he woke up he met the Emperor Nero, who promptly killed himself.

2070. A dozen English public schoolboys on a school trip to Rome in a prosperous and technologically advanced Europe worlds away from a post-Brexit Britain marred by food shortages, poverty and a totalitarian state.

Outsider Miliband Monk is captivated by the gleaming metropolis, and desperate to stay out of the way of his tormentors, who bully him for his sexuality in ultra-conservative Britain, and longs for what he sees as the liberal utopia of modern Europe. When a life-changing shock leads him to pound a bullying classmate and dramatically injure him, and Monk flees into the city, and vanishes completely.

Twenty-five years later, Monk's best friend Banks returns to Rome part of a rare diplomatic mission to the continent, and meets a wild-haired vagrant whom he realises is a much aged, haggard Monk, who claims he has been in ancient Rome for all these years, living under the Caesars. His emergence sparks a conflict in the tinderbox of modern diplomatic relations, whose mysterious origins hark back to the ancient world itself...

About the Author

Patrick Edwards lives in Bristol and has never grown out of his fascination with science and the future. In 2014, he decided to give writing a go and graduated from the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA with distinction. His first novel, Ruin's Wake, was inspired by the works of Iain M. Banks and modern-day North Korea.