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The Kingdoms
A time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved.
Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English—instead of French—the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.
Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English—instead of French—the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published May 25, 2021
574 people are currently reading
31774 people want to read
About the author
Natasha Pulley
14 books2,938 followersNatasha Pulley is a British author, best known for her debut novel,
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
, which won a Betty Trask Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,389 reviews
October 3, 2024
Natasha Pulley must have written this book specifically for me: everything about it was designed to fit precisely, perfectly into the contours of my heart. And it’s not just this book. After reading The Kingdoms, I immediately purchased Pulley’s earlier novels, and recently raced through The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow and The Half Life of Valery K as if someone might take them from my hands at any moment. It’s been months and I still can’t shake the rhythms and cadences of these stories out of my brain. There are treasured passages I still recall, clear as day. Lines that float back to me like bits of poetry. In the end, I am certain—if I may borrow some of Coleridge’s language—that I'd know a Natasha Pulley story if I found it wandering the desert.
This is all to say—Pulley has a voice unlike any other. Her storytelling is distinctive, so utterly inimitable in its style. There is an intoxicating subtle magic in her books, and I spent the last few hours trying to wrap words around it. So without spoiling anything of what occurs in this novel, this review is my attempt at understanding the strange alchemy that makes up Pulley’s books.
Like all Pulley’s novels, The Kingdoms is a very slow read, a book that unfolds like a blooming flower, revealing itself in its own time. This is not a fantasy novel of spills and thrills, not your regular definition of “page-turner.” You begin to read and for several pages, there is very little that makes sense. Instead, there is only the feeling that something very important is being withheld from you, something within your grasp but still desperately out of reach. Something breaking or lying at the edge of breaking. You begin to spin out of control, but there’s a pull, a coaxing, in the mesmerizing assuredness of Pulley’s lines that keeps you reading, in the extreme specificity and intricacy of her worlds, in the intense emotional internality of her characters and the complexe shaping of the time travel narrative. In the sheer texture of longing. Something that compels you to complete and utter attention, attention without compromise. By the time I realized just how deep the story has burrowed into me, a force greater than myself has already demanded I remain anchored, eyes open and eager to drink in every word, and not move until it’s over.
Herein lies the abiding magic of Pulley’s storytelling, I think: that it has a great deal of trust in its reader. Hers is a greedy oeuvre: it’s not just our attention it covets, it also demands our active participation. Pulley leads us through pathways into her reimagined version of history and trusts that we will follow, that we will pay attention and make the necessary connections. Always, she is careful to remain two steps ahead, giving us just the right amount of information to whip our imagination into a frenzy. The more I read, the more unbearable became my need to know more—and the more I gradually came to notice the strings Pulley is pulling through the frame. In fact, I frequently had to pause my reading of The Kingdoms just so I could think. Twice, I had to stand and walk around my room, too drunk with a mix of excitement and dread to sit still. Sometimes, I would have to put down the book, or hug it tightly to my chest, and let the sheer tenderness of a moment quietly wash over me. All of this culminating in one moment towards the end when everything, like a swiftly parted curtain, abruptly made sense. And I just about lost my goddamn mind.
Pulley made something truly masterful here, balancing technique and structure with so much dazzling, ineffable intimacy in a way that makes it impossible not to stop and gawk. The resulting work is a book that you can’t read without wanting to talk about it, a stunning novel with so much to say about war and civilization, trauma and memory, love and sacrifice—and the people heartbreakingly caught up in it.
These are all heavy themes, but you should know that The Kingdoms is not a novel without joy. In these pages, Pulley dares to imagine scenes in which violence and tenderness collide, and moments of delicacy—the kind of sweetness that hurts because it can't last and in the next page will be gone—exist amidst unspeakable calamity. The tragedy and senselessness of war, the things that humans can do to one another; how the trauma we witness and inherit gnaws us through and distorts us into unrecognizable shapes in order to survive; how civilization can feel so impermanent and fragile, when blood is spilled and cities are burning. Pulley makes you feel all of these things deeply, indelibly, and it is against this indistinct chaos of living that The Kingdoms raises a defiant reverence for the terrible and insistent beauty of love. For in the novel’s center—fiercely kindled, and sometimes secret—is a love story. The story of two lonely and tired and broken men who, in the staring presence of death, find each other and lose each other and find each other again, as if in a cosmic dance. Their story is one of strife and seismic loss, but it is also, wrenchingly, one of hope buoyed up by the multiplicity of the odds stacked against it and of happiness that is made more so by the improbability of it existing at all.
There is something here that goes right to the heart of things, something offered like a gift—a gift for the reluctant and hungry, those of us who are pushing, each day, through the clot of our ghosts, and the dregs of the past, haunted by the desire for something left unsaid or unwitnessed, longing still for somewhere else, somewhere beyond, waiting to be carried outward and home. Something that will haunt me for a very long time.
This is all to say—Pulley has a voice unlike any other. Her storytelling is distinctive, so utterly inimitable in its style. There is an intoxicating subtle magic in her books, and I spent the last few hours trying to wrap words around it. So without spoiling anything of what occurs in this novel, this review is my attempt at understanding the strange alchemy that makes up Pulley’s books.
Like all Pulley’s novels, The Kingdoms is a very slow read, a book that unfolds like a blooming flower, revealing itself in its own time. This is not a fantasy novel of spills and thrills, not your regular definition of “page-turner.” You begin to read and for several pages, there is very little that makes sense. Instead, there is only the feeling that something very important is being withheld from you, something within your grasp but still desperately out of reach. Something breaking or lying at the edge of breaking. You begin to spin out of control, but there’s a pull, a coaxing, in the mesmerizing assuredness of Pulley’s lines that keeps you reading, in the extreme specificity and intricacy of her worlds, in the intense emotional internality of her characters and the complexe shaping of the time travel narrative. In the sheer texture of longing. Something that compels you to complete and utter attention, attention without compromise. By the time I realized just how deep the story has burrowed into me, a force greater than myself has already demanded I remain anchored, eyes open and eager to drink in every word, and not move until it’s over.
Herein lies the abiding magic of Pulley’s storytelling, I think: that it has a great deal of trust in its reader. Hers is a greedy oeuvre: it’s not just our attention it covets, it also demands our active participation. Pulley leads us through pathways into her reimagined version of history and trusts that we will follow, that we will pay attention and make the necessary connections. Always, she is careful to remain two steps ahead, giving us just the right amount of information to whip our imagination into a frenzy. The more I read, the more unbearable became my need to know more—and the more I gradually came to notice the strings Pulley is pulling through the frame. In fact, I frequently had to pause my reading of The Kingdoms just so I could think. Twice, I had to stand and walk around my room, too drunk with a mix of excitement and dread to sit still. Sometimes, I would have to put down the book, or hug it tightly to my chest, and let the sheer tenderness of a moment quietly wash over me. All of this culminating in one moment towards the end when everything, like a swiftly parted curtain, abruptly made sense. And I just about lost my goddamn mind.
Pulley made something truly masterful here, balancing technique and structure with so much dazzling, ineffable intimacy in a way that makes it impossible not to stop and gawk. The resulting work is a book that you can’t read without wanting to talk about it, a stunning novel with so much to say about war and civilization, trauma and memory, love and sacrifice—and the people heartbreakingly caught up in it.
These are all heavy themes, but you should know that The Kingdoms is not a novel without joy. In these pages, Pulley dares to imagine scenes in which violence and tenderness collide, and moments of delicacy—the kind of sweetness that hurts because it can't last and in the next page will be gone—exist amidst unspeakable calamity. The tragedy and senselessness of war, the things that humans can do to one another; how the trauma we witness and inherit gnaws us through and distorts us into unrecognizable shapes in order to survive; how civilization can feel so impermanent and fragile, when blood is spilled and cities are burning. Pulley makes you feel all of these things deeply, indelibly, and it is against this indistinct chaos of living that The Kingdoms raises a defiant reverence for the terrible and insistent beauty of love. For in the novel’s center—fiercely kindled, and sometimes secret—is a love story. The story of two lonely and tired and broken men who, in the staring presence of death, find each other and lose each other and find each other again, as if in a cosmic dance. Their story is one of strife and seismic loss, but it is also, wrenchingly, one of hope buoyed up by the multiplicity of the odds stacked against it and of happiness that is made more so by the improbability of it existing at all.
There is something here that goes right to the heart of things, something offered like a gift—a gift for the reluctant and hungry, those of us who are pushing, each day, through the clot of our ghosts, and the dregs of the past, haunted by the desire for something left unsaid or unwitnessed, longing still for somewhere else, somewhere beyond, waiting to be carried outward and home. Something that will haunt me for a very long time.
May 27, 2021
When I came to the end of this book it felt like my heart had expanded or something. I’m not being hyperbolic, I had a genuine physical response to it. This happens occasionally, when I’ve read or watched something that really gets to me: this the-world-is-full-of-wonders sensation that feels more chemical than natural. It’s the difference, I think, between a response to technical excellence and a response to emotional excellence. The Kingdoms is the epitome of the latter.
Because: this is how you do it!! By ‘it’ I mean ‘an epic fantasy’ and ‘a love story’ and, also, just ‘a book’. This is what I wanted The Absolute Book to be. This is the most moving chapter of Cloud Atlas if it was 450 pages long. It’s like finding the best fanfic you’ve ever read, and you’re not even familiar with the fandom and don’t know who any of these people are, but you fall in love with it all the same because it’s just that good.
This also means that reviewing it is hard. I realllllly want to get all CAN I HAVE A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME TO TALK ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR MISSOURI KITE, but my enthusiastic love for that character isn’t something I think I can articulate. Or that it would mean much to anyone who hasn’t yet read the book, even if I did. The character development in this novel is something that has to be experienced; Pulley does this amazing thing of very gradually making you become obsessed with the protagonists, so that you don’t even notice it’s happening until, boom, sad songs are reminding you of them. At least, that’s how it worked for me.
I haven’t even mentioned what the story is actually about yet (which I think speaks to how much my enjoyment of it was down to emotional connection, though that’s not to say the plot isn’t also great). It starts in 1898, as a man named Joe steps off a train and realises he has lost all his memories. He finds himself in a world that is unfamiliar – to him, naturally, but also to us, as this is an alternate history in which the UK is under French rule. The London skyline is dominated by massive steelworks, households still keep slaves, and Edinburgh is occupied by a terrorist group known as the Saints.
Joe is eventually identified by his employer and reunited with his wife. But he doesn’t regain his memories, save for one: he recalls an image of a woman, along with the name Madeline. Although he can’t remember who she was to him, he can’t help but fixate on the idea of tracking her down. This mission becomes more urgent and complicated when he receives a postcard addressed to him and signed ‘M’ – a postcard that, he’s told, was sent 90 years ago.
The world of the book is fantastically complex and very vivid. I was fascinated by it from the start. The interweaving of timelines is one of those things I can hardly think about because I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been to map out how everything/everyone intersects. However, the thing that really makes The Kingdoms special is the central love story. When writing reviews, I often mention the fact that I generally don’t enjoy reading romance. Lots of novels have a romantic subplot squashed in where it doesn’t seem to belong; lots of books explicitly positioned as romance demand suspension of disbelief that I find impossible. But this is exactly how I want a love story to be done: slow, uncertain, tentative and filled with yearning. I became so invested in it that by the last few chapters I was crying over these people.
I never want sequels to books but I want a sequel to this. I want a whole fan community to spring up around this. It’s sweeping and enthralling and has so much heart; I just adored it.
Missouri Kite, though.
I received an advance review copy of The Kingdoms from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Linktree
Because: this is how you do it!! By ‘it’ I mean ‘an epic fantasy’ and ‘a love story’ and, also, just ‘a book’. This is what I wanted The Absolute Book to be. This is the most moving chapter of Cloud Atlas if it was 450 pages long. It’s like finding the best fanfic you’ve ever read, and you’re not even familiar with the fandom and don’t know who any of these people are, but you fall in love with it all the same because it’s just that good.
This also means that reviewing it is hard. I realllllly want to get all CAN I HAVE A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME TO TALK ABOUT OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR MISSOURI KITE, but my enthusiastic love for that character isn’t something I think I can articulate. Or that it would mean much to anyone who hasn’t yet read the book, even if I did. The character development in this novel is something that has to be experienced; Pulley does this amazing thing of very gradually making you become obsessed with the protagonists, so that you don’t even notice it’s happening until, boom, sad songs are reminding you of them. At least, that’s how it worked for me.
I haven’t even mentioned what the story is actually about yet (which I think speaks to how much my enjoyment of it was down to emotional connection, though that’s not to say the plot isn’t also great). It starts in 1898, as a man named Joe steps off a train and realises he has lost all his memories. He finds himself in a world that is unfamiliar – to him, naturally, but also to us, as this is an alternate history in which the UK is under French rule. The London skyline is dominated by massive steelworks, households still keep slaves, and Edinburgh is occupied by a terrorist group known as the Saints.
Joe is eventually identified by his employer and reunited with his wife. But he doesn’t regain his memories, save for one: he recalls an image of a woman, along with the name Madeline. Although he can’t remember who she was to him, he can’t help but fixate on the idea of tracking her down. This mission becomes more urgent and complicated when he receives a postcard addressed to him and signed ‘M’ – a postcard that, he’s told, was sent 90 years ago.
The world of the book is fantastically complex and very vivid. I was fascinated by it from the start. The interweaving of timelines is one of those things I can hardly think about because I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been to map out how everything/everyone intersects. However, the thing that really makes The Kingdoms special is the central love story. When writing reviews, I often mention the fact that I generally don’t enjoy reading romance. Lots of novels have a romantic subplot squashed in where it doesn’t seem to belong; lots of books explicitly positioned as romance demand suspension of disbelief that I find impossible. But this is exactly how I want a love story to be done: slow, uncertain, tentative and filled with yearning. I became so invested in it that by the last few chapters I was crying over these people.
I never want sequels to books but I want a sequel to this. I want a whole fan community to spring up around this. It’s sweeping and enthralling and has so much heart; I just adored it.
Missouri Kite, though.
I received an advance review copy of The Kingdoms from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Linktree
February 10, 2022
I finished this some hours ago now and I am still dazed. What a staggeringly tense, emotional, perfect ending. Natasha Pulley is definitely now up there with my very favourite authors.
The Kingdoms begins in London in 1898, when Joe Tournier disembarks from a train apparently suffering from amnesia. This is London or Londres in an alternative history, where the French won the Battle of Trafalgar and made slaves of the English population. This is exciting in itself for someone like me who loves a bit of alternate history, but then it jumps back another 100 years when Joe accidentally travels back in time. Even better - alternate history AND time slip - what more to ask for?
Maybe many brilliantly written characters who step off the page and are memorable ever after. This is really Ms Pulley's forte. Remember Thaniel and Mori from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and Merrick and Raphael from The Bedlam Stacks. Now we have Joe and Kite and a love affair which travels through time and survives even total separation.
There is also a constant thread of mystery throughout the book. Who is Joe Tournier, why does Kite know so much about him, what is the mystery of the lighthouse and most importantly how did the French come to win that battle? Add to all this historical battles at sea, the sad affair of the giant tortoises, and constantly having to figure out how the time travellers are affecting futures. It is not a book one can speed read.
And then that ending. Beautiful. One of those occasions where I closed the book, patted the cover and sighed contentedly. This is what reading is all about.
The Kingdoms begins in London in 1898, when Joe Tournier disembarks from a train apparently suffering from amnesia. This is London or Londres in an alternative history, where the French won the Battle of Trafalgar and made slaves of the English population. This is exciting in itself for someone like me who loves a bit of alternate history, but then it jumps back another 100 years when Joe accidentally travels back in time. Even better - alternate history AND time slip - what more to ask for?
Maybe many brilliantly written characters who step off the page and are memorable ever after. This is really Ms Pulley's forte. Remember Thaniel and Mori from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and Merrick and Raphael from The Bedlam Stacks. Now we have Joe and Kite and a love affair which travels through time and survives even total separation.
There is also a constant thread of mystery throughout the book. Who is Joe Tournier, why does Kite know so much about him, what is the mystery of the lighthouse and most importantly how did the French come to win that battle? Add to all this historical battles at sea, the sad affair of the giant tortoises, and constantly having to figure out how the time travellers are affecting futures. It is not a book one can speed read.
And then that ending. Beautiful. One of those occasions where I closed the book, patted the cover and sighed contentedly. This is what reading is all about.
October 14, 2021
rep: half-Chinese gay mc, half-Spanish gay mc, Black side characters
tw: rape, murder, blood, violence, guns
Review also on Reads Rainbow. ARC provided by the publisher.
People generally agree that it’s harder to review books you’ve enjoyed; that it’s harder to find the words to describe all the ways in which you loved a book, than it is to explain why you hated it. This statement, for me, has never been more true than right now.
I’ve read The Kingdoms six months ago, and I actually haven’t stopped thinking about it since. And yet, I still have no idea what to say about it. It’s one of those books that shattered my heart into pieces, but I’m staring at this mostly empty file & can’t string together two sentences to explain how.
If you’ve ever read a book by Natasha Pulley, you probably already know that there’s this undercurrent of magic to her writing. And I don’t mean magic in a literal sense, although a lot of her books actually do have some magical elements to them. I mean the way she weaves her stories is magic.
There’s always some big plot going on (and in most cases you could call it a mystery), but even then the books actually focus on the romance. Make no mistakes, though, Pulley does not write romance books: she writes books about love, which is to say the books only happen because the characters love each other so much. It’s visible in The Bedlam Stacks, it’s visible especially in The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, and it’s visible in The Kingdoms.
The book follows a man named Joe who wakes up without his memories, without any idea who he is or where he is, or how he got there. It’s a weird type of amnesia, and we’re told it’s actually just a typical illness of his time and he has to live with it now. As one can imagine, basically the whole story is about Joe trying to find out his past, to learn who are the people that he loves.
It’s a time travel book and it’s a mystery, and it’s literally about changing history. There are giant ships fighting, there are guns, there is so much violence & blood in that book. It could probably not be more eventful. And yet at its very core, The Kingdoms is about love.
Joe finds this postcard that says “Come home, if you remember” and it might be one of the most beautiful quotes I will ever read in a book. Just this idea that love, and specifically gay love, can be stronger than literal laws of times and physics. That you can change the world in order to find the one man who’s your soulmate. That idea is frankly just groundbreaking.
The thing about The Kingdoms – and this is actually true for all of Pulley’s books – is that despite everything that happens, it’s still a very slow book. Not in the sense that the pacing is bad, but just that Pulley understands the importance of why things happen, why the characters do & say the things they do. And it’s almost as if she somehow slows down the book to let you fully experience all those emotions. Like I said, it’s magic.
I’m confident that this is actually the best of Pulley’s books. If you’ve read her previous ones, you can clearly see the development of her style, the improvement over the years. With all the time travel and all the shifting of timelines, the changing of facts & history, it’s such a rich and complicated story. But most importantly it makes you believe in love and soulmates.
tw: rape, murder, blood, violence, guns
Review also on Reads Rainbow. ARC provided by the publisher.
People generally agree that it’s harder to review books you’ve enjoyed; that it’s harder to find the words to describe all the ways in which you loved a book, than it is to explain why you hated it. This statement, for me, has never been more true than right now.
I’ve read The Kingdoms six months ago, and I actually haven’t stopped thinking about it since. And yet, I still have no idea what to say about it. It’s one of those books that shattered my heart into pieces, but I’m staring at this mostly empty file & can’t string together two sentences to explain how.
If you’ve ever read a book by Natasha Pulley, you probably already know that there’s this undercurrent of magic to her writing. And I don’t mean magic in a literal sense, although a lot of her books actually do have some magical elements to them. I mean the way she weaves her stories is magic.
There’s always some big plot going on (and in most cases you could call it a mystery), but even then the books actually focus on the romance. Make no mistakes, though, Pulley does not write romance books: she writes books about love, which is to say the books only happen because the characters love each other so much. It’s visible in The Bedlam Stacks, it’s visible especially in The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, and it’s visible in The Kingdoms.
The book follows a man named Joe who wakes up without his memories, without any idea who he is or where he is, or how he got there. It’s a weird type of amnesia, and we’re told it’s actually just a typical illness of his time and he has to live with it now. As one can imagine, basically the whole story is about Joe trying to find out his past, to learn who are the people that he loves.
It’s a time travel book and it’s a mystery, and it’s literally about changing history. There are giant ships fighting, there are guns, there is so much violence & blood in that book. It could probably not be more eventful. And yet at its very core, The Kingdoms is about love.
Joe finds this postcard that says “Come home, if you remember” and it might be one of the most beautiful quotes I will ever read in a book. Just this idea that love, and specifically gay love, can be stronger than literal laws of times and physics. That you can change the world in order to find the one man who’s your soulmate. That idea is frankly just groundbreaking.
The thing about The Kingdoms – and this is actually true for all of Pulley’s books – is that despite everything that happens, it’s still a very slow book. Not in the sense that the pacing is bad, but just that Pulley understands the importance of why things happen, why the characters do & say the things they do. And it’s almost as if she somehow slows down the book to let you fully experience all those emotions. Like I said, it’s magic.
I’m confident that this is actually the best of Pulley’s books. If you’ve read her previous ones, you can clearly see the development of her style, the improvement over the years. With all the time travel and all the shifting of timelines, the changing of facts & history, it’s such a rich and complicated story. But most importantly it makes you believe in love and soulmates.
August 24, 2021
SPOILERS
WOW.
This book is about time travel and changing the past. As such, like other books in its category, it deals with the butterfly effect, and it does it like this: when the past is changed, the people in present day have their memories of their old past essentially wiped, and new history is superimposed into the minds of those in the future, leaving behind a few scant flashes of their life before.
What I'm trying to say is that this book was written in a way that made me think Natasha Pulley had been through this experience herself: she'd come from a timeline where books existed, which was promptly wiped for one where they didn't, and using the scraps of information she had left she attempted to write a "book", without actually knowing what one was. There is no other explanation for why this book is so strangely, quasi-incompetently constructed. I would NOT recommend this book to anyone who was interested in reading a sci-fi, nor to anyone interested in reading alternate history, because it fails on both fronts.
Things I liked about this book:
The premise: of course.
PART II of the book: This was good? At this point the protagonist, Joe, had finally been spurred into action, the mechanics of the world were being introduced, the mystery was tantalising and hadn't yet grown stale. I nearly gave it an extra star because of that section, but decided against it because of the awful time I had with nearly everything else.
The prose: when Natasha Pulley isn't writing dialogue the prose is nice, and even atmospheric at times.
Things I DIDN'T like about this book:
THE CHARACTERS
Where to begin? I could say that this book, aiming to be a sci-fi alternative history, fails on those accounts, but at the end of the day the speculative genre is flexible. If I had to pinpoint my exact problem with The Kingdoms, it is that the characters are the most incomprehensible characters in pretty much any book I've ever read.
For an alternate history book set in the 1700s/1800s, they definitely don't act or speak like it. You'll find anachronisms peppered through their dialogue jarringly, in ways that reminded me uncomfortably of fanfiction dialogue tropes. Here are some of standard examples:
"Cake?"
"No, thank you," I said, doing some interior shrieking.
(Like the good 'ol 21st century form of expression, *screams internally*?)
"You're a nasty creep with a disgusting little crush that's grown on you like rot. Grow the fuck up."
(Was the man who said this born in the 1700s, or the 1800s, or 1999?)
But I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy in my speculative fiction, and normally I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept this kind of alteration as the artistic license of the author. Except the problem extends beyond characters acting "out of time", they just don't act like bloody real people at all. Here's one innocuous but particularly jarring example:
The table next to Joe's erupted laughing. Everyone threw things at a West Indian man, who flapped like a giant depressed fairy.
(The "throwing things" makes sense in context, and to some extent the flapping does, but "giant depressed fairy"????)
Also, characters die as easily as pins getting knocked down in an alley, and the other characters react with about the same amount of grief and surprise.
"Agatha, you have to do something about Kite. He can't just go around murdering children. I don't care what the reason is."
"I know, I know. I'll go and see him soon, but I'd like to see your heart rate come down first. Can you hear it?"
(The context here is the love interest, Kite, has bodily thrown a literal 14 year old boy off the boat for attempting to divulge a secret. The characters react to Kite killing him -- and also pretty much every other kill by Kite or otherwise -- the same way they might react to a puppy tearing up the furniture. This is NOT meant to be comedic, this book takes itself VERY, VERY seriously).
Finally, for a book that featured a good amount of women and POC, it felt strangely male and white. Perhaps some people feel differently, but racedropping some diverse backgrounds onto characters that experience a history world in a largely white way (or at least not divorced from the experience of white characters) is... not it. Not in the sense that it offends me, but in that it's jarring and reeks of poor research. When combined with the rest of the book's weird distaste for reality, it only exacerbates the overall flimsiness.
And though many women are doctors, lieutenants, etc, the women's narratives are all focalised around their role in shaping the lives of, bouncing off of, or illustrating just how progressive or wicked the men are. They carry no emotional weight in the narrative other than to be killed off for the male characters' (here I'd say grief, but as established above, they don't really grieve? So I'm going to leave it at that). Judging from a blog post I've seen, this is a common trend in Natasha Pulley's books, and though she seems to have made strides to flat out include more women in The Kingdoms, she's got a ways to go.
THE STRUCTURE
The book's structure is all over the place. We get multiple different POVs that happen one after the other with no clear change in narrative voice or indication of who is speaking. Often I would read a whole page, only to realise that it was coming from a different character's perspective, then have to go back and reread it from the beginning. Sometimes the POV would change halfway through a chapter.
These weird, unpadded jumps also occurred with scenes and events and times. One moment characters would be doing one thing, then the next moment it would jump days or months. This covered the book in this strange, dreamlike haze where you couldn't exactly be sure what was happening at what time, to who, and whether something was a flashback or the present moment. The dates at the front of each chapter helped with the timespan (but it still was tricky, there were THREE and two overlapped, one being the flashback pov and one being present pov, but in the past), but did not help with the characters.
By far the worst structural offender was how the book dealt with its central mystery. The main conceit of the book is that the protagonist Joe has lost his memory in a time slip, and for the whole book, spends time trying to find out how he ended up that way, and precisely who he is. It's pretty obvious what has happened to him the first time you see a flashback, which puts a damper on any mystery based reading-inertia quite quickly. But even if I hadn't figured it out, I'd have been furious at the way the author handled it.
Halfway through the book, the love interest Kite reveals to the protagonist that he has a letter written by a woman that the protagonist remembers from his past life, and was holding onto it for petty personal related reasons. He offers to give this letter to the protagonist so that he will forgive another man on their ship who tried to set him on fire in his sleep (again, implausible characters).
Already, this is an extremely artificial way of witholding information, but the worse part is that the protagonist reads one quarter of the letter, decides he is TOO OVERWHELMED to keep reading, and then puts it away and lets the plot happen for a few chapters. Then he feels good enough to try reading it again, takes it out and reads ANOTHER QUARTER before putting it away again. Rinse, repeat 4 times. As such, it takes us, the readers, an entire third or more of the book to actually learn all the information and context the letter provides us.
This is embarrassing and woefully cheap storytelling, and when the letter was finally read I felt tempted to drop the book on the spot.
THE ROMANCE
I have no idea why the protagonist Joe, and his love interest Kite "fell in love". From Kite's perspective I get it: we are bashed over the head with how charming and handsome Joe is meant to be (though it hardly shows up in his actual actions, and really only when the plot demands he be charming to get something the plot needs for him). From Joe's perspective though, it seemed... proximity based affection? Otherwise, their love story got lost in the fugue that shrouds the rest of the novel. At some point it becomes a thing between them to (barf) give tattoos as expressions of affection.
And Kite. Ugh. What can I say about love interest Missouri Kite? I get what Natasha Pulley was trying to do with him, fusing "cruel lieutenant man" with "smexy sad boi" in a way that ended up wholly unpalatable. Multiple times, he kills innocent bystanders, but rather than feeling like this was a core tenet of a troubled, unempathetic man, it felt like window dressing designed to show how much of a teehee, "psycho" (the book's words, not mine) he was -- the way a 13 year old on Wattpad writing Jeff the Killer fanfiction might find that sexy (there's a fantastic Jenny Nicholson video on the subject matter). And I don't mind "bad" love interests, but I need to be able to fundamentally understand how characters who are against killing mentally reconcile their morals with being in love with characters who do bad things. Safe to say, that gap was not bridged here. And sure, the protagonist ultimately loses his daughter, wives, sister-in-law and brother because of the time jumping, but it's a happy end because Joe and Kite can be together right? Not on my watch.
THE PREMISE
I said the premise of the book was good. Too bad after the first third the book abandons the premise and turns into what is ostensibly a roadtrip book. They spend their time pottering from place to place on a boat, taking part in shenanigans of all sorts in the past. The book does little to explore any of the sci-fi stuff that might come out of a premise like this. It also doesn't flesh out the worldbuilding needed to make it a satisfactory alternate history.
To give more context, as a result of a time slip, the world went from being conquered by the English in the 19th century, to the French. The only reason I realised we were meant to be rooting for the characters to go back in time and change the world so the English were in control again was because in the France-alternate timeline they kept slaves. Which seems less like a logical progression of France's attitude towards slaves, and more like a plot device so we, the stupid audience, knew who to root for. Frankly, this was a smart move, because without it, I didn't give a damn which European power was the colonists, so it was good of Natasha Pulley to spoonfeed me the idea that the protagonist and his love interests were the Good Guys :)
1 star.
WOW.
This book is about time travel and changing the past. As such, like other books in its category, it deals with the butterfly effect, and it does it like this: when the past is changed, the people in present day have their memories of their old past essentially wiped, and new history is superimposed into the minds of those in the future, leaving behind a few scant flashes of their life before.
What I'm trying to say is that this book was written in a way that made me think Natasha Pulley had been through this experience herself: she'd come from a timeline where books existed, which was promptly wiped for one where they didn't, and using the scraps of information she had left she attempted to write a "book", without actually knowing what one was. There is no other explanation for why this book is so strangely, quasi-incompetently constructed. I would NOT recommend this book to anyone who was interested in reading a sci-fi, nor to anyone interested in reading alternate history, because it fails on both fronts.
Things I liked about this book:
The premise: of course.
PART II of the book: This was good? At this point the protagonist, Joe, had finally been spurred into action, the mechanics of the world were being introduced, the mystery was tantalising and hadn't yet grown stale. I nearly gave it an extra star because of that section, but decided against it because of the awful time I had with nearly everything else.
The prose: when Natasha Pulley isn't writing dialogue the prose is nice, and even atmospheric at times.
Things I DIDN'T like about this book:
THE CHARACTERS
Where to begin? I could say that this book, aiming to be a sci-fi alternative history, fails on those accounts, but at the end of the day the speculative genre is flexible. If I had to pinpoint my exact problem with The Kingdoms, it is that the characters are the most incomprehensible characters in pretty much any book I've ever read.
For an alternate history book set in the 1700s/1800s, they definitely don't act or speak like it. You'll find anachronisms peppered through their dialogue jarringly, in ways that reminded me uncomfortably of fanfiction dialogue tropes. Here are some of standard examples:
"Cake?"
"No, thank you," I said, doing some interior shrieking.
(Like the good 'ol 21st century form of expression, *screams internally*?)
"You're a nasty creep with a disgusting little crush that's grown on you like rot. Grow the fuck up."
(Was the man who said this born in the 1700s, or the 1800s, or 1999?)
But I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy in my speculative fiction, and normally I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept this kind of alteration as the artistic license of the author. Except the problem extends beyond characters acting "out of time", they just don't act like bloody real people at all. Here's one innocuous but particularly jarring example:
The table next to Joe's erupted laughing. Everyone threw things at a West Indian man, who flapped like a giant depressed fairy.
(The "throwing things" makes sense in context, and to some extent the flapping does, but "giant depressed fairy"????)
Also, characters die as easily as pins getting knocked down in an alley, and the other characters react with about the same amount of grief and surprise.
"Agatha, you have to do something about Kite. He can't just go around murdering children. I don't care what the reason is."
"I know, I know. I'll go and see him soon, but I'd like to see your heart rate come down first. Can you hear it?"
(The context here is the love interest, Kite, has bodily thrown a literal 14 year old boy off the boat for attempting to divulge a secret. The characters react to Kite killing him -- and also pretty much every other kill by Kite or otherwise -- the same way they might react to a puppy tearing up the furniture. This is NOT meant to be comedic, this book takes itself VERY, VERY seriously).
Finally, for a book that featured a good amount of women and POC, it felt strangely male and white. Perhaps some people feel differently, but racedropping some diverse backgrounds onto characters that experience a history world in a largely white way (or at least not divorced from the experience of white characters) is... not it. Not in the sense that it offends me, but in that it's jarring and reeks of poor research. When combined with the rest of the book's weird distaste for reality, it only exacerbates the overall flimsiness.
And though many women are doctors, lieutenants, etc, the women's narratives are all focalised around their role in shaping the lives of, bouncing off of, or illustrating just how progressive or wicked the men are. They carry no emotional weight in the narrative other than to be killed off for the male characters' (here I'd say grief, but as established above, they don't really grieve? So I'm going to leave it at that). Judging from a blog post I've seen, this is a common trend in Natasha Pulley's books, and though she seems to have made strides to flat out include more women in The Kingdoms, she's got a ways to go.
THE STRUCTURE
The book's structure is all over the place. We get multiple different POVs that happen one after the other with no clear change in narrative voice or indication of who is speaking. Often I would read a whole page, only to realise that it was coming from a different character's perspective, then have to go back and reread it from the beginning. Sometimes the POV would change halfway through a chapter.
These weird, unpadded jumps also occurred with scenes and events and times. One moment characters would be doing one thing, then the next moment it would jump days or months. This covered the book in this strange, dreamlike haze where you couldn't exactly be sure what was happening at what time, to who, and whether something was a flashback or the present moment. The dates at the front of each chapter helped with the timespan (but it still was tricky, there were THREE and two overlapped, one being the flashback pov and one being present pov, but in the past), but did not help with the characters.
By far the worst structural offender was how the book dealt with its central mystery. The main conceit of the book is that the protagonist Joe has lost his memory in a time slip, and for the whole book, spends time trying to find out how he ended up that way, and precisely who he is. It's pretty obvious what has happened to him the first time you see a flashback, which puts a damper on any mystery based reading-inertia quite quickly. But even if I hadn't figured it out, I'd have been furious at the way the author handled it.
Halfway through the book, the love interest Kite reveals to the protagonist that he has a letter written by a woman that the protagonist remembers from his past life, and was holding onto it for petty personal related reasons. He offers to give this letter to the protagonist so that he will forgive another man on their ship who tried to set him on fire in his sleep (again, implausible characters).
Already, this is an extremely artificial way of witholding information, but the worse part is that the protagonist reads one quarter of the letter, decides he is TOO OVERWHELMED to keep reading, and then puts it away and lets the plot happen for a few chapters. Then he feels good enough to try reading it again, takes it out and reads ANOTHER QUARTER before putting it away again. Rinse, repeat 4 times. As such, it takes us, the readers, an entire third or more of the book to actually learn all the information and context the letter provides us.
This is embarrassing and woefully cheap storytelling, and when the letter was finally read I felt tempted to drop the book on the spot.
THE ROMANCE
I have no idea why the protagonist Joe, and his love interest Kite "fell in love". From Kite's perspective I get it: we are bashed over the head with how charming and handsome Joe is meant to be (though it hardly shows up in his actual actions, and really only when the plot demands he be charming to get something the plot needs for him). From Joe's perspective though, it seemed... proximity based affection? Otherwise, their love story got lost in the fugue that shrouds the rest of the novel. At some point it becomes a thing between them to (barf) give tattoos as expressions of affection.
And Kite. Ugh. What can I say about love interest Missouri Kite? I get what Natasha Pulley was trying to do with him, fusing "cruel lieutenant man" with "smexy sad boi" in a way that ended up wholly unpalatable. Multiple times, he kills innocent bystanders, but rather than feeling like this was a core tenet of a troubled, unempathetic man, it felt like window dressing designed to show how much of a teehee, "psycho" (the book's words, not mine) he was -- the way a 13 year old on Wattpad writing Jeff the Killer fanfiction might find that sexy (there's a fantastic Jenny Nicholson video on the subject matter). And I don't mind "bad" love interests, but I need to be able to fundamentally understand how characters who are against killing mentally reconcile their morals with being in love with characters who do bad things. Safe to say, that gap was not bridged here. And sure, the protagonist ultimately loses his daughter, wives, sister-in-law and brother because of the time jumping, but it's a happy end because Joe and Kite can be together right? Not on my watch.
THE PREMISE
I said the premise of the book was good. Too bad after the first third the book abandons the premise and turns into what is ostensibly a roadtrip book. They spend their time pottering from place to place on a boat, taking part in shenanigans of all sorts in the past. The book does little to explore any of the sci-fi stuff that might come out of a premise like this. It also doesn't flesh out the worldbuilding needed to make it a satisfactory alternate history.
To give more context, as a result of a time slip, the world went from being conquered by the English in the 19th century, to the French. The only reason I realised we were meant to be rooting for the characters to go back in time and change the world so the English were in control again was because in the France-alternate timeline they kept slaves. Which seems less like a logical progression of France's attitude towards slaves, and more like a plot device so we, the stupid audience, knew who to root for. Frankly, this was a smart move, because without it, I didn't give a damn which European power was the colonists, so it was good of Natasha Pulley to spoonfeed me the idea that the protagonist and his love interests were the Good Guys :)
1 star.
January 24, 2021
I'll caveat my lukewarm review (2.5 stars rounded up to 3) by acknowledging that it's probably not Natasha Pulley's fault, it's all me. In theory, I should really like her books! Dear friends of mine with overlapping taste adore them. Her books are fantastical, involve rich descriptions and scenery and glorious tangles of language, often set in historical periods and I truly love a good historical fiction fantasy; I mean I reread Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell at least once a year! And yet, I briefly started The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and was quickly unimpressed and stopped, I made it just a bit further with The Bedlam Stacks but could not connect.
The Kingdoms is therefore the first Natasha Pulley fiction I've ever finished, and I've come to the clear conclusion that it's not meant to be for me and this author. The Kingdoms has a great premise - a portal between past and present in the nineteenth century, a so-diagnosed amnesiac man trying to put together the pieces of his life, the Napoleonic wars between Britain and France as the backdrop, the stakes being freedom and true love of course. But I found it to be somewhat of a mess to read: sometimes it seemed as though sentences were missing, we'd move along from idea to idea and scene to scene without any fluid transition or connection with what came before. The big twists that covered Joe's identity I saw coming very early on so there was little that surprised me throughout. Characters die very abruptly and other characters barely seem to react to their passing, which could make sense given the war context of the plot but it reads awkwardly and unfinished, the reader is just buffeted along to the next scene. I wonder if Pulley was trying so hard to maintain the mystery and not tip her hand too early that she swung a bit too far in the secrecy and instead made scene connections sparse and thus made the plot more convoluted than it needed to be.
And perhaps because of this weird plot convolution and lack of significant connectivity from scene to scene, I never much cared for any of the lead characters, nor the love story across time that again was hinted at but left so much until the end I suppose to maintain the mystery and give readers small breadcrumbs to follow and piece together. If that was what was intended, for me it left the characters emotionally removed from me as the reader, and I grew to feel neutrally toward them to ambivalent dislike. (A particular moment was quite jarring and made me feel less invested in the big reveal I'd already guessed.)
At any rate, I could have easily rounded this down to two stars, but I did think the prose was good (even if I prefer other wordsmith type authors and don't rate Pulley that highly) and I did enjoy many of the descriptions of settings. I would have loved more of the alternate England and Scotland and more immersion into places, as that also might have helped draw me into the book more. So I'm landing on a lukewarm "I liked rating": I would recommend this to those who have previously enjoyed Pulley's books, and for fans of historical fiction fantasy that are willing to wrestle with some interesting ideas and messy execution. But this shall be my last time reading Pulley, alas she's simply not for me.
The Kingdoms is therefore the first Natasha Pulley fiction I've ever finished, and I've come to the clear conclusion that it's not meant to be for me and this author. The Kingdoms has a great premise - a portal between past and present in the nineteenth century, a so-diagnosed amnesiac man trying to put together the pieces of his life, the Napoleonic wars between Britain and France as the backdrop, the stakes being freedom and true love of course. But I found it to be somewhat of a mess to read: sometimes it seemed as though sentences were missing, we'd move along from idea to idea and scene to scene without any fluid transition or connection with what came before. The big twists that covered Joe's identity I saw coming very early on so there was little that surprised me throughout. Characters die very abruptly and other characters barely seem to react to their passing, which could make sense given the war context of the plot but it reads awkwardly and unfinished, the reader is just buffeted along to the next scene. I wonder if Pulley was trying so hard to maintain the mystery and not tip her hand too early that she swung a bit too far in the secrecy and instead made scene connections sparse and thus made the plot more convoluted than it needed to be.
And perhaps because of this weird plot convolution and lack of significant connectivity from scene to scene, I never much cared for any of the lead characters, nor the love story across time that again was hinted at but left so much until the end I suppose to maintain the mystery and give readers small breadcrumbs to follow and piece together. If that was what was intended, for me it left the characters emotionally removed from me as the reader, and I grew to feel neutrally toward them to ambivalent dislike. (A particular moment was quite jarring and made me feel less invested in the big reveal I'd already guessed.)
At any rate, I could have easily rounded this down to two stars, but I did think the prose was good (even if I prefer other wordsmith type authors and don't rate Pulley that highly) and I did enjoy many of the descriptions of settings. I would have loved more of the alternate England and Scotland and more immersion into places, as that also might have helped draw me into the book more. So I'm landing on a lukewarm "I liked rating": I would recommend this to those who have previously enjoyed Pulley's books, and for fans of historical fiction fantasy that are willing to wrestle with some interesting ideas and messy execution. But this shall be my last time reading Pulley, alas she's simply not for me.
December 28, 2020
Base recipe for a Natasha Pulley cocktail:
- 1 fish-out-of-water protagonist
- 1 kind love interest
- 1 cup loneliness. the type that stops you right on the verge of crying, so you're just left with a constant hum of wrongness and guilt
- 1 cup silences that contain a universe of meanings
- 2 tbsp witty witticisms ("It was good to know he did have a backbone, after two years of feeling pretty sure he was an invertebrate")
Extra additions for The Kingdoms:
- 1 sea captain with RBF who holds romance novels in one hand and shoots people with the other
- 1 beautiful amnesiac with a penchant for sass
- 4 tortoises doing charmingly untortoise-like things (e.g. sharing blankets, playing with cricket balls)
- 1/2 tsp enemies to lovers (kind of)
- 2 tbsp grim war imagery
- 4 tbsp traumas that shape your entire life
Mix them all up in a giant pot, take a sip (c'mon, straight from the ladle) and you'll hear a voice whispering in a crisp British accent: "Time is, and always will be, really fucking gay."
I'll spruce this up to a more sensible review later, but the bottom line is that The Kingdoms is a quiet-yet-not-quiet epic wonder of a story that made me feel like I was soaring by the end. And I'm having trouble cobbling together words to explain why. Maybe it's the scale of it all--how much was at stake and how much had already been sacrificed, and the fact that it was darker than I'd expected. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for stories set on ships. Maybe it's the characters, because Pulley never fails to write beautifully relatable, hopeless, firecracker main characters. Maybe it's seeing love that defies and defies and defies. Maybe it's the lost, broken things that are eventually found by the sea and carried to a new home. Just... There is such a satisfying completeness to it all that makes me want to pump my fists and sob into my sleeves at the same time.
Natasha Pulley calls this her best work to date. Natasha Pulley is damn right.
~~
Review copy provided by the publisher via Edelweiss. All opinions are my own.
- 1 fish-out-of-water protagonist
- 1 kind love interest
- 1 cup loneliness. the type that stops you right on the verge of crying, so you're just left with a constant hum of wrongness and guilt
- 1 cup silences that contain a universe of meanings
- 2 tbsp witty witticisms ("It was good to know he did have a backbone, after two years of feeling pretty sure he was an invertebrate")
Extra additions for The Kingdoms:
- 1 sea captain with RBF who holds romance novels in one hand and shoots people with the other
- 1 beautiful amnesiac with a penchant for sass
- 4 tortoises doing charmingly untortoise-like things (e.g. sharing blankets, playing with cricket balls)
- 1/2 tsp enemies to lovers (kind of)
- 2 tbsp grim war imagery
- 4 tbsp traumas that shape your entire life
Mix them all up in a giant pot, take a sip (c'mon, straight from the ladle) and you'll hear a voice whispering in a crisp British accent: "Time is, and always will be, really fucking gay."
I'll spruce this up to a more sensible review later, but the bottom line is that The Kingdoms is a quiet-yet-not-quiet epic wonder of a story that made me feel like I was soaring by the end. And I'm having trouble cobbling together words to explain why. Maybe it's the scale of it all--how much was at stake and how much had already been sacrificed, and the fact that it was darker than I'd expected. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for stories set on ships. Maybe it's the characters, because Pulley never fails to write beautifully relatable, hopeless, firecracker main characters. Maybe it's seeing love that defies and defies and defies. Maybe it's the lost, broken things that are eventually found by the sea and carried to a new home. Just... There is such a satisfying completeness to it all that makes me want to pump my fists and sob into my sleeves at the same time.
Natasha Pulley calls this her best work to date. Natasha Pulley is damn right.
~~
Review copy provided by the publisher via Edelweiss. All opinions are my own.
December 23, 2024
i told myself i wouldn’t be dramatic about this.
i said “celine you’ve posted about the kingdoms Too Many times babe it’s time to shut up.”
but y’know what? today marks one whole year since i first read the kingdoms so i'm going to be fucking dramatic about it.
(before i get dramatic i want to highlight how my first reaction to this book was < “i’m ugly and poor” me too, kite, me too > because like. lmao mood.)
the question is: when am i /not/ thinking about this book. i think about it whenever i’m lying in bed at night, when i look at all the kingdoms art my best friends have made, whenever i hike to lighthouses just to feel alive. i constantly put on my kingdoms playlist and just. try not to evaporate from feelings.
there is just so much i could say about the kingdoms. little things like “hey did you know that there was a point where i almost gave this book 4 stars out of sheer spite because how dare natasha pulley hurt me like this”.
or other things like: i’d like to think i’ve etched this book into my bones. i’ve turned over every line and word, playing it over and over again. my copy is tabbed to hell and back. i could recognise this story anywhere, in any shape and form. i've hurt myself a thousand times in the process and then stitched it back together like a fragile cloak.
i think about how delicate this story is, how intimate every single scene is because it’s like a ghost, like sea mist. blink and you miss it. something that can’t last and may get ripped away anytime, like fading into nothingness.
i also think about how this book has chaos and tragedy and the senselessness of war, how much trauma we get put through and how fragile every existence is. and yet there is so much tenderness.
i think about how missouri kite is a walking open wound, how it feels to look at the love of your fucking life and be met by honest incomprehension. how they do this dance of finding and losing each other again and again. and ultimately, how hopeful it is that this terrible and insistent love rises out of it, against all odds.
(also sorry to everyone i gaslit while reading this but sorry not sorry)
___
hey siri play that voice recording of me wailing my lungs out at 1am
(written for my top 10 books of 2021 countdown on bookstagram where it's ranked at #3)
this year i discovered the voice of natasha pulley and oh goodness, what an enchanting voice to know. singing a siren song, spinning a rich golden tale, an undercurrent of tender magic wrapping around and pulling you under. where has this been all my life?
so: the kingdoms. it has my entire heart, this was an experience unlike any other - literally Changed Me. i truly wonder if i’ll ever experience a book like this ever again.
nothing draws me more to a book than one that can make me /feel/. pulley went above and beyond that, making me feel a symphony of emotion. she wrapped her hand around my heart and yanked.
amnesia storylines hurt, but this one felt like it was on a whole other level. groundbreaking honestly. the whole idea of feeling as though someone somewhere is calling for you, someone who knows you so intimately, almost touching their fingertips, and then it slips out of your grasp? B R U H.
the thing is, pulley doesn’t write romance per se: she writes books about love. at its core, everything that happens is because of the love that the characters have for each other. the whole idea of how home is a person, that soft but intense yearning. the epitome of fist fighting fate for a shot at reuniting with your person.
“i’ve missed you even when i didn't remember you” a line that haunts me daily. with every iteration of heartbreak, its countered by love. a love so strong that it defies the logic of space, time, and physics. of literally walking to the end of the earth and back to return home to someone. a magnetic pull between two people that literally changes the world, changes history.
or maybe the sands of time are too powerful and love will slip through your fingers each time you think you’ve finally grasped it? maybe you should read the kingdoms and find out :’)
___
(initial review)
*gunshot noise*
wait, let me go back. its 1898. joe tournier steps off a train in london with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. the only clue is an old postcard of a lighthouse in his pocket saying “come home, if you remember”, signed by “M” (haha o fuck i am already tearing up while typing this). though his memory escapes him, he has flashes of a life he can’t remember and of a world that never existed.
till today, i haven’t fully processed this book. maybe i never will. i finished it, sobbed so hard my folks came in to check on me, took an avoidant nap, woke up, looked for fanart, cried some more, and then bought a copy for the favorites shelf. after that i drove across the country to a lighthouse to bring joe and M back home.
i literally. can’t stop thinking about it.
the kingdoms is soft gay magical realism at its finest. its woven with magic. magic that seeps through each word, wrapping around you. magic that wraps around elements of time travel and mysteries, guns and ships and sacrifice.
its about history. changing history - is love strong enough to rewrite history, is it stronger than the laws of space and time? can you defy history and change the world to stay with someone you love? or does history soldier on, pulling love apart?
there will come a moment where you, the reader, will experience your own italicized “oh” moment of realisation of exactly What Has Happened. and you may experience a genuine physical reaction but please trust me when i say that it is entirely worth it.
time travel books can be complicated, especially when mixed with historical aspects. but i think i got the most of it? the power of intense yearning probably imparted me with extra brain cells. or maybe i did actually misread all the timelines because my vision was so blurry from all the fuckin tears!
anyway. *whispers softly but with feeling* i will never fucking emotionally recover from this
my heart has been obliterated but at what cost
___
*pre-read thoughts*
i would like for my heart to get eviscerated
i said “celine you’ve posted about the kingdoms Too Many times babe it’s time to shut up.”
but y’know what? today marks one whole year since i first read the kingdoms so i'm going to be fucking dramatic about it.
(before i get dramatic i want to highlight how my first reaction to this book was < “i’m ugly and poor” me too, kite, me too > because like. lmao mood.)
the question is: when am i /not/ thinking about this book. i think about it whenever i’m lying in bed at night, when i look at all the kingdoms art my best friends have made, whenever i hike to lighthouses just to feel alive. i constantly put on my kingdoms playlist and just. try not to evaporate from feelings.
there is just so much i could say about the kingdoms. little things like “hey did you know that there was a point where i almost gave this book 4 stars out of sheer spite because how dare natasha pulley hurt me like this”.
or other things like: i’d like to think i’ve etched this book into my bones. i’ve turned over every line and word, playing it over and over again. my copy is tabbed to hell and back. i could recognise this story anywhere, in any shape and form. i've hurt myself a thousand times in the process and then stitched it back together like a fragile cloak.
i think about how delicate this story is, how intimate every single scene is because it’s like a ghost, like sea mist. blink and you miss it. something that can’t last and may get ripped away anytime, like fading into nothingness.
i also think about how this book has chaos and tragedy and the senselessness of war, how much trauma we get put through and how fragile every existence is. and yet there is so much tenderness.
i think about how missouri kite is a walking open wound, how it feels to look at the love of your fucking life and be met by honest incomprehension. how they do this dance of finding and losing each other again and again. and ultimately, how hopeful it is that this terrible and insistent love rises out of it, against all odds.
(also sorry to everyone i gaslit while reading this but sorry not sorry)
___
hey siri play that voice recording of me wailing my lungs out at 1am
(written for my top 10 books of 2021 countdown on bookstagram where it's ranked at #3)
this year i discovered the voice of natasha pulley and oh goodness, what an enchanting voice to know. singing a siren song, spinning a rich golden tale, an undercurrent of tender magic wrapping around and pulling you under. where has this been all my life?
so: the kingdoms. it has my entire heart, this was an experience unlike any other - literally Changed Me. i truly wonder if i’ll ever experience a book like this ever again.
nothing draws me more to a book than one that can make me /feel/. pulley went above and beyond that, making me feel a symphony of emotion. she wrapped her hand around my heart and yanked.
amnesia storylines hurt, but this one felt like it was on a whole other level. groundbreaking honestly. the whole idea of feeling as though someone somewhere is calling for you, someone who knows you so intimately, almost touching their fingertips, and then it slips out of your grasp? B R U H.
the thing is, pulley doesn’t write romance per se: she writes books about love. at its core, everything that happens is because of the love that the characters have for each other. the whole idea of how home is a person, that soft but intense yearning. the epitome of fist fighting fate for a shot at reuniting with your person.
“i’ve missed you even when i didn't remember you” a line that haunts me daily. with every iteration of heartbreak, its countered by love. a love so strong that it defies the logic of space, time, and physics. of literally walking to the end of the earth and back to return home to someone. a magnetic pull between two people that literally changes the world, changes history.
or maybe the sands of time are too powerful and love will slip through your fingers each time you think you’ve finally grasped it? maybe you should read the kingdoms and find out :’)
“come home, if you remember.”
___
(initial review)
“he hadn’t imagined to, but all the way home, like an idiot, he’d been stitching a fragile cloak of half-imagined hope, barely with the substance of thule but there all the same. trying on hopes like what was no better than playing dress-up with her clothes.”
*gunshot noise*
wait, let me go back. its 1898. joe tournier steps off a train in london with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. the only clue is an old postcard of a lighthouse in his pocket saying “come home, if you remember”, signed by “M” (haha o fuck i am already tearing up while typing this). though his memory escapes him, he has flashes of a life he can’t remember and of a world that never existed.
till today, i haven’t fully processed this book. maybe i never will. i finished it, sobbed so hard my folks came in to check on me, took an avoidant nap, woke up, looked for fanart, cried some more, and then bought a copy for the favorites shelf. after that i drove across the country to a lighthouse to bring joe and M back home.
i literally. can’t stop thinking about it.
the kingdoms is soft gay magical realism at its finest. its woven with magic. magic that seeps through each word, wrapping around you. magic that wraps around elements of time travel and mysteries, guns and ships and sacrifice.
its about history. changing history - is love strong enough to rewrite history, is it stronger than the laws of space and time? can you defy history and change the world to stay with someone you love? or does history soldier on, pulling love apart?
there will come a moment where you, the reader, will experience your own italicized “oh” moment of realisation of exactly What Has Happened. and you may experience a genuine physical reaction but please trust me when i say that it is entirely worth it.
time travel books can be complicated, especially when mixed with historical aspects. but i think i got the most of it? the power of intense yearning probably imparted me with extra brain cells. or maybe i did actually misread all the timelines because my vision was so blurry from all the fuckin tears!
anyway. *whispers softly but with feeling* i will never fucking emotionally recover from this
my heart has been obliterated but at what cost
___
*pre-read thoughts*
i would like for my heart to get eviscerated
September 20, 2021
For the last couple of decades, many emerging authors have managed to make of me their follower. Capable authors in even the most niche genres getting or recycling ideas above their station or experience. Natasha Pulley is such an author.
Pulley is a writer who has a command of language and form. She is a full fledged narrator. The Kingdoms is a work that I feel, is one of the rare ones released this year that will be a classic. This is a historical mystery that has time travel in it. That's not a spoiler.
This book showcases the Napoleonic wars. Who said the French are bad at warfare? Not this book! You'll know when you read it. The characters though, are wonderfully shown. You get to realise more about them as the pages flip by. It feels like these are people of blood and bones. It feels that way to me. I like this book. Hope you read it.
Pulley is a writer who has a command of language and form. She is a full fledged narrator. The Kingdoms is a work that I feel, is one of the rare ones released this year that will be a classic. This is a historical mystery that has time travel in it. That's not a spoiler.
This book showcases the Napoleonic wars. Who said the French are bad at warfare? Not this book! You'll know when you read it. The characters though, are wonderfully shown. You get to realise more about them as the pages flip by. It feels like these are people of blood and bones. It feels that way to me. I like this book. Hope you read it.
December 17, 2023
I’m hooked on Natasha Pulley’s writing, and I want to read all her other books as soon as I can! Not want. NEED. The Kingdoms was the second one I read, and I am in awe. Again.
You’re my family. You were family before any of them. I’ve missed you even when I didn’t remember you.
Natasha Pulley is a master of throwing around little snippets while nothing seems to happen. The pacing of her books is rather slow, but with all these fragments, she builds up a tension and intensity that’s almost unbearable. Her writing held me in a stranglehold, and I didn’t even mind. I just kept my eyes glued to the pages and wanted to read on and on and on.
This historical time loop/travel story is mind-boggling. I wanted to piece all those snippets and timelines together so desperately that I had to stop racing myself through the book and put it away occasionally just to think. I remember this feeling while reading Shaun David Hutchinson’s A Complicated Love Story Set in Space. All those fragments from different times gave an insight into other POVs, too, Agatha’s and Madeline’s but mostly Missouri Kite’s—the officer in the Royal Navy, a multiple-layered man who I hated at times. I understood so well why Joe was furious at him. Those turtles and Fred! My heart broke. But I kept thinking of Laurent in Captive Prince and treasured Missouri’s kind and soft moments.
I had already put some pieces together, but when I got to the last two parts of the story, my heart started to melt and beat faster and faster at the same time. What a glorious ending! I have to restrain myself from reading another of Natasha's books right away, and I can't wait for her new book (sci-fi, the blurb reads like Winter’s Orbit) to come out in March 2024!
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You’re my family. You were family before any of them. I’ve missed you even when I didn’t remember you.
Natasha Pulley is a master of throwing around little snippets while nothing seems to happen. The pacing of her books is rather slow, but with all these fragments, she builds up a tension and intensity that’s almost unbearable. Her writing held me in a stranglehold, and I didn’t even mind. I just kept my eyes glued to the pages and wanted to read on and on and on.
This historical time loop/travel story is mind-boggling. I wanted to piece all those snippets and timelines together so desperately that I had to stop racing myself through the book and put it away occasionally just to think. I remember this feeling while reading Shaun David Hutchinson’s A Complicated Love Story Set in Space. All those fragments from different times gave an insight into other POVs, too, Agatha’s and Madeline’s but mostly Missouri Kite’s—the officer in the Royal Navy, a multiple-layered man who I hated at times. I understood so well why Joe was furious at him. Those turtles and Fred! My heart broke. But I kept thinking of Laurent in Captive Prince and treasured Missouri’s kind and soft moments.
I had already put some pieces together, but when I got to the last two parts of the story, my heart started to melt and beat faster and faster at the same time. What a glorious ending! I have to restrain myself from reading another of Natasha's books right away, and I can't wait for her new book (sci-fi, the blurb reads like Winter’s Orbit) to come out in March 2024!
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October 21, 2020
Frankly, what the HELL just happened?
Things this book is:
Things this book is:
• A history-based time travel adventure/romance, taking place in Great Britain around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Kind of slow. Much more heavy on the reflective, atmospheric and emotional side than the adventure one, though there is plenty of seafaring gore.
• Gay.
• Not super surprising. As soon as you get the first reluctant crumb of background about The Kingdom from Kite and the first flashback, you know the MC's previous identity and pretty much what's going on. Then it's just waiting half the book for him to catch up with everyone else.
• Leaving me WILDLY emotionally conflicted. Was the ending happy? Are we happy about this? Do we like both of the MCs? Like, I see it, but having some qualms about
• And then there's every other relationship that happened in the book, most of which are at least mildly disturbing in some way. Is this okay? Are we all okay with this? I'm going to need a memo written to explain the emotions I should be having, because I'm pretty sure the confusion and discomfort I have going on are not what the author intended.
June 30, 2021
What a book! Clever, poignant, beautifully written, fun, surprising, fantastically plotted and just so thoroughly amazing. Absolutely one of my favourites of the year. Natasha Pulley does it again.
Want to read
May 1, 2021My standard reaction when David Mitchell is mentioned as a comparison to a book: add to tbr ✅
Plus I loved Watchmaker of Filigree Street 🕰
Plus I loved Watchmaker of Filigree Street 🕰
June 13, 2023
I loved this one so much. I will post a review when I have recovered.
****
Even after a couple of weeks I still have a bit of a ‘book-hangover’ - but here goes
The story starts with Joe arriving at a train station in late Victorian London, except it is called Londres, everyone is speaking French and the fact that Joe is speaking English is treated with suspicion.
For those familiar with fantasy tropes it is immediately obvious we have an alternative history… but this is so much more.
Joe remembers his name but nothing else from before arriving at the station. He is helped by a kind man and taken to an asylum where the doctors explain he is suffering from a relatively common form of epilepsy which causes amnesia.
During his time in the asylum Joe has the opportunity to learn some basic facts about Londres and how he is expected to behave. After a few days a kindly French man answers the asylum’s advertisement and claims he is Joe’s master. Joe, like most English people in this French colony, is a slave.
After a while, having settled into the routine of his life Joe receives a postcard sent nearly 100 years previously. Somehow the picture is of Eilean Mor lighthouse, even though it has only been built a few years, and the message reads “Dearest Joe, come home if you remember me. M”.
Is M Madeline? A name that conjures a sense of déjà vu, a vague glimpse of his past surfacing from the depths of Joe’s lost memories.
Despite Joe’s reluctance to leave his infant daughter he decides he must go to Eilean Mor.
After Joe arrives at Eilean Mor the truth about what is happening is gradually revealed to the reader and Joe, although some of the people we encounter seem to know more than they are willing to say.
I was enthralled by this story, by the fact that the characters are loving but complicated, that the women are strong and have agency. The author does not make any attempt to conceal or trivialize the devastating effect of trauma and I was heart-broken by the choices the characters were forced to make.
The story drew me in so I wanted to read faster to find out what happened but also to read more slowly so it would never end.
And in the middle of this whirl pool of emotions is Missouri Kite a man who so conflicted and damaged by life, fragile but also brutal, caring but withdrawn. He is a difficult man to love but in the end I did.
This is a mystery, woven together with time-travel, a story of the violence of war and terrible decisions compelled by love and duty. But most of all it is about love.
I will be reading this again and have already ordered books from this author’s back catalogue.
Highly recommended.
I received this book from Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review
****
Even after a couple of weeks I still have a bit of a ‘book-hangover’ - but here goes
The story starts with Joe arriving at a train station in late Victorian London, except it is called Londres, everyone is speaking French and the fact that Joe is speaking English is treated with suspicion.
For those familiar with fantasy tropes it is immediately obvious we have an alternative history… but this is so much more.
Joe remembers his name but nothing else from before arriving at the station. He is helped by a kind man and taken to an asylum where the doctors explain he is suffering from a relatively common form of epilepsy which causes amnesia.
During his time in the asylum Joe has the opportunity to learn some basic facts about Londres and how he is expected to behave. After a few days a kindly French man answers the asylum’s advertisement and claims he is Joe’s master. Joe, like most English people in this French colony, is a slave.
After a while, having settled into the routine of his life Joe receives a postcard sent nearly 100 years previously. Somehow the picture is of Eilean Mor lighthouse, even though it has only been built a few years, and the message reads “Dearest Joe, come home if you remember me. M”.
Is M Madeline? A name that conjures a sense of déjà vu, a vague glimpse of his past surfacing from the depths of Joe’s lost memories.
Despite Joe’s reluctance to leave his infant daughter he decides he must go to Eilean Mor.
After Joe arrives at Eilean Mor the truth about what is happening is gradually revealed to the reader and Joe, although some of the people we encounter seem to know more than they are willing to say.
I was enthralled by this story, by the fact that the characters are loving but complicated, that the women are strong and have agency. The author does not make any attempt to conceal or trivialize the devastating effect of trauma and I was heart-broken by the choices the characters were forced to make.
The story drew me in so I wanted to read faster to find out what happened but also to read more slowly so it would never end.
And in the middle of this whirl pool of emotions is Missouri Kite a man who so conflicted and damaged by life, fragile but also brutal, caring but withdrawn. He is a difficult man to love but in the end I did.
This is a mystery, woven together with time-travel, a story of the violence of war and terrible decisions compelled by love and duty. But most of all it is about love.
I will be reading this again and have already ordered books from this author’s back catalogue.
Highly recommended.
I received this book from Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review
May 21, 2021
read our full reviews on reads rainbow
Rep: biracial (white, Chinese) gay mc with epilepsy, gay mc, Black side characters
CWs: implied conversion therapy & rape, violence, gore
March 4, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of
The Kingdoms.
The premise sounded intriguing so I was excited when my request was approved.
** Minor spoilers **
Sadly, it failed to capture my interest for a number of reasons:
1. The world building was good, but not enough exposition was given, the framework was loose and readers had to guess about the political and societal climate Joe woke up in.
2. The writing was good, but wordy, tedious, and many times the narrative dragged.
3. I didn't connect with any of the characters, maybe except for Agatha, but didn't sympathize or cared about anyone.
4. I'm not sure if this was due to the fact that I'm reading an ARC, but most of the sentences do not start with a capital letter.
I hope this isn't a stylistic choice meant to be artsy because it's not. It's distracting and irritating, like when a gnat keeps flitting around your head.
5. Worst of all, I found the themes of sailing, war, politics and sea battles immensely boring.
These topics have never been of interest to me.
All I wanted to read about was the time slip and it was barely about that and mostly about war and battle.
This was SOOO not for me, but I think readers who like a little political intrigue, war battles and sailing would enjoy this.
The premise sounded intriguing so I was excited when my request was approved.
** Minor spoilers **
Sadly, it failed to capture my interest for a number of reasons:
1. The world building was good, but not enough exposition was given, the framework was loose and readers had to guess about the political and societal climate Joe woke up in.
2. The writing was good, but wordy, tedious, and many times the narrative dragged.
3. I didn't connect with any of the characters, maybe except for Agatha, but didn't sympathize or cared about anyone.
4. I'm not sure if this was due to the fact that I'm reading an ARC, but most of the sentences do not start with a capital letter.
I hope this isn't a stylistic choice meant to be artsy because it's not. It's distracting and irritating, like when a gnat keeps flitting around your head.
5. Worst of all, I found the themes of sailing, war, politics and sea battles immensely boring.
These topics have never been of interest to me.
All I wanted to read about was the time slip and it was barely about that and mostly about war and battle.
This was SOOO not for me, but I think readers who like a little political intrigue, war battles and sailing would enjoy this.
February 17, 2025
it's a breath of fresh air for me to even think about this novel—i'm so unabashedly fond of it. i can't wait to reread this and giggle and kick my feet and highlight every single word from cover to cover !!!! what a lucky day that will be
August 11, 2021
I found this book nearly incomprehensible to fathom. It was interesting enough to get me through to the very end as I thought it might make sense by then, but no, no sense throughout.
It was creative, but time jumping between 1904, 1797, 1804 and more, I found it impossible to keep track. Alternate histories with France winning at Trafalger and Waterloo, or not.
Kudos for Ms Pully's imagination, nothing for having this reader able to follow what was going on.
Not my cup of tea at all, but I know some have enjoyed it greatly. Must be me.
It was creative, but time jumping between 1904, 1797, 1804 and more, I found it impossible to keep track. Alternate histories with France winning at Trafalger and Waterloo, or not.
Kudos for Ms Pully's imagination, nothing for having this reader able to follow what was going on.
Not my cup of tea at all, but I know some have enjoyed it greatly. Must be me.
January 18, 2022
Really strange time bending alt. history novel. I wanted it to be a little smarter overall, and I found myself getting a bit frustrated with the focus on the characters rather than any full engagement with the huge historical struggles. But there were some genuine emotional moments that got to me! And I was curious the whole time whether or not the book would turn into a "we have to set history right!" novel or a "I have to do what's right for ME" novel or a time heist novel or what. So it's fresh.
Read
October 28, 2021Damn, I loved this! Perfectly doled-out timey-wimey mysteriousness, identity-bending in the best bittersweet way, an incredible high-stakes slow burn m/m romance, and gorgeously detailed worldbuilding.
March 13, 2022
Reread March 2022: I will never know rest.
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"I've missed you even when I didn't remember you."
If you've been here for a hot minute, you probably know I adore Natasha Pulley's writing. She's carved a niche in the literary scene with her soft gay magical realist novels that are somehow exactly to my taste.
Now, I'm not going to lie, in the middle of this book I thought this just might not get 5 stars from me, because there was just so much hurt, and I didn't see how this could end in anything but devastation and heartache. But she did it! Natasha Pulley, you absolute genius!!!
It's definitely her most epic novel, the ideas are so complex, and the characters? Wow. Joe is a sweetheart, but I was so unsure about Kite - he was so rough and unpredictable in places, and I hated him for keeping things from Joe. But the last part, called Home... I cried the whole 40 pages, first from relief, then surprise, anger, shock, terror, worry, and then hope and absolute, infinite love. I was swept away. You know how Natasha Pulley's romances are usually so lowkey, and it was true for this, it was mostly pining, but then the last pages, when you realise what exactly happened, and what the characters did, just so they could see each other again... Magnifique.
Honestly, I'm the shell of a person at the moment, and all I want to do is to reread it. It's just so.... *clenches fist and wipes a tear* good.
Rep: half-Chinese mlm main character, half-Spanish mlm main character, side black characters
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I've missed you even when I didn't remember you."
If you've been here for a hot minute, you probably know I adore Natasha Pulley's writing. She's carved a niche in the literary scene with her soft gay magical realist novels that are somehow exactly to my taste.
Now, I'm not going to lie, in the middle of this book I thought this just might not get 5 stars from me, because there was just so much hurt, and I didn't see how this could end in anything but devastation and heartache. But she did it! Natasha Pulley, you absolute genius!!!
It's definitely her most epic novel, the ideas are so complex, and the characters? Wow. Joe is a sweetheart, but I was so unsure about Kite - he was so rough and unpredictable in places, and I hated him for keeping things from Joe. But the last part, called Home... I cried the whole 40 pages, first from relief, then surprise, anger, shock, terror, worry, and then hope and absolute, infinite love. I was swept away. You know how Natasha Pulley's romances are usually so lowkey, and it was true for this, it was mostly pining, but then the last pages, when you realise what exactly happened, and what the characters did, just so they could see each other again... Magnifique.
Honestly, I'm the shell of a person at the moment, and all I want to do is to reread it. It's just so.... *clenches fist and wipes a tear* good.
Rep: half-Chinese mlm main character, half-Spanish mlm main character, side black characters
January 19, 2022
I'm just supposed to distill all these gigantic emotions into some kind of review, huh?
I've very rarely met books that were written specifically for me--there are a handful, yes, and I will be very glad to have this book join their ranks.
This book is not for everyone. It's...complicated and horrible and aching, it's full of sharp edges and burn scars and murder, it's about history and love and what those two concepts do to people. It's about ships. And telegraphs. Lighthouses and time travel. Tortoises. Abuse and the decisions that lead to it. There are a lot of reasons why people will not like this book.
But, oh, oh, this book was written for me. Elegiac, liminal, fragile, aching. This book hurts but in such a good way. A spooling, non-linear narrative, that should be tangled and unparseable, but is instead clever and slowly unwinding until you understand the heart. Characters who are brittle and fragile as glass, complex and unthinkingly brave. Time travel with consequences, messy and completely probable alternate history, a slow-burn of a romance that is absolutely devastating and somehow perfect.
This book is not for everyone. But this book is for me. And I sincerely thank the author for giving it to me.
I've very rarely met books that were written specifically for me--there are a handful, yes, and I will be very glad to have this book join their ranks.
This book is not for everyone. It's...complicated and horrible and aching, it's full of sharp edges and burn scars and murder, it's about history and love and what those two concepts do to people. It's about ships. And telegraphs. Lighthouses and time travel. Tortoises. Abuse and the decisions that lead to it. There are a lot of reasons why people will not like this book.
But, oh, oh, this book was written for me. Elegiac, liminal, fragile, aching. This book hurts but in such a good way. A spooling, non-linear narrative, that should be tangled and unparseable, but is instead clever and slowly unwinding until you understand the heart. Characters who are brittle and fragile as glass, complex and unthinkingly brave. Time travel with consequences, messy and completely probable alternate history, a slow-burn of a romance that is absolutely devastating and somehow perfect.
This book is not for everyone. But this book is for me. And I sincerely thank the author for giving it to me.
May 12, 2021
thank you to netgalley & the publishers for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review
2.5 stars
The Kingdoms started out strong but as each of the six sections passed the story became less and less engaging. Characters who I was intrigued by started to become boring if not straight up annoying to read about. There was real emotional weight to begin with but by the end, these huge moments had little to no introspection I think Pulley is a very talented writer and has a way with words, though this book wasn't for me. The central mystery is no mystery at all, and intriguing set ups get anticlimactic conclusions. The ending fell so flat to me as I had long since ceased caring about the characters and its hard to root for a romance when you don't like half the pairing .
2.5 stars
The Kingdoms started out strong but as each of the six sections passed the story became less and less engaging. Characters who I was intrigued by started to become boring if not straight up annoying to read about. There was real emotional weight to begin with but by the end, these huge moments had little to no introspection I think Pulley is a very talented writer and has a way with words, though this book wasn't for me. The central mystery is no mystery at all, and intriguing set ups get anticlimactic conclusions. The ending fell so flat to me as I had long since ceased caring about the characters and its hard to root for a romance when you don't like half the pairing .
August 27, 2021
Alternative history with time slip, sounds good, should be my kind of fantasy yet I found it painfully slow and really found it a struggle to get to the end. The world building is strong and detailed, the descriptions really make the settings believable. I won’t try to describe the plot, it’s convoluted! There’s lots of great imagery and ideas throughout.
July 30, 2021
I don't think The Kingdoms is a very good book. By the 70% mark I was hate-reading to the finish.
But even though it was pretty bad, it wasn't like some of the clunkers I've read this year. I pushed through a bad 400 page book because the author clearly knows how to write. It was like watching Ready Player One, a bad movie with a good director. Sometimes the material you got aint salvageable.
Things I liked:
the first 20% or so is very interesting, if still shot through with some of the problems I'm going to go into more detail on below. The crumb trail of the mystery is satisfying and the prose is good and isn't getting sabotaged by extraneous POV changes.
Things I didn't like:
The romance that the book hinges on is poorly shown to the people reading the damn book and the whole back half of the book hinges on this stupid relationship. Kite is an unlikeable psychopath who never ever sees much consequence for his actions and Joe, our hero, is boring as hell. I think the author genuinely did not know how to write him at times or forgot what his personality was supposed to be. Unless you're absolutely thirsting for these dudes (and even that is pretty disappointing, no real action minus some discrete smooches), there is nothing here that could sustain a chapter much less a whole book.
In the end, I almost feel tricked by how the prose lured me in. The unique flavor to this particular romance story is an alt-history of an England that loses in the Napoleonic Wars and is taken over by the French. I hoped this would add some interesting flavor and a backdrop for sci fi shenanigans, but with the romance and mystery at the core of course. It really was more like a Harry Turtledove book with a slightly better editor.
And that might even be unfair to Mr. Turtledove. He wrote Byzantine magic sagas but made his money with tomes of schlocky alt-history; hitler and stalin teaming up to fight aliens, the confederacy joining the allies to fight the north in a different ww1, with names and faces we recognize (Col Custer! JFK!) inexplicably still popping in to make an appearance.
The Kingdoms, while not as schlocky, is probably more insulting. The French Republic victorious is something out of Tory press tabloids. Slavery is widespread (there are plantations in Cornwall??), as are implied genocides of culture and men. France is evil evil evil. The author tries to slip in a few commentaries on fat nobles, like Lord Lawrence, but there's never any really doubt that any sacrifice is worth it to save merry old England. No idea how stopping one siege of one city in Scotland led to England's liberation but whatever, that's far from my biggest problem with the books ending.
So, a good alternate history doesn't necessarily need to be something historically accurate. I think the Man in the High Castle is a great alternate history, not because that's how it would have actually played out if the US had lost WW2, but because it gave Dick a chance to explore America's national culture through unique lenses. The Kingdoms, by contrast, is far more audaciously historically illiterate, asks nothing interesting and says even less. She wants the sympathy of a Britain turned into a colony, but then celebrates imperialism with a big multicultural shindig to celebrate the heroes big time victory. It's just nationalist drivel.
All so that you can spend half the book on a stupid boat!
But really the creme de la crem is the ending. The whole book we are told Joe will have to make a choice. That's really the crux of the whole point of the timeline stuff. The whole reason it adds something intriguing to this romance. Joe in Fixed England timeline is happy, he's single but he has a loving extended family and two nieces/nephews he's very attached to like his own children. But Kite, the lover he had forgotten, returns. Wow this could really be quite the choice to make! Nah, turns out they took a brisk walk and it changed the timeline enough to kill off that pesky family so now the children are under his guardianship. He promptly takes them back in time, so he can have Kite AND his niece/nephew to himself.
This is after the book doesn't let Joe have a choice in the Evil Baguette timeline either. Even though Kite loves him, supposedly, saving stupid old England is so important that he prevents him on pain of violence from returning to his daughter in Evil London. There's no weighing of priorities, Joe is not able to leave until well after he's fucked up the butterfly effect enough to cause his daughter to disappear. Any chance for the characters to meditate on their romance, the fulcrum of the whole damn book, is wasted.
It's all a huge mess really.
But even though it was pretty bad, it wasn't like some of the clunkers I've read this year. I pushed through a bad 400 page book because the author clearly knows how to write. It was like watching Ready Player One, a bad movie with a good director. Sometimes the material you got aint salvageable.
Things I liked:
the first 20% or so is very interesting, if still shot through with some of the problems I'm going to go into more detail on below. The crumb trail of the mystery is satisfying and the prose is good and isn't getting sabotaged by extraneous POV changes.
Things I didn't like:
The romance that the book hinges on is poorly shown to the people reading the damn book and the whole back half of the book hinges on this stupid relationship. Kite is an unlikeable psychopath who never ever sees much consequence for his actions and Joe, our hero, is boring as hell. I think the author genuinely did not know how to write him at times or forgot what his personality was supposed to be. Unless you're absolutely thirsting for these dudes (and even that is pretty disappointing, no real action minus some discrete smooches), there is nothing here that could sustain a chapter much less a whole book.
In the end, I almost feel tricked by how the prose lured me in. The unique flavor to this particular romance story is an alt-history of an England that loses in the Napoleonic Wars and is taken over by the French. I hoped this would add some interesting flavor and a backdrop for sci fi shenanigans, but with the romance and mystery at the core of course. It really was more like a Harry Turtledove book with a slightly better editor.
And that might even be unfair to Mr. Turtledove. He wrote Byzantine magic sagas but made his money with tomes of schlocky alt-history; hitler and stalin teaming up to fight aliens, the confederacy joining the allies to fight the north in a different ww1, with names and faces we recognize (Col Custer! JFK!) inexplicably still popping in to make an appearance.
The Kingdoms, while not as schlocky, is probably more insulting. The French Republic victorious is something out of Tory press tabloids. Slavery is widespread (there are plantations in Cornwall??), as are implied genocides of culture and men. France is evil evil evil. The author tries to slip in a few commentaries on fat nobles, like Lord Lawrence, but there's never any really doubt that any sacrifice is worth it to save merry old England. No idea how stopping one siege of one city in Scotland led to England's liberation but whatever, that's far from my biggest problem with the books ending.
So, a good alternate history doesn't necessarily need to be something historically accurate. I think the Man in the High Castle is a great alternate history, not because that's how it would have actually played out if the US had lost WW2, but because it gave Dick a chance to explore America's national culture through unique lenses. The Kingdoms, by contrast, is far more audaciously historically illiterate, asks nothing interesting and says even less. She wants the sympathy of a Britain turned into a colony, but then celebrates imperialism with a big multicultural shindig to celebrate the heroes big time victory. It's just nationalist drivel.
All so that you can spend half the book on a stupid boat!
But really the creme de la crem is the ending. The whole book we are told Joe will have to make a choice. That's really the crux of the whole point of the timeline stuff. The whole reason it adds something intriguing to this romance. Joe in Fixed England timeline is happy, he's single but he has a loving extended family and two nieces/nephews he's very attached to like his own children. But Kite, the lover he had forgotten, returns. Wow this could really be quite the choice to make! Nah, turns out they took a brisk walk and it changed the timeline enough to kill off that pesky family so now the children are under his guardianship. He promptly takes them back in time, so he can have Kite AND his niece/nephew to himself.
This is after the book doesn't let Joe have a choice in the Evil Baguette timeline either. Even though Kite loves him, supposedly, saving stupid old England is so important that he prevents him on pain of violence from returning to his daughter in Evil London. There's no weighing of priorities, Joe is not able to leave until well after he's fucked up the butterfly effect enough to cause his daughter to disappear. Any chance for the characters to meditate on their romance, the fulcrum of the whole damn book, is wasted.
It's all a huge mess really.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 23, 2022
Twisty gripping time travel and alternate history story with a yearning love story and a big mystery underneath. It is fantastic. It is also fantastically flawed (in my opinion).
I was not planning to read this originally and it did not sound like something I wanted to read (Incidentally I think this deserved a cover with a lot more personality, and also a different blurb, because I had quite the wrong idea about it and it is more appealing, more romantic and emotional and less dry than I expected.). But two friends loved it, I decided to check it out and it was so gripping I read it in a couple of days. It is a fantastic story but it is also, in my opinion, a fantastically flawed story though you only see that in retrospect, when one gets to the end, "gets" it, and then starts thinking back to the plot. This "review" of mine will be a mess and likely suffer some edits in the future because I am so conflicted about it and I am still trying to process it.
One problem of time travel paradox stories, particularly with a big mystery is something might have an undisclosed reason, be a clue, be an effect of something (the seeming anachronisms, hey, all can be explained by well it is an alternate universe, which it is. I think the "departure" universe is not meant to be ours, is not consistent though the author could have made that a lot clearer). And you finish the book, you get an emotional high from mystery solved, love revealed and all that, but if you are a nitpicker, the plot and character motivations can be unraveled into unlikely or insufficient very easily. I am almost afraid to list what I thought were plot/motivation holes, in case putting it down means thinking more about it some more (well, yeah) and destroys my enjoyment a bit more (but I will because otherwise I will forget it, and writing it out, well maybe somebody else reads it and can explain it or put it in context). And it was very very enjoyable, sweeping, romantic, it was just a bit superficial in plot and above all motivations and well tending to melodramatic. I still loved it and no regrets about reading it, I am looking for her other books.
Random observation, this is full of "rep": non-white people , women with agency and doing military things 200 years ago. It is fun, great, but if you think a bit about it it can feel a bit like wallpaper: the universes can be a bit inconsistent (more about it on the spoilers) and the women like tokens almost. There are 3 very strong women in this story (slight ), two of which get some representation of their PoV, one is basically wallpaper (but awesome wallpaper) and I keep thinking they all deserved a bit more, rather than feeling they are just there are foils for the males in the love story.
The writing is also a bit weird, particularly the dialogue, which sometimes feel a bit 21st century. Some descriptions, narratives are very good though, and the pace, the dripping of tantalizing details is very good.
Lots and lots of spoilers next, and plot ramblings, likely all very messy and some very shallow observations
I was not planning to read this originally and it did not sound like something I wanted to read (Incidentally I think this deserved a cover with a lot more personality, and also a different blurb, because I had quite the wrong idea about it and it is more appealing, more romantic and emotional and less dry than I expected.). But two friends loved it, I decided to check it out and it was so gripping I read it in a couple of days. It is a fantastic story but it is also, in my opinion, a fantastically flawed story though you only see that in retrospect, when one gets to the end, "gets" it, and then starts thinking back to the plot. This "review" of mine will be a mess and likely suffer some edits in the future because I am so conflicted about it and I am still trying to process it.
One problem of time travel paradox stories, particularly with a big mystery is something might have an undisclosed reason, be a clue, be an effect of something (the seeming anachronisms, hey, all can be explained by well it is an alternate universe, which it is. I think the "departure" universe is not meant to be ours, is not consistent though the author could have made that a lot clearer). And you finish the book, you get an emotional high from mystery solved, love revealed and all that, but if you are a nitpicker, the plot and character motivations can be unraveled into unlikely or insufficient very easily. I am almost afraid to list what I thought were plot/motivation holes, in case putting it down means thinking more about it some more (well, yeah) and destroys my enjoyment a bit more (but I will because otherwise I will forget it, and writing it out, well maybe somebody else reads it and can explain it or put it in context). And it was very very enjoyable, sweeping, romantic, it was just a bit superficial in plot and above all motivations and well tending to melodramatic. I still loved it and no regrets about reading it, I am looking for her other books.
Random observation, this is full of "rep": non-white people , women with agency and doing military things 200 years ago. It is fun, great, but if you think a bit about it it can feel a bit like wallpaper: the universes can be a bit inconsistent (more about it on the spoilers) and the women like tokens almost. There are 3 very strong women in this story (slight ), two of which get some representation of their PoV, one is basically wallpaper (but awesome wallpaper) and I keep thinking they all deserved a bit more, rather than feeling they are just there are foils for the males in the love story.
The writing is also a bit weird, particularly the dialogue, which sometimes feel a bit 21st century. Some descriptions, narratives are very good though, and the pace, the dripping of tantalizing details is very good.
Lots and lots of spoilers next, and plot ramblings, likely all very messy and some very shallow observations
December 20, 2021
DNF 45% - I simply can't get past the tastelessness of making "what if there was an alternate history where England is the oppressed and enslaved one" the main premise. Making the biggest colonial empire into a victim was...certainly A Choice. The time travel was interesting, but the characters weren't that good, and the whole "let's make England great again" angle...no thanks.
Content warnings: there's a scene very early on where the protagonist's apparently-wife essentially rapes him when he keeps refusing sex
Content warnings: there's a scene very early on where the protagonist's apparently-wife essentially rapes him when he keeps refusing sex
February 5, 2022
Sometimes rating a book is purely emotional. This is one of those times. At the back of my mind there's a cold voice hissing that Missouri Kite is a terrible human being , that I'm still unsure if I was meant to unveil the mystery of who Joe was so quickly (I'm pretty sure I was, though) and that I should correct my rating accordingly.
That cold voice can shut the fuck up, though. The Kingdoms smashed my defenses on page one—it thoroughly ruined my ability to balance pros and cons and count points to relay a semblance of "objectivity" that would be nothing more than a lie. Years after starting reviewing, I still have to convince myself that it's okay, really. I'm allowed to forget my own rules if I damn please.
What I know is : atmospheric books so quietly heartbreaking and full of yearning will always find a path to my heart. The Kingdoms is no different. This is alternative history with a time-travel twist, but really this is a character-driven story about longing and love. I adored everything about it.
I rooted for these characters, flaws and all - I just love them SO MUCH (kite included, sorry, can't help it 🥺 he's so sad and lonely 😭 HE DESERVES LOVE OKAY). As soon as I finished the last page, I began obsessively rereading the beginning, and this, more than anything, tells me that I can't give it less than 5 stars.
That cold voice can shut the fuck up, though. The Kingdoms smashed my defenses on page one—it thoroughly ruined my ability to balance pros and cons and count points to relay a semblance of "objectivity" that would be nothing more than a lie. Years after starting reviewing, I still have to convince myself that it's okay, really. I'm allowed to forget my own rules if I damn please.
What I know is : atmospheric books so quietly heartbreaking and full of yearning will always find a path to my heart. The Kingdoms is no different. This is alternative history with a time-travel twist, but really this is a character-driven story about longing and love. I adored everything about it.
I rooted for these characters, flaws and all - I just love them SO MUCH (kite included, sorry, can't help it 🥺 he's so sad and lonely 😭 HE DESERVES LOVE OKAY). As soon as I finished the last page, I began obsessively rereading the beginning, and this, more than anything, tells me that I can't give it less than 5 stars.
April 11, 2022
Started out well but by the quarter mark became just too long, too messy, too boring.
Long can be fine. Messy, probably not, but you never know. Boring is never good. Combine all three of those and you have a very un-fun reading experience on your hands.
I kept thinking, "well, it's probably just this part that's boring, I'm sure it's going to get much better soon."
"Or by the halfway point."
"Or surely by the end."
"Or never."
"Oh, well."
Plot: hangs on the thread of a single conversation that one character refuses to have. I still don't know why. "Joe would like to know who he really is." "Great, let's spend around 350 pages not telling him and call it a book."
Characters: weirdly uninteresting, and often unbelievable. Main character: possibly suffering effects similar to those of lobotomy due to too many time jumps.
Me: possibly suffering effects similar to those of lobotomy due to too many time jumps. Please help me by blinking twice if I am still in the year 2022.
Long can be fine. Messy, probably not, but you never know. Boring is never good. Combine all three of those and you have a very un-fun reading experience on your hands.
I kept thinking, "well, it's probably just this part that's boring, I'm sure it's going to get much better soon."
"Or by the halfway point."
"Or surely by the end."
"Or never."
"Oh, well."
Plot: hangs on the thread of a single conversation that one character refuses to have. I still don't know why. "Joe would like to know who he really is." "Great, let's spend around 350 pages not telling him and call it a book."
Characters: weirdly uninteresting, and often unbelievable. Main character: possibly suffering effects similar to those of lobotomy due to too many time jumps.
Me: possibly suffering effects similar to those of lobotomy due to too many time jumps. Please help me by blinking twice if I am still in the year 2022.
March 20, 2022
This was really good.
I found myself caught up in the mystery of Joe, this man found coming off of a train in a London now ruled by France. Joe has no memory of his past but he tries his best to continue on with his life.
When he receives a letter with a mysterious message, he puts himself in a position to go to the location in the letter.
When Joe arrives at the lighthouse he begins a wonderful journey into the past with the hopes of changing the future.
This was beautifully written, just when I thought I knew what was going on there was a new element. I loved how it came full circle at the end, my only disappointment was not enough romance between Joe and Kite.
I found myself caught up in the mystery of Joe, this man found coming off of a train in a London now ruled by France. Joe has no memory of his past but he tries his best to continue on with his life.
When he receives a letter with a mysterious message, he puts himself in a position to go to the location in the letter.
When Joe arrives at the lighthouse he begins a wonderful journey into the past with the hopes of changing the future.
This was beautifully written, just when I thought I knew what was going on there was a new element. I loved how it came full circle at the end, my only disappointment was not enough romance between Joe and Kite.
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