We needed abut half a second to decide we want to request an early copy of this book, once they became available. We’ve read everything else that Natasha Pulley has written, so we thought we know what to expect. And yet, The Kingdoms just stunned us. It’s a masterpiece.
There’s a mix at the end of this post, and I highly recommend you listen to it while reading the book. It somehow makes it more painful. And after, make sure to follow Natasha on twitter.
(Also for those of you who are already fans of Pulley’s work, can I point you in the direction of a bot I made that tweets quotes from her books every two hours?)
For fans of The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and David Mitchell, a genre bending, 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.
From bestselling author Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms is an epic, wildly original novel that bends genre as easily as it twists time.
The Kingdoms
Natasha Pulley
Rep: gay mc with epilepsy, gay li
CWs: implied conversion therapy & rape, violence, gore
Release: 25th May 2021
Charlotte’s Review
You know those books that you finish and immediately want to read again? That, for me, was The Kingdoms. And, yes, I did go back and reread it a day later. And, no, I still don’t know how I’m supposed to review this book.
I’m almost certain I said, after reading The Lost Future of Pepperharrow in February, that that was my favourite Natasha Pulley book. I’m fairly certain I said similar after finishing The Bedlam Stacks previously. So, this statement may not stand the test of time but I’ll say it anyway: The Kingdoms is my favourite Natasha Pulley book.
I definitely believe that it’s her best book yet, at least. It has an added punch to it that the others did not, as much as I did still love them. In part, I think that was the setting. In part, it was a lot more visceral and raw than previous books. Those had a gentleness to them that, while it wasn’t lacking here, it was less prevalent. I don’t know if I’m phrasing this in at all an understandable way — I just have a lot of feelings about this book and not many words.
Where Pulley’s other books are somewhat fabulist, this is solidly more on the science fiction end of things, involving time travel, changing the course of history, and other such things. We follow Joe, a man who, at the start of the book, has had a sudden onset of amnesia, who doesn’t know anything beyond his name and the moment he is currently living in. Then he receives a postcard that has been held for him for over 90 years, showing a picture of a lighthouse up in the Outer Hebrides. When, a few years later, the opportunity arises for him to travel to that lighthouse, he does so. Which is when strange things start to happen.
I think one of my favourite things about this book is the slow unspooling of the plot, which is typical of Pulley’s books, but works all the better here. Joe doesn’t know who he is, although Kite and Agatha seem to, so you don’t know who he is (although you have your suspicions. Actually one of the best things about rereading it was seeing the clues to the reveal all laid out, once you knew where to look). And when you get to the reveal, you think back and you think oh and it makes total sense (and also becomes about a thousand times more painful).
And, as ever, it’s a very character-driven novel. Possibly the balance is a little shifted, so that there is more plot driving it too, but it’s still very much focused on the characters. It definitely then helps that I loved the characters (okay, well, loved the characters I was supposed to love, because you aren’t catching me feeling the slightest bit positive about Lord Lawrence any time soon!), most notably Joe and Kite. I think it definitely helps though, with the latter, that you do get chapters in his POV. At times, on the first read, before I knew everything, he frustrated me, but those chapters helped (and the reveal… going back and re-evaluating it all).
I think, then, overall this is a book that, if you already loved Natasha Pulley, you will love this one. If this is your first introduction to Natasha Pulley, I think it’s an excellent one to start with.
Anna’s Review
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.
So, have we convinced you that you want to read this book?
