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? 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. The plot, however, is straightforward enough (by time-travel standards, at least). We start the book following the journey of Joe Tournier, a 43-year-old man who has lost his memory and lives in an alternative version of 1898 England where France won the Napoleonic War. Lots and lots of spoilers next, and plot ramblings, likely all very messy and some very shallow observations My big problem with the novel, however, is the writing. There are too many sentences that are grammatically incomprehensible, leaving the reader scratching his head. Add to that the author's tendency to linger on internal monologues that make no sense, and the narrative becomes, at times, a slog.

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. 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. 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. Times, Los Angeles (10 July 2015). " 'Watchmaker of Filigree Street' is a magical tale of Victorian London". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2 September 2016. Kind of slow. Much more heavy on the reflective, atmospheric and emotional side than the adventure one, though there is plenty of seafaring gore.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.

At first I thought that the characters didn’t have too much personality, and I thought they were unrealistic, that I couldn’t get attached to them at all… But as the story progresses they develop perfectly, this book has one of the most beautiful and well written relationships that I’ve ever read so far. It doesn't feel mechanical or fake, I don't know how to describe it well but it's like: 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. 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. While many authors who focus on the mechanics of time travel and paradoxes have a tendency to simplify cause and effect, Pulley drills down into the possibilities, creating a world in which the present (whenever it is) is simply what it is, without knowledge of the specific decisions that caused it to differ from other potential presents. Furthermore, as long as there is the potential for time travel, no present can be truly considered set. Living in the late nineteenth century, Tournier could find himself married to his brother's widow one moment and the next he, his brother, and his brother's wife could be having dinner, never suspecting or remembering that there was a timeline in which Tournier's brother had died. The "throwing things" makes sense in context, and to some extent the flapping does, but "giant depressed fairy"????)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. The second book of this series is called ‘The Lost Future of Pepperharrow’. It was also released by the Bloomsbury publication in 2020. This novel takes place in 1888, five years after the events in the first novel unfolded. At the start, it is mentioned that the unassuming translator, Thaniel Steepleton, and the watchmaker having the ability to remember the future, Keita Mori, are taking a journey to Japan. Steepleton has received a posting to Tokyo-based British legation, while Keita has some business of his own in Yokohoma. As Thaniel Steepleton arrives at the legation, he is informed that several staff members have been witnessing ghosts. So, he sets himself on the task of finding out what is really happening there. But, while he stays with Keita Mori, Thaniel himself begins to see ghostly happenings. Keita Mori appears to be frightened upon learning about the ghostly happenings, but he does not share the reason behind it. Cliss, Sarah. "Natasha holds author's event at Ely and meets up with some familiar faces" . Retrieved 2 September 2016. 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 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.

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. 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). 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. Shortly after arriving, Joe receives a visit from a mysterious man he pulls from the water on a stormy night. He leaves Joe with a warning to leave the lighthouse and never return but the two soon meet again: this time in the year 1807 after he’s kidnapped by the crew onboard a ship looking for an electrical engineer to help them win a war and change the outcome of a future Joe had been taken from. 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.And so Joe’s quest to find answers for questions he can hardly form begins, taking him from the attic room he shares with his precious daughter and a wife he does not love to the seemingly haunted lighthouse on the Outer Hebrides. Let's lay down some parameters here. Yes, this is fantasy, where anything is possible in theory. Yes, this is an alternative history where anything might have happened. But it's essential to any fantasy that it follows its own rules - so if you set up a story in which ships and naval warfare of the 18th and 19th century are a major part, then those ships and that warfare has to be consistent with the world you are creating. 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. 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.)