This review will go live at the link below on 7 June:

Hi and welcome to my review of The Kingdoms!

Genre bending and time twisting, you say? Sign me up, I say! Such enthusiasm can backfire, I’ve been there, you’ve probably been there too, so I’m sure you’ll want to know: did I actually get what it said on the box? I am happy to say that I did! To me The Kingdoms felt like Outlander meets Dark Matter in a mind-boggling speculative historical fiction novel.

When we first meet Joe, he’s in his early forties and stepping off a train in London, or more accurately: Londres, as The Kingdoms offers an alternative history in which England is a colony of France. The Thames is the Tamise, people read Le Monde, and French is the official language. Weirded out yet? I certainly was! But also very intrigued! Not only by the setting, but also by this protagonist who suffers from amnesia and feels as alien in this Londres as I did.

A few months later and still not remembering anything from before he stepped off that train, Joe receives an envelope addressed to him and held at the sorting office since 1805, for 93 years that is. Inside there’s a postcard with a photo of a lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides and a note: Come home, if you remember. M. Is this M the Madeline Joe vaguely remembers? But how can she be when the letter was sent 93 years ago? And why does he feel like he knows that lighthouse? Curiouser and curiouser.

We stay with Joe as he follows the clues that lead him to the Outer Hebrides and the lighthouse that’s been haunting him. I loved that some of the mystery is cleared up right there and then, but I still had lots of questions that remained unanswered for quite some time while The Kingdoms tapered off into various timelines to explore some of the other characters’ history, as well as Joe’s present. I do love historical fiction, against all odds and all my expectations it’s become a favourite genre, but I have to admit I grew a tad impatient because I wanted Joe to find out more about the things he couldn’t remember, and I wanted to know about M. Although there’s plenty of action, I felt that all of that could perhaps have been a bit more concise, as I felt my attention waver from time to time. (I’m sure that’s all me, though, if there’s such a thing as a patience gene, they must have forgotten to put that in.)

However, when I reached the end and the story came together, I fully grasped why the author did what she did and I had to admit she’d made all the right choices, as the finale wouldn’t have had such an impact on me if it hadn’t been for all that came before. (Sorry not sorry, I’d rather be vague than spoil things for you.)

The Kingdoms definitely needs your full attention. It’s been compared to Evelyn Hardcastle and I feel that’s the most important trait these two books have in common: they are so intricate that they are quite mind-boggling and you need to read them attentively cos once you lose your way, I don’t think you can ever find it again.

The Kingdoms takes a bit of effort and concentration but it’s well worth it. If you enjoy historical fiction laced with fantasy and you like putting those little grey cells to work, then The Kingdoms is one you need to check out. And remember: there’s no place like home, but home isn’t always where, when and with whom you might think it is.

The Kingdoms is out now in all digitals formats, hardback and audio.

Huge thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for sending me a copy of the book in exchange for a review.

This book was absolutely phenomenal. The world building, the characters, the plot; all were so expertly done!

I loved this book and will be buying a copy immediately!

Natasha Pulley’s latest novel is a historical fantasy adventure into the fragility of history when time travel is involved. She takes us on a wild ride from what should be Victorian London to a ship in the midst of the Napoleonic wars and back again. We follow Joe Tournier who believes he’s suffering from epilepsy that causes amnesia, only to receive a postcard that’s been held for him for nearly a century. The postcard says ‘Come home, if you remember’, and Joe finds himself seeking out the sender of the message and the memories he has lost.

The most interesting thread of this story for me was the way history changed because of interferences in the past as a result of time travel. We go from the history we know - Napoleon’s forces losing - to Britain being invaded and turned into a colony of France. Pulley captures well that sense of time shifting and things changing around us as a result of something that changed decades before. I also think the sense of disorientation she creates through Joe is realistic, and transfers well to the reader’s experience of the story.

We spend a lot of time in Joe’s head in this story. That does really helps with the disorientation we feel with and through him, but it also makes it a little jarring in the periods when we dip into what’s happening in other characters’ heads. These moments are usually to fill in back story that we can’t get from Joe’s perspective (because Pulley needs to keep the mystery about who he is), but I felt quite distanced from these other characters. I never felt I really got to know them in the story, which really hindered my engagement with their relationships with Joe.

There’s a particular relationship we’re supposed to root for, but I felt distanced from it because I couldn’t really get a handle on the other person involved. Perhaps that’s because Pulley was creating confusion around that character through Joe, but I didn’t feel that that was ever really set right, so I wasn’t as invested in this relationship as I was supposed to be.

I also felt there were other character perspectives that didn’t really need to be there, and one particular moment where a character’s decision to do something seemed unnecessary because the plot took a different turn.

There was also some contradictory behaviour from Joe. While there was a plot reason for that, that all felt a bit messy to me. I think there was a little too much disorientation going on, and perhaps some things needed paring back a bit.

Lastly, while the time travel aspect was interesting, I didn’t feel the method, or the reason the method was there, was fully realised. I wanted more detail, more grounding, on how the time travel was able to happen at all.

All in all, I was interested in the mystery of Joe’s missing memory, and there was some interesting history woven into the story, but I felt there were some issues with characterisation, contradiction, and character relationships that made this less enjoyable for me than I hoped.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley is an exciting, engaging, sometimes confusing time-bending book, filled with adventure, suspense and naval battles.

We follow Joe Tournier in 1898 as he arrives in London on a train from Glasgow. Joe is confused because everything is both familiar and wrong. He can't remember anything about his life prior to that point and everyone (including himself) is speaking French. The rest of the book explores the reasons for Joe's amnesia and helps him find out and connect with the people who are important to him.

A weird and compelling book, thoroughly recommended.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

This is a wonderful time-bending tale that twists the historical events around the Napoleonic War. The story is incredibly twisty and engrossing and is an extremely original take on the time-travel genre. A fantastic adventure with unforgettable characters. I absolutely loved it!

Have you ever read a book, enjoyed it, but had little to no idea what was actually happening? That's how I feel about The Kingdoms. I loved the characters, the authors writing style and the general mystery, but came out of it at the end wondering what exactly it was I had just read. I'm going to apologise now because this review might end up a little all over the place with me trying to explain my feelings without giving away major spoilers.

The Kingdoms follows Joe Tournier after he 'wakes up' in London with no real knowledge of who he is, how he got there and where exactly there is. He is quickly picked up by his Master who informs Joe he is a slave, has been since he was a child. Joe has no recollection of this, nor of the wife that the Master insists he has. According to the doctors Joe is suffering from a kind of paramnesia that is selectively affecting people around the country. Then one day a postcard appears with a picture of a lighthouse signed M. The arrival of the postcard sets into motion a chain of events that will see Joe travel the length of the country, and even to a different Britain, one before the French invaded where a mysterious British ship and it's crew were captured for information. Joe has the potential to change the world, if he can just remember.

The Kingdoms is a heavily character driven story of which Joe is at the forefront. He never really feel like he fits into his life in French occupied London, he doesn't have memories of his wife, let alone feelings, but the one thing he does remember is a blurry visage of a man on a beach, and a vision of an England that speaks English instead of French. You can't help but feel for Joe throughout the story, especially when he finds people who seem to know the truth of him but are unwilling to give up the knowledge. His story is one of love as well as immeasurable loss, and I wont lie in saying it had me in an overly emotional state.

We're also introduced to a wide cast of side characters from Joe's supposed wife to Kite, the Captain of the boat Joe finds himself on, but they're all incredibly hard to talk about without giving away spoilers for the plot. Suffice to say they all have a major part to play in the telling of Joe's story, as well as the furthering of the plot. Were never quite sure who we can trust, especially given Joe is the King of unreliable narrators, but we know that some of them know more about Joe's story than they are letting on, even if we aren't sure of the reasons.

Not only told from different perspectives, but different time periods and even different historical timelines, which got a little confusing at first. I buddy read this with Susan and it took her sending me multiple clips from Avengers movies before I got my head round certain aspects of the story and timelines. You should definitely pay attention to the chapter headers, as these mention the time period the chapter is from which definitely helped me. But even within that we have overlapping timelines, history literally being changed before our eyes, and though I managed to get my head round a lot of the changes, it was the ending that really threw me for a loop and left me with a lot of unanswered questions.

Now, I'm normally a fan of open ended books, but this was a little too open ended for my liking. I felt like the main mystery of the book just never got explained, and I really struggled to understand the last few chapters and how they fit into the previous 'ripple effect' style timeline changes. I will admit that this might be a me issue and not the book, there seem to be a lot of people who loved this story, ending and all. I just would have loved an explanation for Joe's paramnesia, as well as a better understanding of who exactly it was happening too and why.

Pulley definitely pulls no punches with her storytelling. I went through a rigmarole of emotions whilst reading The Kingdoms, and there were definitely a few moments that had me shouting WTF. Her characters are incredibly complicated, but I can guarantee you will love them... even the more morally grey ones. Pulley's writing style is beautiful and emotive and certainly adds a flow to a story that could have been choppy if written differently. I did enjoy this book, but there are certain sticking points for me that just meant I didn't love it, or understand it as much as I would have liked.

Natasha Pulley has a lovely way with words where she can create prose that is so quietly magical. It is all the more magical for being so soft and subtle, and just like The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, the only other Pulley novel I have read, The Kingdoms is enchanting. I finished it nearly a week ago and I find myself sometimes thinking about the characters, thinking about what would happen after the last page and if they’re okay. That’s my favourite feeling to have after finishing a book, that constant wondering about people who you read about for so many pages and are so dear to you they feel real.

The Kingdoms main strength is with its characters. Joe is our main character, introduced to us after exiting a train without knowing who or where he is, the latest victim of a type of amnesia that has been affecting people around the same time. Joe’s story is focused on finding his past, particularly in trying to remember people who may have once loved him. A big theme of the novel is love, and though it is far from being classed as a Romance, love plays such an important role in the story. The people Joe grows to love and the people he used to love before he forgot them are both important facets of the story, and the times where the lines blur and Joe feels guilty or heartbroken for having loved are achingly sad. It’s especially lovely to be able to read a slowburn romance within such an epic story between two men, the yearning and aching nature of love pairing perfectly with the large-scale problem of being lost in time.

Although love is such a prominent thread throughout The Kingdoms, the main plot is the mystery about what happened to Joe. After a domino effect of choices, Joe finds himself alone at a remote lighthouse where he seems to have travelled back in time. Naturally, this creates a whole new set of problems including history changing before his eyes and the agony of not knowing if his actions are unintentionally erasing the things that are important to him in the future. With pirates, tortoises, naval battles and murder, it is an incredibly entertaining read without ever losing that focus on quiet magic and the importance of love.

The complicated nature of the story is handled really well, and though I had to do a little extra googling about the nineteenth century, the story is presented clearly while still maintaining a lavish abundance of plot and intriguing exploration of changing history. Timelines overlap and are erased, dissolving before our eyes and being built up from the smallest action creating a ripple effect. I found it both epic in scale and understandable, and Pulley did an incredible job of weaving both sides of the time travel together.

Joe’s whole journey revolves around a postcard that simply says ‘come home if you remember’, and as the story explores where his home is and who could have sent him this postcard from the past, I found it both beautiful and thrilling. At the end of the day, everything is about love and finding home.

Thank you to Net Galley for providing this ARC!

I enjoyed this story even if I was slightly confused, but it was a pleasant type of confusion that is a hallmark of Natasha Pulley's strange, quiet, and time-bending stories. The Kingdoms follows Joe Tournier, who finds himself with no memories, standing on a train platform in French-occupied London, in a world and a time this is both familiar and alien. Struggling with a life he doesn't recognise, he receives a postcard that simply says "Come home, if you remember”, and sets off to find out the truth of who he is and what happened to him. What follows is an unravelling of past and future, tangled together with memories of people and love that echo across time.

The writing is eloquent and softly emotive, and for all the ways that the timeline and plot is puzzling, it is also deeply intriguing. There's beautiful descriptions of Scotland, and gorgeous aesthetics of seafaring and lighthouses. The characters - especially Joe and Kite - are written in this very careful, precise manner, revealed slowly through quiet moments and subtle observation. Kite is very interesting, likeable yet complicated, although some more questionable parts of his character were a little too glossed over. The gay yearning is PERFECTION, full of tenderness and frustration, and I cried for basically the entire last chapter. The story jumps around a lot, which gets a bit difficult to follow in the middle, but ultimately provides these moments of heartbreaking realization that amplify the stakes and the emotions.

It's a weird, confusing, and slow-build story that I know won't be to everyone's taste, but if you liked Pulley's previous novels, then this has a similar aesthetic, full of fluid timelines, carefully crafted characters and that a strange kind of almost-magic. The themes of time and history that are so prevalent in the Watchmaker of Filigree Street and the Bedlam Stacks are explored again in The Kingdoms in a way that is new and ambitious but still familiar.

Honestly, some of the history stuff went a bit over my head, and the constant movements between years and ships and characters got a bit too much in the middle section, but it's worth it. However, I'm not totally sure that having British people as slaves in the alterative timeline was an appropriate thing to include, given Britain's involvement in the actual history of slavery, and I think this could have been taken out without really affecting the plot too much.

Rating - 4.5 Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the eARC.

I have been an enormous fan of Natasha Pulley's work since I read The Watchmaker of Filigree Street several years ago and so I was overjoyed to receive the eARC of her new book.

It follows the story of Joe Tournier, who finds himself stepping off a train in 19th Century France with absolutely no idea who he is, or how he got there. His only clue is a postcard of an old Scottish lighthouse, written by the mysterious M, the only person who might be able to help Joe find himself again. Accompanying Joe on his journey through time was wonderful, although the eARC had some formatting errors which were a bit distracting at times.

As with The Watchmaker, this was a beautiful story, exceptionally written with diverse characters that you take straight into your heart. It is not a fast-paced book, but I found the slow unveiling of the story to be perfectly suited to the subject matter. I am not usually a fan of books that include time travel, but this is definitely an exception. There are no other characters I would rather travel through time with.

This is the first book I read by Natasha Pulley and I wanted to read it because I found the blurb fascinating.
I wasn't disappointed as this is a fascinating story that mixes genres and makes you think.
There's plenty of things I loved and the alternate history side was excellent as it describes a UK which is a French colony.
The world building is excellent, the characters are fleshed out and the complex plot flows and never drags.
It was an excellent read and I found it gripping, entertaining and thought provoking.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Kingdoms is a genre-bending, time-twisting alternative history fantasy that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved set at both the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's 1898 and Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia; he appears to remember his name but nothing else of value. His first memory is of stepping off a train in Londres in the nineteenth-century French colony of England having travelled there from Glasgow. He learns that the former British capital has been a colony of the French Republic ever since they won the Napoleonic Wars ninety years ago. He doesn't recognise his surroundings and can remember nothing about his life before the moment he is presently in. A doctor diagnoses him with ”silent epilepsy” a disease characterised by paramnesia, amnesia and visions. Paramnesia is described as ”the blurring of something imaginary and something real”, but Joe isn't the only one in the city with the same strange afflictions. Despite the illness, Joe is soon returned to his French master—most English citizens have been enslaved under the reign of Napoleon IV—and to his wife, Alice, none of whom he remembers; in fact, Joe believes his wife to be called Madeline and has visions of her being a completely different person from the reality. Then one day a clue to Joe’s identity arrives in the post about a month after he arrives in Londres; a postcard mailed a century ago in 1805 and featuring the image of a Scottish lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides. But this lighthouse has only recently been built so how is that possible? And why has it taken so long for the mail to reach its final destination?

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 and get answers about his identity and past in the process. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland where north of Glasgow he travels through a time portal that transports him back to the era of the (Napoleonic) War and victory could be anyones. At the lighthouse, he meets Missouri Kite, a Royal Navy officer from 1807 who’s manning the lost empire’s battleships and his sister and the ship’s surgeon, Agatha Castlereagh, who hope to use technology and information from the future to change the outcome of the war. Can Joe help the British to win against the French and change the course of history? This is a compelling, utterly captivating and richly atmospheric novel combining steampunk, speculative fiction, queer romance and history in a highly original tale. Peopled with a small but complex, beautifully multi-layered cast of characters, we journey with Joe as he attempts to alter history whilst maintaining his connection to his young daughter who is still in the 1900s. Not only does it span a century but it also crosses Europe and has a compušlsive and thoroughly enthralling mystery at its heart. It's cleverly woven, emotionally raw and fraught with tension with a palpable level of suspense and this never dissipates. It's action-packed, rich in detail and concerns itself primarily with the ephemerality of both memory and love. Pulley’s finest work to date. Highly recommended.

So, I have to admit that when I started reading this book I was so confused. But I think that’s more of a reflection of my concentration and mental state this month. I found when I left it too long between readings I lost the books train of thought. Luckily I started reading in depth the last 3 days and really got into it.

“Come home, if you remember”
Joe, pulling into London King Cross, suddenly has no idea who he is or where he’s just come from. London is french occupied Londres now and although it all seems familiar, he remembers another life, a life that wasn’t like this. What if France hadn’t won the Battle of Trafalgar?

This is a slow burner with a lot of facts. The last third of the book really gathers momentum and after the world building I really wanted to see how it would end for these characters. Love, memories and the sailing seas - this was a really enjoyable read.

Thank you to #netgalley for this e-ARC. #TheKingdoms #NatashaPulley

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

Thanks to Bloomsbury for a review copy.

Natasha Pulley has an amazing talent for weaving the most complex of tales using simple language. Here we meet Joe, an amnesiac who arrives at a station in London, with no idea how he got there. As we follow his story the world in which he finds himself becomes increasingly complex thanks to a pair of pillars in the North Sea which connect two different time periods.

Joe is from the later of the two time periods, the end of the nineteenth century, whereas the other zone is about a hundred years earlier. This is one of those books which just seems to lead the reader effortlessly through the narrative whilst the world it describes becomes increasingly disconnected as time lines are altered – after all, the past affects the future so what happens in the earlier zone has consequences in the later one and whole futures can be wiped out as history changes.

This is not however, primarily a science fiction book. It is the story of one man, trying to understand what is happening to him and then trying to survive and protect his family in a world with which he is wholly unfamiliar.

My only criticisms were that I felt the ‘bromance’ between Joe and Missouri was overly laboured (in a similar way to the central relationship in ‘The Watchmaker of Filigree Street.’) It seemed to me that the reader would understand the subtext without having it spelt out over and over again in the story. Though this did not detract from my enjoyment it did get tedious as the book went on.

More seriously I really found myself struggling with a scene of animal cruelty quite early on in the story. Whilst the narrative point which the author was making was clear I felt that there were many other ways in which the result could have been achieved without involving animals at all. The cold and dispassionate violence displayed by the central characters, whom, up until then, I was starting to like, was heart breaking. I almost gave up on the book at this point but forced myself to continue after a couple of days break in the hope that this section would be an isolated example and that things would improve which, thankfully, they did. If I could pop back in time like the characters in this story I would certainly try and persuade the author to rewrite this section in a different way – sadly as I live in the real world and the time lines are fixed I think this is unlikely!

This aside I enjoyed the tale immensely and had no idea how it would all be pulled together at the end. The conclusion was however, wholly satisfactory and neatly wrapped up all the loose ends, including the motivations on one character whose actions had been a mystery almost until the last chapter.

Readers who enjoyed ‘The Watchmaker of Filligree Street’ will undoubtedly enjoy this even though it is a much darker novel than the earlier work. Those who have not read anything by Natasha Pulley before will find an entertaining story written in clear prose which hides deep and complex worldbuilding behind its apparent simplicity.

By her own admission Natasha Pulley writes "weird" books and this one definitely qualifies in that category.

The Kingdoms is a multiverse novel, set roughly between the late 1700's and the early 1900's. In one of the timelines the French won the Battle of Trafalgar and in another they didn't. Some people travel between the timelines at a point near the Eilean Mor Lighthouse, (a real lighthouse which has a famous mystery of disappearing Keepers attached to it). Travelling across the timelines affects the memories of some people and they experience what is diagnosed as epilepsy.

Needless to say, the military become aware of this anomaly and seek to exploit it by kidnapping future engineers and bringing unheard of technology into their times to help them win battles. Anyone who ever watched Star Trek will know that messing with the past inevitably affects the future.

But at it's heart this is a love story. Joe Tournier finds himself in French London as a slave, living with a family he doesn't remember. He has vague memories of a woman in a green dress and the name Madeline. When he receives a postcard with a picture of the Eilean Mor lighthouse on it, sent 93 years previously signed "M" he decides to try and find Madeline.

The twists and turns that Joe's story takes were hard to keep up with at times and it's only really near the end that the story comes into sharp focus and makes sense.

The book earns points for creativity and imagination from me, but it was a frustrating read at times. Definitely not a book to read if you are looking for something that doesn't tax the brain too much!

I've said at some point before, and I will say it again -- I will have no clue about what sliver of history Natasha Pulley will pick up to weave a book about next, and I will pick it up, and enjoy it tremednously. So far, this rule has worked for me 10/10 :D A reader who has loved her previous books would recognize certain themes that made the writing stand out -- the tender, wistful loners crossing paths and irrevocably changing those paths, the weight of lost futures, the resonance of the moment of overlap, playing fast and loose with the concept of linearity of time, a soft touch alt history -- and yet again Natasha Pulley combines these things into a vivid, immersive tale that had me sitting at the edge of my seat. It is another tenderest, most fragile love story at the very core of it, wrapped in a very illustrative meditation on colonialism, privilege and hm, butterfly effect, i suppose. It's also more violent and messy than both Watchmaker and Bedlam, which was novel, i felt, but cast the characters in such chiaroscuro light that it kept the tension high until the very last page. and honestly, i am really compelled to turn back to page one and start reading it again.

many thanks to #NetGalley for the copy of #TheKingdoms.

DRC provided by Bloomsbury Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Representation: bisexual protagonist, gay deuteragonist with hearing loss, Jamaican tertiary character, Chinese tertiary character.

Content Warning: slavery, violence (graphic), torture, child murder, death (graphic), child endangerment, emotional abuse, animal torture and killing.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley is a phenomenal historical novel, a breath-taking uchronic story about finding the way back home.

When Joe steps off the train at the Gare du Roi station in Londres, he is feeling disoriented and is finding hard to remember most of his life. A gentle stranger brings him to the hospital where he is diagnosed with epilepsy and after a week in an asylum his family finds him. One day, a post-person delivers him a postcard from almost a century before with a Scottish lighthouse on the front and three short sentences in English on the back, but no signature except for an initial. Two years have passed, Joe has started working as a welder, but he still cannot avoid to feel as if something is missing, or better someone. When the lighthouse keepers from the same Scottish lighthouse disappear, Joe volunteers to go. This decision will bring him a step closer to discover what and who is missing from his life.

I loved it so much and now I do not know how to express that, as always! I loved everything about it: the several settings (I have a soft spot for Scotland though), the characters (red-haired boys who had difficult upbringings are also a weakness of mine) and the overall intricate plot. I urge everyone to read this book!

It is my first time reading one of Pulley’s works and it seems I could have not chosen one better than this. I was so captivated by the novel that even when I was not reading it, I still was thinking about it and what would happen next. I am really looking forward to reading something else from Natasha Pulley.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley was full of emotions. It is set in the early 19th century and the writing was superb. The characters were fully formed with a great plot and storyline that will draw you into the pages. The story follows Joe who wakes up with no memories of who he is. This historical fantasy book will take you on a journey primarily told from Joe's perspective as he tries to figure out who he is and what has happened to the world. I really enjoyed this book and I know I'll be adding the paperback to my book collection.

I’m absolutely in awe of Natasha Pulley. Whatever she puts her hand to, it’s brilliant! The Kingdoms is a stand-alone novel mainly set in an alternative UK in early 19th c and 1900, with many twists and turns and highly surprising flights of fancy. As always, I am under the spell of this excellent author and completely buy everything she comes up with, however far fetched. Her unique ability to write complex, flawed, sympathetic and highly likeable characters is unrivalled, and this type of character comes back in every book she writes including this one. Her plotting and pacing is flawless, and with just enough tugs on the heartstrings the reader keeps racing along to figure out what is behind the oddities and peculiarities of both characters and narrative.

Apart from all of the above, the fact that the book is partly set in a lighthouse off the Outer Hebrides where three lighthouse keepers have gone missing and a mysterious, old postcard sets off a thrilling chain of events, is just perfect, I couldn’t think of a more enticing hook for me as a reader!

Yes, it is a long read, but as always, completely worth it. I read it in two sittings, you will too!

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an e ARC in exchange for an honest review. I’ve already ordered a physical copy too, as with all my favourite books.

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. That 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 lows of times and physics. That you can change the world 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.

One of the best things about signing up to a NetGalley account is knowing you have a better than even chance of coming across a book that, while it is yet to be published, you can read it before most other people, and then tell the world how great it is, knowing somehow you’ve done your part to boost its success in the eyes of its authors, publishers, and future readers. All this to say, I’ve just finished reading The Kingdoms by British writer Natasha Pulley and you should at this very moment stop what you’re doing and order it from whatever online service works for you. This book is a heart-breaking but life-affirming masterpiece, all wrapped up in a plot that is complex and poignant.

The Kingdoms is initially set in the year 1898, where Natasha Pulley imagines an alternate history in which England lost the Battle of Trafalgar to France, resulting in the French invading London and installing itself as the ruling power and households now have English people as slaves. There is resistance from Scotland, where a group known as the Saints fight back when and where they can. Joe Tournier steps off a train in London having travelled from Edinburgh and finds that his hold on reality is vanishing rapidly. An enforced stay at a psychiatric hospital reveals he suffers from a type of amnesia brought on by epileptic episodes. Eventually he is identified and returned to a family that has enslaved him. He has a wife he doesn’t recognise and life he’s not familiar with, but he gets by because it’s what’s expected of him. His world is further turned upside down when he receives a postcard from someone called ‘M’, dated nearly 100 years in the past. Through a series of events and choices, Joe makes his way to Edinburgh, to the lighthouse pictured on the postcard, and soon he’s in another time and place.

Joe is the character through which we experience this new world, but he’s not the only person we connect to. Missouri Kite is a Spanish pirate who has joined the English resistance and using the portal near the lighthouse though which ships can travel from one time to another, he kidnaps Joe hoping to use the man’s knowledge of future technology to reshape the past and restore balance and history. But with every action in the past, the future itself becomes uncertain. Joe is afraid that if he helps Missouri and his sister Agatha then he will lose his own place in time and his daughter may very well fade into non-existence. But he feels a profound connection to the Spaniard, and there’s almost a symbiotic relationship between the two. There is more going on between then than meets the eye.

Two things must be real for me to enjoy a book, particularly one from the genre of speculative fiction and fantasy. The world-building while complex must ring true, and the characters have to jump out of the page and hold you until their story is done, leaving you to pick up the pieces of your life when the book is finished. I read the last two or three chapters of The Kingdoms twice, not because I needed to fully understand what was happening to the world, but because I wanted to feel my feelings again. The ending is beautiful. If I say anything more, I could end up spoiling the book. If you have read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, then you’ll know what to expect from The Kingdoms. I haven’t, but now I want to.

The Kingdoms is historical speculative fiction at its finest. I fell in love with Joe and Missouri. I sympathised and empathised with their plights. My heart broke more than once for Agatha. The battle scenes are butal and history, whichever one it ends up being, never felt more vibrant and fluid. I thank NetGalley and the book’s publishers for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. I also wish to thank Natasha Pulley for writing such a beautiful and thrilling novel. I will look out for more of her work in the future.