Despite having The Watchmaker of Filigree Street on my TBR list for years now, The Kingdoms is somehow the first Natasha Pulley book I’ve ever read. I pre-ordered a physical copy of the book immediately after finishing my ARC, as well as added all her other books to my immediate TBR pile, which tells you a lot about how I feel about The Kingdoms. This is one of those books that make me wish I could read it for the first time all over again, just so I could feel the overwhelming rush of emotions that comes from not knowing what happens in the end.
“Dearest Joe, come home, if you remember. M.” says the postcard Joe Tournier receives in 1898; it has apparently been held at the sorting office for 93 years, so that it could be delivered to him on the date specified. The postcard has a picture of a lighthouse called Eilean Mor in the Outer Hebrides, but Joe doesn’t recognise it. He doesn’t even remember who he is supposed to be, since he lost his memory a while ago. Joe is told that he is a British slave in London, one of the many in the French empire. But he also gets flashes of a life he has supposedly never lived, in an England that’s not ruled by the French and where he can freely speak English.
On an impulse, Joe decides to visit the lighthouse anyway, in search of the truth of his existence. Little does he know that his journey would take him back through time itself to a stranger called Kite who seems to know him better than himself, and would hand him the power to change the very future of his world.
I’m usually not a big fan of books that centre around a romance, but there’s just something about LGBTQ+ romances set in historical periods that always appeals to me, and that was probably the main reason I picked up The Kingdoms. This book is a bit of a hodgepodge of a few different genres as there’s time travel and it’s obviously historical fiction, but there’s also elements of fantasy so seamlessly weaved throughout the story that they almost blend in with the very essence of reality. Pulley’s prose feels ethereal even as it sizzles with dry humour. Pieces of the story take place at multiple places and times, and Pulley paints every single one of those settings with utmost veracity and vividness. Every single aspect of this book was indeed sheer perfection to me, but the romance at the core of the story—that blossomed even amidst all the uncertainty and carnage and hopelessness of war—really was the most beautiful thing about this book.
Joe is the main character in The Kingdoms, but talking about him could give away a bunch of spoilers, so I’ll just say this—I loved him with all my heart and then some. As for the English navy officer Kite, he’s faced abuse all his life, so much so that he’s begun to turn into a bit of a machine, someone who seems incapable of natural human emotions. With a romance that involves a person who doesn’t know who he is, and another who’s barely holding up against emotional and psychological trauma while leading his ship into what seems like a losing battle, it’s understandable that this relationship isn’t one that’d give you unadulterated happiness. And yet, even as these two broken people keep fighting against time to find each other again and again only to lose each other every time, and even as you can’t shake the feeling that they were doomed from the start, you still keep hoping against hope for something good to happen. The Kingdoms is not an easy book, but in the end, Joe and Kite make it worth it.
With The Kingdoms, Pulley has given me a book that I’d forever be recommending to everyone I see, just so I could have someone to scream about this exquisitely beautiful story with. If you like nail biting agony, time travel, alternative history, and super slow burn gay romances with pining and one of the involved parties being oblivious of the other’s feelings, The Kingdoms is the book for you. You could check out Pulley’s other books too, I’ve been told they are all equally heart-wrenching, and I can’t wait to find out for myself.
The Kingdoms is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of May 25th 2021.
Will you be picking up The Kingdoms? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
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.
Dear Anuska,
I am currently reading The Kingdom, & totally love it.
I’ve read Pulley’s other books, & I am certain from what you say in your very lovely review that you are going to completely adore The Watchmaker… and …Pepperharrow.
I am in awe of Natasha Pulley, and I feel a deep gratitude when I read her books that she gives me everything I want from the characters, the detailed worlds she creates & the plot, & then with her amazing vision she totally surprises me too.
I do hope you’ll post reviews of her other books as you read them: I’ll be looking out for them!
Wendy