The Kingdoms: Natasha Pulley

Product Information

Wheeler, Sara (15 September 2017). "A 19th-Century Smuggler in the Peruvian Andes". The New York Times . Retrieved 29 December 2017.

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.To begin with, I have to admit that the beginning might be a little bit dense. You have to get used to situating yourself well in what time (period/date) each character is.

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!!! 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. Natasha Pulley's prose, her descriptions and the relationship between her characters makes the book really atmospheric. As if you were feeling the essence of the sea salt when the characters are close to it, or feel the drops when it rains in a chapter… God I already said this on my “The Watchmaker pf Filigree Street” review but the writing is wonderful.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. The Kingdoms contains multitudes: it is a love story, a seafaring war novel, a time-travel mystery, an alternative history tale, and more. And while each description in the previous sentence is accurate, each description fails to capture all that the book encompasses. Pulley, Natasha (2019). The Lost Future of Pepperharrow. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-63557-330-5. OCLC 1042353069.

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. 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. The novel begins with Tournier arriving in London on a train, with no recollection of who he is, where he has been, or where he is going. A helpful stranger on the platform at Gare du Roi helps orient him and he finds himself, temporarily, in a hospital. Diagnosed with epilepsy that causes amnesia, Tournier and the reader are both allowed to discover this alternative London in which the French have conquered England, together. Tournier's education includes the discovery that he is a slave, married to his brother's widow, and is a knowledgeable engineer. These discoveries, along with a tattered and mysterious postcard featuring the Eilean Mor lighthouse, eventually leads him to abandon his wife and daughter to take a posting at the isolated lighthouse and try to determine what happened to the lighthouse keepers who had gone missing. This is embarrassing and woefully cheap storytelling, and when the letter was finally read I felt tempted to drop the book on the spot.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 Kite's murdering a young boy just to protect the secret of his own love from Joe and the general faff about him murdering a decent amount of other people and not being fully stable seems justified if Joe is going to raise two toddlers with him. Also, Joe literally was married three different times and had two other sets of children, which is giving me pause.

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. Darauf abgebildet der Leuchtturm auf Eilean Mor und mit der kurzen Nachricht: Komm nach Hause, wenn du dich erinnerst. M.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. 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.