Author Natasha Pulley’s perhaps most prevalent theme when you consider her list of works as a whole is the concept of time – whether it’s knowing the future, seeing the past unfurl before your eyes in the forms of ghosts, or in the case of her new novel The Kingdoms, seeing the web of timelines, present, future, and potential, unravel and reshape before your very eyes as a consequence of your actions. 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.

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. Swept out to sea with a hardened British sea captain named Kite, who might know more about Joe's past than he's willing to let on, Joe will remake history, and himself. 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.) Wheeler, Sara (15 September 2017). "A 19th-Century Smuggler in the Peruvian Andes". The New York Times . Retrieved 29 December 2017. Kind of slow. Much more heavy on the reflective, atmospheric and emotional side than the adventure one, though there is plenty of seafaring gore. 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.Joe has never left England, never even left London. He is a British slave, one of thousands throughout the French Empire. He has a job, a wife, a baby daughter.

Six months after this valuable discovery, Thaniel Steepleton’s life is saved by the mysterious timepiece when he is drawn away from the blast scene that causes the complete destruction of Scotland Yard. This life-saving incident makes Thaniel Steepleton go in search of the maker of the gold watch. He turns out to be a lonely and kind immigrant from Japan named Keita Mori. When Thaniel comes across Keita Mori, he appears to him as a harmless person. But, several unexplainable events happen later that make Thaniel Steepleton suspect that Keita Mori might be hiding something very important. She was educated at Soham Village College, New College, Oxford, and the University of East Anglia (MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction), 2012). [1] [2] [3] Works [ edit ] there will come a moment where you, the reader, will experience your own italicized “oh” moment of realisation of exactly What Has Happened. and you may experience a genuine physical reaction but please trust me when i say that it is entirely worth it. For fans of Matt Haig, Stuart Turton and Bridget Collins comes a sweeping historical adventure from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street I’ve always had difficulties reading books about time travel, but ”The Kingdoms” solves all the doubts that raises during the story.

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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. There is a promise that the processing, grieving, and perhaps accountability for the characters’ actions will take place after the book ends. For many readers, that will likely be enough. Those looking for a happily ever after, however, won’t close The Kingdoms feeling just happy. Or at least not only happy—bittersweet is too tame a word for the maelstrom of happiness, relief, grief, and anger you may have. While an open-minded reader may guess at some of the book’s twists before they’re revealed, personally it made the book no less enjoyable to read for the mere fact that they’re clever.

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). Eilean Mor hat sofort was bei mir klingeln lassen und mich an das Buch "Die Leuchtturmwärter" von Emma Stonex denken lassen. Denn es ist genau dieser Leuchtturm, der auch in dieser Geschichte eine Rolle spielt. Denn dort sind im Jahr 1900 tatsächlich drei Wärter auf mysteriöse Weise verschwunden und auch Natasha Pulley bindet dieses Ereignis gekonnt in ihren Roman mit ein. Das erlebt nämlich der Protagonist Joe Tournier, der im Jahr 1898 aus einem Zug in Londres aussteigt und keine Erinnerungen mehr an seine Vergangenheit hat. London bzw. Londres ist ihm eigentlich vertraut, aber alles erscheint im völlig anders. Er zweifelt an seiner Wahrnehmung, an seinem Verstand und auch an sich selbst, bis plötzlich eine Postkarte eintrifft - aus dem Jahr 1805. I hope this isn't a stylistic choice meant to be artsy because it's not. It's distracting and irritating, like when a gnat keeps flitting around your head. All I wanted to read about was the time slip and it was barely about that and mostly about war and battle.Dearest Joe, come home, if you remember. M.” reads the postcard which depicts a lighthouse in Scotland. It had been held at the sorting office for 91 years with clear delivery instructions. When Joe enquires, he discovers that construction on the lighthouse had just been finished. 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. 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. 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.