Book #33 of 2022:
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
This novel has its share of flaws, but I almost want to give it four stars regardless. The worldbuilding and time-travel mechanics are excellent, as is the gradual way these elements are introduced in the text. We open on a late nineteenth-century England that is merely a vassal state of France, and a figure who finds himself stepping off a train there with no memories at all. However, he does have periodic visions of things that aren’t true — buildings that don’t actually exist; the faces of familiar-looking strangers; an impossible alternate reality where his homeland is free — and in seeking answers to those mysteries, he eventually stumbles upon a gateway that leads to nearly a hundred years ago.
He’s not the only one who’s made that journey, of course, and the reason his timeline is different from ours is that the French have gained knowledge about the future that allowed them to avoid defeat at the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo. Once in the past, our protagonist also becomes gradually involved in a slow-burn romance with a dashing yet secretive and angry-at-the-world pirate captain — a man who moreover may have already known him back in the days he can’t remember.
And that’s where the story loses me a bit, because — spoiler alert — it is very obvious right away how these two lovers are connected, yet the narrative plays coy to save it as a big reveal near the end for some reason. So I struggle with that writing choice, as well as with a few deaths that are shrugged off too speedily and the supposed dilemma facing the hero that if he stays to explore this newfound connection and help rewrite history (again), he will likely erase his beloved young daughter from existence. I have kids that age myself, and it’s hard to imagine someone in my shoes risking their lives on a half-forgotten ghost, no matter how dreamy this particular one appears. I’m not saying that piece of plotting is inherently misguided, but I don’t feel as though author Natasha Pulley has managed to sell it convincingly enough in this exercise. Given a character who more firmly believes in the nationalistic cause or whose offspring don’t seem as dear or as threatened, and this development could maybe have worked. It just doesn’t here, at least for me as a reader.
And that’s my sense overall of this title, I guess. Certain parts are terrific. Others seem like they could have been as well, had that potential not been squandered in execution. A rushed conclusion that attempts to find a happy balance for the family/relationship conflict reads as far too easy, for instance, and thus largely unearned. I’m both impressed and frustrated by the composite result, but I think the latter sentiment wins out in the end.
[Content warning for gun violence, gore, slavery, marital rape, and racism.]
★★★☆☆
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