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A review by heresthepencil
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
5.0
rep: half-Chinese gay mc, half-Spanish gay mc, Black side characters
tw: rape, murder, blood, violence, guns
Review also on Reads Rainbow. ARC provided by the publisher.
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. This 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 laws of times and physics. That you can change the world in order 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.
tw: rape, murder, blood, violence, guns
Review also on Reads Rainbow. ARC provided by the publisher.
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. This 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 laws of times and physics. That you can change the world in order 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.