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sophonax 's review for:
The Kingdoms
by Natasha Pulley
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
As Joe is helped from the train he is uneasy, his surroundings all at once familiar but different in some way he cannot grasp. Soon we find that Joe has amnesia, he isn’t alone in this but his journey is only just beginning.
The way Pulley grips the reader with the mystery that is Joe; half-Chinese and apparently a pedigree, in this alternate London where England fell to the French making slaves of the English and the English language illegal. We are right alongside him as day by day he lives this life, working off his indenture. As the small glimpses of something else are drip fed we are pulled in closer and closer, until it begins to unravel.
Then we are on a whirlwind adventure slipping back 100years to before the war was lost, to before England fell. There is tragedy, murder in the coldest of blood, war, naval battles, romance, joy, pain, and adventure.
The culmination is wonderful I loved the characters around Joe (there is a tiger!) as our protagonist, the mystery of who is friend or foe and nudges of hints to something more.
This has the sweetest most tender descriptions of non-sexual comforting touch in the main relationship that I have read in a long while. I could imagine them curled together, the way they held one another and fit.
One to read again to truly uncover its secrets.
The way Pulley grips the reader with the mystery that is Joe; half-Chinese and apparently a pedigree, in this alternate London where England fell to the French making slaves of the English and the English language illegal. We are right alongside him as day by day he lives this life, working off his indenture. As the small glimpses of something else are drip fed we are pulled in closer and closer, until it begins to unravel.
Then we are on a whirlwind adventure slipping back 100years to before the war was lost, to before England fell. There is tragedy, murder in the coldest of blood, war, naval battles, romance, joy, pain, and adventure.
The culmination is wonderful I loved the characters around Joe (there is a tiger!) as our protagonist, the mystery of who is friend or foe and nudges of hints to something more.
This has the sweetest most tender descriptions of non-sexual comforting touch in the main relationship that I have read in a long while. I could imagine them curled together, the way they held one another and fit.
One to read again to truly uncover its secrets.