A review by toggle_fow
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

Frankly, what the HELL just happened?

Things this book is:

• A history-based time travel adventure/romance, taking place in Great Britain around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

• Kind of slow. Much more heavy on the reflective, atmospheric and emotional side than the adventure one, though there is plenty of seafaring gore.

• Gay.

• Not super surprising. As soon as you get the first reluctant crumb of background about The Kingdom from Kite and the first flashback, you know the MC's previous identity and pretty much what's going on. Then it's just waiting half the book for him to catch up with everyone else.

• 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. (hide spoiler)]

• And then there's every other relationship that happened in the book, most of which are at least mildly disturbing in some way. Is this okay? Are we all okay with this? I'm going to need a memo written to explain the emotions I should be having, because I'm pretty sure the confusion and discomfort I have going on are not what the author intended.