Book Review – The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

Title – The Kingdoms

Author – Natasha Pulley

Genre – Historical Fantasy

Historical Fiction has always been my go to genre whenever I felt my interest in reading needs to be piqued. I had been curious about Natasha Pulley’s books for quite a while and when I came across her latest one, I couldn’t help but pick it up since it combined two interesting genres – Historical Fiction and Fantasy. Here is my take on whether this book worked for me or didn’t.

Joe Tournier arrives in French London and realizes he has no memory of himself whatsoever. He gets admitted to a hospital and is later acknowledged as someone’s slave and he has been married. What does struck to him in his memory is the name Madeline and a postcard of a lighthouse with the letter M on it. His quest on finding his identity when he finds himself 100 years in the past is what makes up the rest of the plot.

Not giving much about the book as it might be considered as a spoiler, the book honestly felt dragged in a lot of places. Since a lot of Alternate History is involved in the book, it does take a bit of time to get used to the plot.

Though with the synopsis being quite interesting, the readers are easily able to guess a lot of future plot points which unfortunately is not such a book one would look forward to. Ultimately when the book ends, the readers are neither confounded or awed by how the book shaped.

One interesting aspect of the book that I would love to point out though is the concept of Time Travel that we see here. With so many books exploring the idea, this one again stresses on the fact that a change in the past during time travel does effect the entire future (chaos theory) and this has been explained well here. If you are a fan of the author or the concept of Time travel, I’m sure you may find this one intriguing.

My Ratings – 🌟🌟🌟 (3 out of 5 stars)