A history-based time travel adventure/romance, taking place in Great Britain around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The conflict is all about Joe forgetting and insisting in returning to his family or actually Lily. And this contrasts a lot with a later revelation about Jem having a 12 year old son, Edward. Joe remembers Madeline. He does not really remember the man on his dream, does not remember Agatha. Jem in 1797 is not particularly concerned, does not try to return to the portal, to Edward, or to rescue Madeline, nor does he agonize much about the rest. Then a letter is delivered, one that has been held in a sorting house for 93 years! In the envelope is a postcard with an etching of a lighthouse that looks vaguely familiar to him. The caption reads ‘Eilean Mor, in the Outer Hebrides.’ On the reverse of the postcard is written: ‘Dearest Joe, Come home, if you remember. M.’

its about history. changing history - is love strong enough to rewrite history, is it stronger than the laws of space and time? can you defy history and change the world to stay with someone you love? or does history soldier on, pulling love apart?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.

No detailed spoilers here, but please don't expect moral purity from any of the central characters. If you're looking for cinnamon rolls, this isn't your book. he hadn’t imagined to, but all the way home, like an idiot, he’d been stitching a fragile cloak of half-imagined hope, barely with the substance of thule but there all the same. trying on hopes like what was no better than playing dress-up with her clothes.” Lots and lots of spoilers next, and plot ramblings, likely all very messy and some very shallow observations there is just so much i could say about the kingdoms. little things like “hey did you know that there was a point where i almost gave this book 4 stars out of sheer spite because how dare natasha pulley hurt me like this”.But, oh, oh, this book was written for me. Elegiac, liminal, fragile, aching. This book hurts but in such a good way. A spooling, non-linear narrative, that should be tangled and unparseable, but is instead clever and slowly unwinding until you understand the heart. Characters who are brittle and fragile as glass, complex and unthinkingly brave. Time travel with consequences, messy and completely probable alternate history, a slow-burn of a romance that is absolutely devastating and somehow perfect. An Oxford physicist named Grace Carrow happens to interfere unwittingly, causing Thaniel to be torn between two opposing loyalties. The novel turned out to be an entertaining and sweeping read. Its atmospheric narrative tends to take the reader on a mesmerizing journey through London of the Victorian era and Japan at the time of its crumbling civil war. Author Pulley has done a fantastic job of combining historical events with interesting, fancy flights. The original story and mind-blowing characters enabled the book to reach out to readers in huge numbers. Author Pulley’s wonderful style of writing and original story helped the book win the Betty Trask prize in 2016. Following the tremendous success of the book, Pulley began working on the second volume of the series and published it with much more success and popularity. I said the premise of the book was good. Too bad after the first third the book abandons the premise and turns into what is ostensibly a roadtrip book. They spend their time pottering from place to place on a boat, taking part in shenanigans of all sorts in the past. The book does little to explore any of the sci-fi stuff that might come out of a premise like this. It also doesn't flesh out the worldbuilding needed to make it a satisfactory alternate history.

there will come a moment where you, the reader, will experience your own italicized “oh” moment of realisation of exactly What Has Happened. and you may experience a genuine physical reaction but please trust me when i say that it is entirely worth it. Honestly, I'm the shell of a person at the moment, and all I want to do is to reread it. It's just so.... *clenches fist and wipes a tear* good. 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. After a while, having settled into the routine of his life Joe receives a postcard sent nearly 100 years previously. Somehow the picture is of Eilean Mor lighthouse, even though it has only been built a few years, and the message reads “Dearest Joe, come home if you remember me. M”. Natasha Pulley is a renowned British author of historical fiction and fantasy stories. She is well known for writing The Watchmaker of Filigree Street series. The first book of this series, having the same name as the series, has won the Betty Trask Award. Winning this award became the highlight of Pulley’s career as she got noticed by the who’s who of the writing world. Author Pulley made her debut in the world of publishing in 2015. She was born on December 4, 1988, in the United Kingdom. She completed her education in English Literature from Soham Village College, New College, Oxford. Thereafter, Pulley obtained her master’s degree in creative writing from East Anglia University in 2012. Following her graduation, Pulley began teaching English. She was employed in China as a teacher of English for 6 weeks.That is to say—Pulley has a voice unlike any other. Her storytelling is so distinctive, so utterly inimitable in its style. There is an intoxicating subtle magic in her books, and I spent the last few hours trying to wrap words around it. So without spoiling anything of what occurs in this novel, this review is my attempt at understanding the strange alchemy that makes up Pulley’s books. PART II of the book: This was good? At this point the protagonist, Joe, had finally been spurred into action, the mechanics of the world were being introduced, the mystery was tantalising and hadn't yet grown stale. I nearly gave it an extra star because of that section, but decided against it because of the awful time I had with nearly everything else. And Kite. Ugh. What can I say about love interest Missouri Kite? I get what Natasha Pulley was trying to do with him, fusing "cruel lieutenant man" with "smexy sad boi" in a way that ended up wholly unpalatable. Multiple times, he kills innocent bystanders, but rather than feeling like this was a core tenet of a troubled, unempathetic man, it felt like window dressing designed to show how much of a teehee, "psycho" (the book's words, not mine) he was -- the way a 13 year old on Wattpad writing Jeff the Killer fanfiction might find that sexy (there's a fantastic Jenny Nicholson video on the subject matter). And I don't mind "bad" love interests, but I need to be able to fundamentally understand how characters who are against killing mentally reconcile their morals with being in love with characters who do bad things. Safe to say, that gap was not bridged here. And sure, the protagonist ultimately loses his daughter, wives, sister-in-law and brother because of the time jumping, but it's a happy end because Joe and Kite can be together right? Not on my watch. Agatha, you have to do something about Kite. He can't just go around murdering children. I don't care what the reason is." Shortly after arriving, Joe receives a visit from a mysterious man he pulls from the water on a stormy night. He leaves Joe with a warning to leave the lighthouse and never return but the two soon meet again: this time in the year 1807 after he’s kidnapped by the crew onboard a ship looking for an electrical engineer to help them win a war and change the outcome of a future Joe had been taken from.