Twisty gripping time travel and alternate history story with a yearning love story and a big mystery underneath. It is fantastic. It is also fantastically flawed (in my opinion). I’m hooked on Natasha Pulley’s writing, and I want to read all her other books as soon as I can! Not want. NEED. The Kingdoms was the second one I read, and I am in awe. Again. Now, I'm not going to lie, in the middle of this book I thought this just might not get 5 stars from me, because there was just so much hurt, and I didn't see how this could end in anything but devastation and heartache. But she did it! Natasha Pulley, you absolute genius!!! This is embarrassing and woefully cheap storytelling, and when the letter was finally read I felt tempted to drop the book on the spot.

i also think about how this book has chaos and tragedy and the senselessness of war, how much trauma we get put through and how fragile every existence is. and yet there is so much tenderness. The writing is also a bit weird, particularly the dialogue, which sometimes feel a bit 21st century. Some descriptions, narratives are very good though, and the pace, the dripping of tantalizing details is very good.

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For fans of The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and David Mitchell, a genre bending, time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved. For those familiar with fantasy tropes it is immediately obvious we have an alternative history… but this is so much more.

Given his confusion Joe is taken to a hospital and is diagnosed as having a form of epilepsy that includes both amnesia and paramnesia, a blurring of something imaginary and something real. 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”.At first I thought that the characters didn’t have too much personality, and I thought they were unrealistic, that I couldn’t get attached to them at all… But as the story progresses they develop perfectly, this book has one of the most beautiful and well written relationships that I’ve ever read so far. It doesn't feel mechanical or fake, I don't know how to describe it well but it's like: This historical time loop/travel story is mind-boggling. I wanted to piece all those snippets and timelines together so desperately that I had to stop racing myself through the book and put it away occasionally just to think. I remember this feeling while reading Shaun David Hutchinson’s A Complicated Love Story Set in Space. All those fragments from different times gave an insight into other POVs, too, Agatha’s and Madeline’s but mostly Missouri Kite’s—the officer in the Royal Navy, a multiple-layered man who I hated at times. I understood so well why Joe was furious at him. Those turtles and Fred! My heart broke. But I kept thinking of Laurent in Captive Prince and treasured Missouri’s kind and soft moments.

Ultimately, The Kingdoms succeeds on a number of levels – it is an entertaining yarn, a beautiful character study replete with a human streak and beating heart, a pulse-pounding action-adventure, and a twisty-turny science-fiction thriller about the power of our choices and of the consequences that those same choices must bring. One of the best novels of 2021 and one well-worthy of revisiting again and again, The Kingdoms solidifies Pulley’s presence of one of the UK’s best young writers and a major voice to look out for. In 2016, Pulley lived in Peru for several months. This opportunity was provided to her by the Society of Authors’ travel grant. Pulley spent all those months in researching her second book and chasing llamas. Following the immense success of her first novel, she decided to come up with its sequel. After spending almost a year in developing the manuscript, Pulley was finally able to publish the widely successful second installment in 2020. As of now, she resides in Bath with her family. Pulley is at work on the fourth book of her career and is expected to release it in the coming months. Joe is the main character in The Kingdoms, but talking about him could give away a bunch of spoilers, so I’ll just say this—I loved him with all my heart and then some. As for the English navy officer Kite, he’s faced abuse all his life, so much so that he’s begun to turn into a bit of a machine, someone who seems incapable of natural human emotions. With a romance that involves a person who doesn’t know who he is, and another who’s barely holding up against emotional and psychological trauma while leading his ship into what seems like a losing battle, it’s understandable that this relationship isn’t one that’d give you unadulterated happiness. And yet, even as these two broken people keep fighting against time to find each other again and again only to lose each other every time, and even as you can’t shake the feeling that they were doomed from the start, you still keep hoping against hope for something good to happen. The Kingdoms is not an easy book, but in the end, Joe and Kite make it worth it.And apart from the factual issues, there are other problems. In several places, the plot relies on an unlikely sequence of events. As with the French plan to win the Battle of Trafalgar by killing Nelson and all the senior officers of the British fleet, which just seemed ridiculous to me. And then there's enforcing Naval discipline by putting names up on the 'Outstanding Idiots' board, rather than by flogging. Certainly more humane, but utterly inconsistent with the supposed time. Cliss, Sarah. "Natasha holds author's event at Ely and meets up with some familiar faces" . Retrieved 2 September 2016.