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A review by fitzbff
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
adventurous
challenging
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I so so badly wanted to like this. I had heard only good things. But oh my god was this a complete and utter disappointment. For starters, the actual book is not like the little synopsis on the back. There is a massive shift around 100 pages in that I just couldn't get on board with. This, inexplicably, requires the reader to have a pretty decent knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars, because Pulley has absolutely no interest in making sure the reader understands what's actually happening in the book. I thought this was going to be a mystery about the protagonist's lost memories, but it's actually an alternate history story that requires prior knowledge going in. The plot, without spoilers, involves a bunch of naval scenes and concern about the future, a lot of butterfly effect-type stuff, but everything is written in this disaffected tone which makes it had to parse out what's actually important and what isn't. I finished this book just last night and I don't remember what the characters actually do. I couldn't tell you how the new equilibrium at the end of the story is achieved, character goals are confusing at the best of times, it's a complete clusterfuck of things happening for unapparent reasons. I didn't realise the climax of the plot had happened until I was reading what is essentially the epilogue. The fact that a plot so incomprehensible was actually published is baffling to me.
The characters don't make this plot go down any easier either. Joe is quite possibly the most uninteresting and passive protagonist I have read this year. I cannot tell you a single thing about his character or personality. He just goes along with whatever is happening because it's a book and books need protagonists. The main romance in this book is so unbelievable too. Pulley does nothing to make this central pairing interesting or evocative. The only reason I saw their pairing coming was because the plot "twists" in this book are so obvious I can barely call them twists. Between the incomprehensibility of the time travel plot and the mishandling of the plot twists with Joe's lost memories, it's a wonder I actually finished this book. Between all this and the terrible prose it's strange that I managed it. This prose is so bad it often took me out of the book. Sentences and paragraphs are clumsily structured, and words are unnecessarily repeated within sentences very often. It's like the author just went with her first or second draft, and no editor cleaned anything up.
Long story short, this book is messy at best and unintelligible at worst. What starts as a decent mystery about a man losing his memory, grows into a weird, clumsy alternate history where things happen just because. Maybe with a good editing team or written by a better writer, this story could've been something interesting, but as it is, it's a wonky, confusing, mess.
The characters don't make this plot go down any easier either. Joe is quite possibly the most uninteresting and passive protagonist I have read this year. I cannot tell you a single thing about his character or personality. He just goes along with whatever is happening because it's a book and books need protagonists. The main romance in this book is so unbelievable too. Pulley does nothing to make this central pairing interesting or evocative. The only reason I saw their pairing coming was because the plot "twists" in this book are so obvious I can barely call them twists. Between the incomprehensibility of the time travel plot and the mishandling of the plot twists with Joe's lost memories, it's a wonder I actually finished this book. Between all this and the terrible prose it's strange that I managed it. This prose is so bad it often took me out of the book. Sentences and paragraphs are clumsily structured, and words are unnecessarily repeated within sentences very often. It's like the author just went with her first or second draft, and no editor cleaned anything up.
Long story short, this book is messy at best and unintelligible at worst. What starts as a decent mystery about a man losing his memory, grows into a weird, clumsy alternate history where things happen just because. Maybe with a good editing team or written by a better writer, this story could've been something interesting, but as it is, it's a wonky, confusing, mess.