Like the other folks, I do think it could have benefitted from a stronger performance and better character differentiation. Not her strongest work but still worth a read I'm now hoping that the book will be so popular and such a classic that it will get another and stronger performance some year soon. Joe's 'why' sounds like that of a spoiled teenager rather than a confused adult. Solomon manages to make Joe Tournier sound quite whinny in his interactions with the other people he meets along with way. He has a rasp to his voice that also shows up for all characters and never sounds quite natural but rather stylized. Theo Solomon makes everyone sound pretty much the same. Because of the various timelines and settings, a performance was needed that had consistent and clearly distinguished voices for the major characters. As other reviewers have said, the Kingdoms has a complex timeline and plot that is entertaining but also challenging to follow and figure out. I have read all of Natasha Pulley's novels with delight both at the adventurous stories that she weaves and at the high quality and skill of her narrative writing.

In the process, Joe will remake history and himself.įrom best-selling author Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms is an epic, wildly original novel that bends genre as easily as it twists time.įascinating story but not the performance needed The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battleships of a lost empire’s Royal Navy. Written in illegal English - instead of French - the postcard is signed only with the letter 'M', but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself and he’s determined to find the writer. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the 19th-century French colony of England. Bloomsbury presents The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley, read by Theo Solomon.įor fans of The 7½ 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.