11 new science fiction and fantasy book releases to make your May magical

May 2021 release: The Kingdoms – Natasha Pulley

Billed as a story for fans of The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and David Mitchell, Natasha Pulley’s The Kingdoms is 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.

The story follows Joseph Tournier,  who lives in 1898 Londres – a city in the French colony of England, conquered during the Napoleonic Wars – and who steps off a train from Glasgow with no memory of his life before that moment. Hazy images and names – a woman named Madeline, specifically – haunt him, along with a creeping sense that something is wrong. He’s not alone either, dozens of people across the city have experienced the same amnesia, though no one can explain why.

A postcard delivered nearly a century after it’s been mailed sends Joe north to the Outer Hebrides searching for answers in a mysterious lighthouse – that may contain the secrets to the man he once was. Time-bending twists follow, as Joe must decide how much of himself he’s willing to risk to change the past, and in doing so forever alter the future.

The official synopsis describes the story as follows.

"Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. 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. 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 search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire’s Royal Navy. In the process, Joe will remake history, and himself."

The Kingdoms is available on May 25.