If The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley left you craving time-bent queer longing, pick up The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley next.

Bradley gave you temporal displacement as foreplay; Pulley makes it a full consummation. The Kingdoms delivers amnesiac confusion wrapped in alt-history brilliance—a Britain conquered by Napoleon's France, where your protagonist wakes with no past and a pocket watch that shouldn't exist. Here, identity doesn't just shift across timelines; it splinters, reconstructs, and demands you question which version of yourself deserves to survive. The slow-burn queer romance doesn't politely ask for space—it commandeers the narrative with all the emotional devastation you're clearly chasing.

Pulley wields imperial satire like a scalpel, eviscerating both British and French colonial arrogance while her flawed lovers circle each other through espionage, betrayal, and impossibly high stakes. It's intellectually uncompromising and utterly swoonworthy.

Identity doesn't just shift across timelines; it splinters, reconstructs, and demands you question which version deserves to survive.