The Kingdom is a uniquely formatted mystery of the lies hiding behind a glimmering facade. Told through snapshots of memory, trial proceedings, and interviews, it tells the tale of Ana, one of the Fantasists, or robot-human hybrids, working in the magical dreamland that is The Kingdom theme park. This park sells the dreams of happily ever after, even to its own creations, but Ana is starting to see through the cracks in the facade. When she starts to experience real emotion, especially the feeling of falling in love, the beautiful dream shatters fast and Ana is left lost among all the sharp edges.

While this book was definitely a cover buy (I mean, holo cover? On top of the beautifully illustrated design? There’s no way I can resist that), the synopsis also really intrigued me. I mean, there’s the obvious connection to Westworld, but I’ll be honest I have no experience/bias from that parallel. I just found the idea of a futuristic theme park combined with a murder mystery pretty interesting.

In the end, the book did a lot of things ok and very little actually good. While it was entertaining and quick, I can already feel myself forgetting the details of the story, as overall it was extremely shallow. This shallowness comes through most in the world building, where while we do get a lot of it, none of it is fully fleshed out (though it seems like the author is building up to a sequel?) It leads to a lot of ‘woah’ moments that never actually come back around, threads left dangling, and general vagueness about the world in general. I can’t actually continue to ponder the book and the world it’s set in and what the ending means for the characters but I don’t have any frame of reference to understand it, no setting to fully place that ending in.

The plot itself was another thing that intrigued me at first but slowly lost its luster. I was into the whole “wow this theme park is awesome but is it????”, but then the story just took a lot of turns that were either too expected or too repetive. Namely, the actual ending of the story, what was being built up in all the trial files and interviews, was pretty easy to guess, either partially or fully, by about 40-50% in the story. On top of that, the author kept coming back to the same dark aspect of the park without ever actually revealing it fully or discussing it openly. It was mainly used to monger fear in the main character, and while every reader knows the truth and can guess from the vagueness, I feel like it should’ve been discussed more openly or used less, not kept in this half shadow.

Lastly, you had the characters themselves. I never really got behind the romance (and I only half liked Ana and Owen at any point in time), so there was this whole binding thread in the novel that didn’t affect me, especially as this romance became more vital to the book. On top of that, I felt like most of the characters (besides a few) felt like cardboard cutouts of each other, specifically the sisters. Only 2 or 3 were ever fully distinguishable from each other, and while in the setting it might be forgivable/understandable, I’m not sure if that was actually the intention of the author. Mainly I just found myself not fully caring about Ana and the cast, so some moments ended up falling flat.

I was still very into this book at points, namely the first 20-30%, and the file format is always something that raises my enjoyment of any book. However, even with the intriguing setting and unique format going for it, I can’t say I really enjoyed this book overall.