Joe Tournier has no memory of how he got to London, though he's assured he is the slave of a kindly Frenchman and is simply suffering from a strange form of epilepsy leading to memory loss. This doesn't stop him occasionally remembering a man waiting for him at a beach, or wondering about the postcard featuring a lighthouse, asking him to come back if he remembers. He doesn't remember, but he wants to, and so he follows the postcard and the man all the way to the Napoleonic wars.

This book was an adventure in the truest sense. Up until the very end, I had no idea how the threads could possibly come together. Despite figuring several things out early-ish on, the end was a surprise. Full notes under spoiler tag.

***Spoilers***

What I loved:

Kite. Kite was a great, complex, interesting character and I felt at the end as if there was still so much more of him to know. Also, I will forever be a sucker for the character who believes himself to be hopelessly pining forever after someone unattainable and is therefor colder and crueler to them. Natasha Pulley has an excellent knack for being unflinching with her characters and having them be genuinely deeply morally grey in unpleasant ways.

Another great tendency of Pulley's in my opinion is well-thought-out magical realism. The time travel portal is a one way trip for Jem, because when he goes back, the future has changed - and it happens again! And it keeps happening! The implications are frankly staggering and horrific, and Pulley does not pull punches with them. I also like how at the end, once Joe knows, he can't unknow and witnesses the changes as they happen, and also that his previous epileptic deja vu moments were probably moments when the past was changing.

What I have mixed feelings about:

Jem having three(!) dead wives. That's the big one. This already happened in Pepperharrow, that the interesting and complex female lead genuinely believes one of the male leads is insane and has to be killed, and then she dies a tragic death, leaving room for the two male leads to get together. I know it's not entirely period appropriate, but I wish there were less women dying in this book.

An add-on to that is that I knew pretty early on that Joe was Jem, and that Madeline was his wife. it just seemed pretty logical to me. This also meant that a lot of the book while Joe was waiting to figure it out was deeply frustrating to me. The latter is NOT a criticism - I really liked that, it put me SO MUCH in Joe's headspace because I was right there with him, begging him to just remember already. In terms of the romance though, I kind of wish we got more time with a Joe who knows he was Jem, or in Jem's POV in the past, because it left some of his decision-making about Agatha and Kite kind of opaque. And also, he and Kite suffered so much, I kinda wanted them to get more time to enjoy their happy ending. But that's a me issue.