Wynfield's Kingdom

A Tale of the London Slums

Fiction - Historical - Personage
468 Pages
Reviewed on 02/10/2016
Buy on Amazon

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    Book Review

Reviewed by Emily White for Readers' Favorite

Wynfield's Kingdom: A Tale of the London Slums by Marina Julia Neary is a historical fiction set in the 1830s in the heart of one of London's most notorious slums. Dr. Thomas Grant adopts a ten-year-old thief who was beaten for disobeying his gang leader. Wynfield grows up, but life isn't much better than it was on the streets. He's an opium addict who steals and resells guns from a weapons factory. At night, he entertains crowds of the poor with the help of his girlfriend, who suffers from such madness that she believes beauty and joy will remain out of her reach forever. But Wynfield begins to believe that he is meant for something larger than this life, that he has a bigger purpose to fulfill. He never dreams it involves overthrowing the class system and those wealthier than him, and he hopes he is strong enough for the challenge.

Wynfield's Kingdom is dark, passionate, and intense. The humor is black and there are many grotesque emotions; madness and suffering plague the entire story. Marina Julia Neary dropped me straight into the darkness of Victorian London. She hit on many important issues like hopelessness, courage, desire, abandonment, cruelty, class, and a man's journey for more out of life. The characters are complex and well-defined. She guides the story with a powerful narrative that showcases her understanding of politics and class during this time. And there are so many plot twists that I was engaged throughout the entire story and didn't want to put it down until I'd reached the end.