The Kingdom of Ohio

Written by Matthew Flaming

Published by Amy Einhorn Books

322 Pages

Review by Jessica Eberhardt

Receives:

Time travel, history, inventions, technology, happenstance, and love. These are just a few of the many plot twists Matthew Flaming incorporates into the 322 pages of his debut novel, The Kingdom of Ohio. The plot turns around two fictional characters and a supporting cast of real-life inventors who helped to shape the world we live in.

The story takes place in the early 1900s when Peter Force arrives in New York City to land a job digging the subway. Through chance he meets Cheri-Anne Toledo, who claims to be a descendant of the King of Ohio. She says she has traveled through time on a machine of her own design, and somehow she has landed in New York City. Her tales about her family’s kingdom in Ohio seem outlandish, and Peter wants to dismiss her as crazy. But she’s a beautiful girl, and he’s intrigued enough to be pulled into her story. Along the way Peter encounters such notables as Nicola Tesla, J.P. Morgan, and Thomas Edison. Then, as the pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together, Peter realizes that Cheri-Anne may be telling the truth after all. In an odd inclusion for a novel, there are academic-like footnotes lining the pages, and we learn more about the lives of Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison than we may want to know. There is also fair attention given to the technological revolution we are still living today. Finally, the love story between Peter and Cheri-Anne is one of the prevailing plot turns here, and it is the most interesting part of this story.

I don’t usually like to use the word interesting to describe a book since the word interesting itself is not very interesting, yet that is the best word I can use to describe The Kingdom of Ohio. It is unique in its blending of genres, including time travel, science, romance, historical fiction, and philosophical meandering. I have to admit that it took some time for me to warm up to this story because while Flaming’s prose is easy on the eyes and ears, I had some problems staying interested in the beginning. I just didn’t feel connected enough to either Peter, Cheri-Anne, or the elderly narrator who fades in and out of a linear storyline to tell his tale, which can make the plot difficult to follow at times. The identity of the elderly narrator is no great surprise, and the use of footnotes in a novel is jarring. Still, as the story progressed I began enjoying it more. By the end, I was impressed with Flaming’s style and I came to appreciate the scope of the story.

I flipped back and forth between giving this story three or four quills. I was closer to giving it three and a half quills, but I finally decided to give it four. While not exactly forgiving its flaws, overall I enjoyed Flaming’s style. He has obviously done his research on this period of the later days of the Industrial Revolution, and his use of real-life historical figures adds depth to the imagined story. I liked the details surrounding Cheri-Anne’s history, and most of all I appreciated the love story between Peter and Cheri-Anne. It is the love between those two characters that makes the rest of the story matter. ______________________________________________________________

Jessica Eberhardt is a writer and reviewer from San Francisco, California. She is currently completing her second historical novel set in Caesar’s Rome.