Kirkus Reviews calls Matthew Flaming’s debut novel, The Kingdom of Ohio, “impossible to resist,” praising its “marrying poetic prose with hints of steampunk aesthetics.” Closer to home, the Stranger‘s Paul Constant labels it “just deadly dull,” adding that “There’s nothing in the central mystery to entice the reader on.”
So clearly it sparks differences of opinion. For me, this Booklicious review nails down the general outlines, and discontinuities, of the work: “Part historical fiction, part alternate reality, and wholly romantic, Flaming’s novel is a conglomerate of popular publishing trends and timeless storytelling elements.”
The daily life of a turn-of-the-century New York subway construction worker is vividly evoked; the Kingdom of Toledo’s founding by French pilgrims is carefully footnoted; the unlikely romance between young engineer Peter Force and math genius Cheri-Anne Toledo springs up amid their opposition to a powerful cabal starring J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison.
All is recounted by a peculiar old historian, closing up shop in Los Angeles, who is less convincingly elderly than reminiscent of that stodgy younger man you know who annoyingly litters his speech with literary archaisms. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, young men fond of archaisms, it’s just not as significant of advanced age as it is of advanced bookwormery.)
There’s an ambition to this agglomeration that isn’t actually to write the ultra-selling novel, but to powerfully reimagine a splintering world as worlds of possibility colliding–this, sadly, is a task that exceeds Flaming’s abilities, as yet, as a novelist. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
“Clarity in general isn’t one of my strengths,” our narrator admits early on, and you will come to agree with him, especially as regards the powerful cabal’s plot, which I cannot for the life of me summarize. (Neither is characterization, but that hasn’t stopped Dan Brown, has it?) As with many a first novel, the reader is likely to become frustrated by immersion in the story, and being bounced out of it.
It’s too bad that Flaming was allowed to remain so enamored of his disjunctive leaps through time, because he overshoots what the reader needs to know by decades, and provides his research for the novel (real and fictionally constructed research) in place of story. And a better editor would have waved off lines like, “To put it succinctly–have you heard of the Royal House of Toledo?” followed shortly by, “Suffice to say, my family and I were under attack.”
Not to pile on, but the nearby text includes wine described as a “ruby liquid,” a “surly waitress,” and Cheri-Anne leaning forward “conspiratorially.” That lavender prose clangs fiercely with Peter Force’s Tarzan-like laconic speech:
“Maybe.” He considers. “Dangerous, though. Could bring the whole tunnel down on us. Or could be a pocket of gas behind that wall–kill us just as quick.”
The net result is not that there’s one good story buried inside, but a few promising ones, with only the relationship of Peter and Cheri-Anne finding its way to a climactic moment. To use the novel’s mining terminology, the rest of the veins dry up. Still, let’s face it, depending upon your reading interests, you could do plenty worse, and that’s without limiting yourself to first novels.