... a dense, suspenseful bundle of Norwegian noir ... At 549 pages, The Kingdom (named after the Opgard’s family farm) feels as much like a miniseries as a novel. You’re so curious about what the next episode will bring that even if you’ve stepped away from the book for a meal or a good night’s sleep, you feel like one of those 19th-century readers who stormed the New York Harbor, awaiting the arrival of a new installment of a Dickens novel ... The sometimes droll, sometimes eerily affectless, occasionally enraged narrator is Roy ... While brutal emotional injury is at the center of the novel, social change is what keeps the Opgard family saga churning ... Scandinavian noir is famous for its gore, and while The Kingdom isn’t lacking in that department, most of what’s grisly here is psychological. There’s some excellent Albee-esque relational to-ing and fro-ing among Roy, Carl and Shannon, the wife Carl brings to Os from Canada ... Why do mentally healthy readers want to spend time with these godawful people? Writers like Nesbo have that knack for instilling just enough humanity in their miscreants that we keep hoping they might, if not repent, then at least acknowledge their moral scuzziness. Or, being morally imperfect ourselves, we sort of hope they don’t get caught — at least not yet ... Buddhists — and any number of Presbyterians — will know that The Kingdom can only end in one way, and most souls will find Nesbo’s finish both a relief and — don’t look while I flagellate myself — a bit of a disappointment ... Not at all disappointing is the great bulk of this generally mesmerizing novel, including its occasional wit.
The Kingdom is a masterpiece that will hit the mark for crime fiction lovers, and also for readers who don’t swear by any genre... There is intrigue in every direction, as Nesbo recreates each facet of life in a small Norwegian village ... While you read The Kingdom, you’ll sense a deeper current carrying you ... Yet at the same time, Nesbo’s storytelling keeps a whole series of events and characters frothing at the surface, dipping into humour one page and tragedy the next. It all feels immediate and real, so when Roy’s logic gets a little twisted you’ll roll with it because you’ll buy into him, and the rest of the people in Os for that matter. The deeply engaging, skilful storytelling of The Kingdom reminded me of The Little Friend by Donna Tartt.
The closest this book comes to Nesbo’s customary darkness and luridness is a brief scene in which a character disguises himself by wearing the scalp of a dead man whose corpse is later dissolved in a bath of a cleaning fluid called Fritz. And although it’s set in a mountain village in rural Norway, The Kingdom in some ways seems more American in tone than Scandinavian ... [The protagonist is] also a much more leisurely storyteller than the one who narrates the Hole books, and in the beginning the book seems less a mystery story than a Faulknerian saga about sibling rivalry and sexual jealousy ... I think Nesbo also means to suggest that this rural Norway is a place of great natural beauty. The trouble is that he’s not very good at describing it—or Roy isn’t ... The Kingdom begins slowly and only gradually picks up speed, until Roy is swept up in the momentum of his own story. The ending is sudden and startling and—to me, anyway—a bit of a psychological stretch. To get your head around it you have to question everything you thought you knew about the two brothers. The ending also puts you in the morally compromised position of hoping that justice won’t be done. In the much more violent Hole books evil is always exorcised, however briefly, and for that reason they’re much more comforting.
Mr. Nesbo doesn’t spare the reader a single excruciating detail. Vivid characters speak dialogue that is always pungent and convincing, although Robert Ferguson’s translation is sometimes awkward and unidiomatic, especially in longer descriptive passages ... there are shocks and surprises at every turn ... Mr. Nesbo explores the depths of the human psyche, along with more mundane foibles of a closed society. One of the more interesting questions, not resolved until the end, is just who will survive.
...intricately plotted ... Nesbø's affinity for dark stories takes another leap as he explores the unshakable bonds of Roy and Carl that go beyond being siblings ... With The Kingdom, Nesbø builds a slow-burn thriller that leaps to myriad twists as he peels back the brothers' strong relationship, which is partially built on terrible secrets and tinged with violence.
... starts slowly, but one gets enthralled by Roy’s detailed narrative of his bloody family. His narrative jumps back and forth in time, but the selection and arrangement of events offers a vivid picture why Roy acts as he does. Nesbo is always a great storyteller. The world he depicts is bleak and potentially depressing, but he presents it with relentless power. There are moments when the narrative gets a bit far-fetched and it becomes clear that a stretch of guard rail on a hairpin curve would have radically changed the story. Still, the contrast between Roy’s calm narrative and the horrors that take place give this saga of intense love and betrayal enormous tension.
Nesbo sinks his teeth into a village full of fascinating characters to bring us this standalone novel that the reader will immediately be immersed in, but likely not be able to leave nearly so easily ... through Nesbo’s exquisite writing, though we see this world through Roy, we are able to clearly understand the motivations of other characters, even when Roy does not ... There are some twists and reveals in the story where the reader may be able to predict the ‘what’ but will still be completely engrossed in learning the ‘how’ and the ‘why' ... an epic tale of contrasts as it sees people (and life) as both beautiful and harsh, looks at people in the village as cogs in a machine while those living outside the village are almost anonymous strangers, and sees just how ugly the beautiful concept of brotherly love can be.
... a somewhat different book for Jo Nesbø. It is a stand-alone novel that has many more slow-boil elements than any of the entries in his Harry Hole series. However, those who have followed Nesbø from the beginning or arrived as latecomers to his work will find much to love here ... intermittently bounces back and forth between the past and present, so while the plot that runs through the book is deceptively straightforward, every page or two contains a small revelation or surprise that intersects with others. This creates a tangle of intricate branches that cause the players to be revealed as much more complicated than they would seem ... I thought that I had the ending figured out on multiple occasions and was wrong every time. Whatever disappointment I initially experienced upon learning that this was not a Harry Hole novel evaporated within the first few pages and never reappeared. No one who reads The Kingdom will ever forget it or its author, who deserves a place at the summit of the must-read list of anyone who enjoys dark quality literature. I also would be remiss if I did not offer a tip of the fedora to Robert Ferguson for his fine and nuanced translation, which picks up on Nesbø’s wondrous turns of phrase and gifts them to his English-speaking readers.
... a bleakly captivating stand-alone thriller ... Nesbø ‘s slow-burn thriller is guaranteed to be in high demand. As the story unfolds, it builds in dread and depravity. The small-town atmosphere resembles a Peyton Place as envisioned in an unlikely collaboration between Raymond Chandler and Henrik Ibsen. The complex characters and twisting plot will keep readers turning the pages and eager to discuss.
... a creepy stand-alone ... Nesbø brilliantly uses the insularity of Roy’s world, both internally and externally, to accentuate the Shakespearean inevitability of the impending tragedy.
... the murky, violent twists on brotherly love that you’d expect from this leading exponent of Nordic noir ... Nesbø peels away the secrets surrounding Carl’s project, his backstory, and his connections to his old neighbors so methodically that most readers, like frogs in a gradually warming pan of water, will take quite a while to realize just how extensive, wholesale, and disturbing those secrets really are. The illusions of a family and its close-knit town constructed and demolished on a truly epic scale
