Kaliane Bradley

The Publisher Says: A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I know how petty and spoiled I'm going to sound in this review, but I can't, in good conscience, ignore this extremely promising debut novel. I'm a complete sucker for time-travel novels and stories, and all the weirdness that accompanies the (incorrect, in my opinion) History-changing antics of time travelers. (I think there are many worlds in the multiverse.) The notion here presented of making use of the lives of those who died too soon for Other Ends is one with a lot of appeal to me.

And yet this is a five-star idea in a four-star book. I love the idea! I like the execution because it's not fussy, doesn't cram in irrelevancies but *does* offer squads and fleets of enriching details, bothe about the past and the story-present, just a bit down our own road. So what's wrong?

She makes the spy story an excuse to tell this fundamentally romantic story, not this idea to propel a spy story. The way it's resolved is good just not great, and that's down to the wrong-endedness of the grasp. Nameless Narratrix is, it's absurdly evident from the get-go, going to fall in love with her new "expat" (coy bureaucratese for "kidnapped time-traveling hostage") and they are going to Do the Deed. I'm on record as not liking heterosex in my life, no matter where it comes from, so this was never going to work for me. But after thinking a lot about this book and its wonderful humor, its inventive take on the purposes of time travel, and its very well-limned characters, I realized I'd be just as tetchy if Nameless had been a man bedding a man the way god intended.

The problem for me is that I think the romantic plot is just too similar to the squads and fleets of inferior iterations of Outlander that litter the romance-reader's landscape. Why do more of the same? Well, in this case, because 1) it sells, and b) it's vastly...enormously...better-done than anything else in its competition.

But here's whiny little me, moaning "just leave it out!" as Nameless and her "expat" have headboard-smashing sex. Y'all are voting with your wallets, the book's a hit and rightly so! But it isn't the book I wanted.

Hence four, not five, stars. And my shamefaced admission that this is NOT the review that this book merited.… (más)

The Ministry of Time is a soft sci-fi romance between a 10-minutes-from-now modern woman and a 19th century naval officer. It is also the story of a planet in climate crisis, and it is about empire and generational trauma, and it is about breaking free of the story laid out for you. I found many parts of it compelling: the romance in particular worked for me, and I also thought a lot of the dialogue and character beats were quite funny. The book is structured with interludes after each chapter into the historical events the male main character, Commander Gore of the HMS Erebus, experienced as a part of Franklin’s lost expedition. I have more than zero knowledge of that particular incident as a fan of the TV show The Terror (much like the author herself), and so these interludes were of questionable utility for me. Once I read the author’s note and understood she included them partly out of deference to people who are not already familiar they made a little more sense.
Towards the end of the novel, as we careen towards a conclusion, I started to lose the plot a little – I understand everything that happened, I just am not sure I felt satisfied by the final act. I’m picky about endings though, especially for stories I enjoy, so I think that may be a personal thing. Overall this is an exciting debut from someone I share more than a few interests with, so I’m curious to see more from her in the future.… (más)

2.7 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

'We have time-travel,’ she said, like someone describing the coffee machine. ‘Welcome to the Ministry.’

Set some time in the not too distant future, The Ministry of Time opens up with an intriguing concept, time travel exists and the United Kingdom's government controls it. Told all from the point-of-view of a woman who previously worked in the languages department, she applies for an internal job wanting the higher pay. When the Ministry section of the government hires her to be a “bridge”, her life changes. I thought this started off strongly with an intriguing concept, The Ministry has selected people from different timelines that from recorded history, they know die in their own timeline. Our narrator's a bridge (someone who stays with the “expat” for a year to help them transition) for a Commander Graham Gore. Graham's an actual real historical figure which I thought gave this a slight fanfiction feel, to it's scifi and speculative fiction.

Ideas have to cause problems before they cause solutions.

It's all a little murky as to why the government has decided to pick these people and what exactly they're doing, our narrator's a company woman and doesn't question too much in the beginning. After I thought was a strong scifi start, the middle stagnated in pace and we get lost in our narrator's head for awhile. There's the transition of assimilating a man who died in 1847 to a twenty-first century London, along with the narrator's attraction to him. A lot of the attraction was already built as she's read his personal letters, knows his story, and romanticized him through this knowledge and liking a daguerreotype existing picture of him. For Graham's part, since we don't have his pov, he's a not a clear readable character; it seems he could be attracted to her but it could also be him trying to play his cards right. I've seen Outlander comparisons and I would caution reading this for the romance because you'd probably be disappointed (there were a few open door scenes but those alone do not a romance make).

The middle also explored inherited trauma and warring with helping your country but not enabling their same made mistakes. Our narrator is the daughter of a Cambodian refugee and she carries some of her mother's trauma which creates some push and pull in “just following orders”. We get introduced to some of the other bridges and expats, with two of them, a WWI soldier and black plague survivor playing bigger secondary character roles. Through their experiences to the new world, we get some discussions on gay rights and feminism.

The truth is, it won’t get better if you keep making the same mistakes.

After the more sluggish middle, the latter second half picked up speed with the building spy thriller aspect and what The Ministry is actually trying to do. There are some hints sprinkled throughout that you could kind of guess where the story is going (I wasn't hundred percent correct) and we get some action and takes on climate change. When dealing with time travel, there are always going to be some holes, this had those with some of the “whys” not fully answered and the “hereness” and “thereness” not completely making sense. The romance wasn't the strongest and the thriller aspect waiting around too long to fully hit, giving some of a rushed ending feeling. The discussions and takes on racism, trauma, sexism, imperialism, and other issues had some mealy mouth, I get the narrator is working through them herself, but it left me feeling like not a lot was said when done. This was a whole bunch of elements mixed together that I'm not sure all fully got realized and created a got lost on it's way middle that really slowed the pace and dented it's impact for me.… (más)

Set in the near future, we are introduced to a civil servant, who has been working beneath her capability. She is suddenly offered a job that really excites her. Not only for the salary boost but for the challenges this job presents. A newly formed government ministry has been experimenting with time travel and they have been plucking “expats” from different times in history and bringing them back to the present to study the effects of time-travel. She is tasked with working as a “bridge”, living with and monitoring a Commander Graham Gore. Gore was on a doomed Arctic expedition in 1845.
There is plenty of fun in this story, as these two develop a deep friendship and Gore is introduced to all the modern developments in this modern age. Some he detests and some he enjoys. This is a fresh spin on this genre, filled with memorable characters and a fast narrative. A solid debut.… (más)