Wow, I don't know what I was expecting when I requested a review copy of this book, but this was certainly quite the journey...

In some alternate version of present day(ish) Britain, our unnamed protagonist gets a secret ministry job as a "bridge" for a person who has been rescued from time. Specifically commander Graham Gore who is rescued from a polar expedition in 1847. Her job, amongst other things, is to monitor Commander Gore (or "47" as he becomes known amongst his cohort of time refugees) for any distress time travel may have caused his physical or mental self, and acclimatise him to modern day.

But soon it becomes clear that the time travellers and their bridges are under threat from something or someone more sinister and immediate than the side effects of travelling through time.

I love time travel stories, though they often unravel and become hard to follow. To some extent that is also the case here, but I found it logically consistent enough within itself that the whole mind bendy aspect of time travel didn't bother me. And I cared about Graham, Arthur and Maggie, and was interested and invested in finding out what happened to them and how they would adjust to modern life.

The writing is gorgeous, and there were several passages that hurt me with their beauty, though there were also similes I couldn't quite get on board with.

I probably would have rated this 5 stars if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't quite get on board with the romance. It gave me the ick, somehow. Something about the time refugees being in a vulnerable position and their bridges being in a position of power, and the way Graham was described through most of the book I didn't really read him as a sexual being. I feel like I would have needed to see more romantic interest from his POV earlier on. That said, I was still invested and I was still touched by the ending.

It's a clever, funny, sad, beautiful and thought-provoking book, that I would absolutely recommend.

Part Time-Travel Sci-Fi, Romance, Spy-Thriller set in London in the 2020s, but actually reads like a slice-of-life literary fiction novel most of the time.

The MC is of mixed heritage, her mother is a refugee from Cambodia and her father is British. She’s been working as a translator for some time when she is recruited by the Ministry of Time. She’s going to be the person who explains how the 21st century works for a temporal expat. The two of them are going to be housemates for at least a year.

The expat is one of a group of five temporal refugees, who were extracted shortly before they might have died. Commander Graham Gore is a real life figure from history. He was on the "Terror", one of the ships of Franklin’s expedition to find the North Passage. The fictional Gore of this novel is extracted from a small observation shed in the Arctic in 1847 and now has to find his land-legs in a Britain that is very different from his time. The bridge is supposed to help him.

I liked the premise the book offered, but had my problems with the fanfiction-like writing style, the pacing and its convoluted plot. Very prosaic passages clashed with banter, dialogue and, later on in the book, action sequences. The first two thirds of the book seem slow, compared to the last third when the spy-thriller part of the story kicks in.

The story is narrated in first person POV by the unnamed female MC, except for the beginnings of each chapter, which are third person POV accounts of the expat’s Arctic journey. If this was an account written by the unnamed Ministry employee, why were there passages about Gore and his days in the Arctic at the beginning of each chapter? Where did they come from and how did they make it into this report?
Some of the elements of the story worked better for me than others and all in all it only made sense when I reminded myself that the story is supposed to be the account of the Ministry employee and not a novel. That’s why her rather detached inner monologue about her feelings made sense to me, as well as the above mentioned fanfiction style writing that seemed to be all over the place.

Why the five people were extracted from the past and for what purpose is never fully explained. It was interesting to have five characters from the 17th to 19th century trying to find their way around the 2020s, but this aspect of the novel fell short. I think this book wanted to incorporate too many topics at once (climate change, refugees, racisms, misogynism, homophobia,… to name only a few) and be a romantic story and spy-thriller at the same time.

ARC provided by the publishers via NetGalley.

It's always tricky reviewing such an anticipated book, and one that has received such glowing reviews already. It can be difficult to live up to the hype, and whilst there was a lot to like in Ministry of Time, it fell a touch flat for me, in part because of this. Bradley is a skilled writer, and there’s a lot of excellent prose here. My main issue was towards the last 3/4ths of the book when it takes a slightly more ‘genre-y’ turn and failed to quite stick the landing. There are so many things explored in this novel - slow burn romance, time travel, post-colonialism, otherness and race, displacement - that work so well when combined early on, that when the plot sort of devolves into a more action based ‘typical’ time travel story, I felt we lost the richness that had come before, which led to a slightly muddled, slightly rushed and slightly disappointing ending. I honestly would have been happy to just read a romance that explores all of the themes outlined above, as these were the parts where Bradley’s skills shone. Seeing the ‘expats’ adjust to the 21st century could have filled the whole book alone, as this was such a fresh take on the time travel genre - we didn't need to devolve into cliche. Some of the logic about the 'future' also just didn't quite chime for me - the timescale felt off. The secondary characters felt richly drawn (and I loved Margaret and Arthur in particular), to the degree that I felt I couldn’t quite say the same about the narrator - she’s withholding from us in the text, but we also largely see her in relation to other people. Perhaps this was intentional, but I’d have loved to have delved a little deeper into her psyche at times, as she was compelling, but distant. There were a few jarring moments and/or references for me as someone of the same age and clearly the same level of online-ness as the author (as well as having read an interview with Bradley that stated the books very embryonic origins in ‘The Terror’ fandom, which is also referenced in the acknowledgements at the end) - that I couldn’t quite shake off. I also felt the framing device of the story felt introduced a tad too late, personally, which also made it fall a touch flat. Overall this was a strong debut that didn’t quite match up to my, admittedly high, expectations, but Bradley is clearly an incredibly talented writer, and I look forward to following her career with interest.

Oh yes. This is a very good book. I mean, it’s got time travel so I’m already partially sold but still.

The time travel itself consists of “doors” opening to bring through various people from the past just before their death, including polar explorer Graham Gore and it his “bridge” who the novel follows as she tries to help him settle and navigate in the modern world. There are elements of a once fiction, spy thriller and romance in this book and is just so well written. The characters are wonderfully drawn and I loved reading about their interactions in the future.

Highly recommended.

The author clearly has talent, and this book will find a big audience I'm sure, but it didn't work for me, for a number of reasons.

The humour, which is very present, was more miss than hit for me. There were times in the book where I was reminded of slightly naff BBC sitcoms, as our motley crew of time travellers try to adapt to modern-day England. Humour is very subjective though, and of course lots of other readers will find this aspect a strength.

The romance didn't really work for me. It arrives fairly late on in proceedings and then feels rather rushed.

As for the plot and time-travel elements, which is what I was here for, well this also felt like a late arrival. It was almost as if the first 2/3 of the book was a hilarious "fish out of water" comedy, and then the final third was an action-packed, twisty, sci-fi, spy thriller. I'm usually an absolute dolt when it comes to spotting twists, but I have to say even I could see the "reveals" from some way off. But the end manages to be both predictable and slightly incomprehensible. I may have glazed over a bit in the final sections, but I'm not entirely sure what happened and what the overall lesson was.

I think the author has a very strong "everywoman" voice, in that her main character felt relatable and fun. The book was at it's strongest for me when told in a simple fashion; there were a few passages that seemed levered in to be more "literary", and at times felt oddly-worded or obtuse.

Anyway, not one for me, but as other reviewers have noted, those who enjoy light-hearted, comic, "romantasy" style novels may well love it.

One of my favourite genres is time travel and although this involves people being extracted from the past to the present day we are never really involved in that aspect of it.

The protagonist, a civil servant, becomes a 'bridge' for one of these 'expats' a Graham Gore. A fictionalised version of someone who actually existed. The bridge, we never discover her name, is there to assist the ex=pat in acclimatising to 21st century life. The blurb states that it is comedic yet it never made me laugh. Perhaps my sense of humour has failed.

The book covers a year in which their lives as a 19th century man comes to terms with woman power, climate change, technology and the knowledge of what happened to his contempories.

In part, the book is about the decisions we make and how those decisions take us down different paths. There is a mix up of different dimentions to that effect.

I do not think I will read this again. The plot twists now being known, The BBC has aquired the rights to adapt this book and it will be interesting to see how they go about that.

I think my biggest let down was that none of the characters came to life for me. A shame as the premise was good and different.

3 stars as at one point I did wonder whether I could finish, I am glad I did.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

It was a delight to read something so inventive and different, that was at the same time historical and precisely modern, witty and thought-provoking.

3.8
Commander Gore is unexpectedly pulled from the past into an unknown word, he is living with his bridge, a stranger. He is not alone, there are other time travellers, who need to adjust to this new reality.
Why are they here and are they safe?

The thing I enjoyed more in this book is the intricacies of the relationship between Commander Gore and his bridge, and the time travellers discovering the new world.

The problem with time travel in science fiction novels - or the fun with SF time travel adventures if you like - is that it has unforeseen consequences. Some writers choose to ignore the paradox it creates and just explore the opportunities it offers, others have their own strictly defined rules. Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time takes the consequences part of it all relatively seriously, but has fun with the concept at the same time. But then, if/when we have time travel, you would expect that the matter be taken very seriously, so seriously in fact that, as the title suggests, that the British government has set up a whole department to deal with the ramifications, approaching the matter cautiously, but at the same time not in a particularly ethical manner. That's the fun part. Unfortunately the rest of the novel has mixed ideas about how seriously the author wants to write about science-fiction or indulge in romantic fantasy.

Initially however there is much amusement in a Tom Holt fashion at the curiosities of British manners and the incompetence of its authorities to run anything successfully. When it comes to the discovery of a time portal, the sensible thing to do would be to proceed cautiously, which the top secret Ministry do here by recklessly bringing historical figures from the past into the present day to see what impact it has on the human psyche, although you suspect that they might have other purposes in mind as well. It's going to be quite a jolt for the subjects being brought from the past, or 'expats' as they are called, and as they struggle to adjust it doesn't look like too many of them are going to survive the mental trauma.

Each of the expats have been chosen because they are soon to die in the period they are from. If they are going to die anyway, it's not so much of a loss, and it will cause fewer temporal disturbances. To help them adjust, they are assigned an agent, known as a “bridge”, to monitor and guide them through the progress, hopefully with some of them not entirely losing their minds. 'Samples' are taken from 1646, 1665, 1793, 1847 and 1916. The narrator, a mixed race recruit from Languages, is assigned as bridge to 'forty-seven', First Lieutenant Graham Gore, an explorer on the HMS Erebus that along with the HMS Terror, lost all its crew on a failed expedition in the Arctic in the mid-nineteenth century.

There is some amusement in a Victorian era Royal Navy Officer's attempts to relate to his more liberated female bridge and her modern ways, which doesn't so much make fun of the politically backward racism and imperialist, sexist ways of the past, but serves rather to reflect the absurdity of our modern age back at us by viewing it through the eyes of the past. Confronted with television Gore remarks “You can send dioramas through the ether, and you've used it to show people at their most wretched.” “No one's forcing you to watch EastEnders”, is the comeback.

The first half of the book spends a long time musing and amusing over these cultural differences and use of language, but it comes at the expense of really driving forward what you would think is the more interesting point of the discovery of a time machine and the use it is being put to. There are hints of seemingly minor and inexplicable problems, like the subjects not showing on scanner, the bridge's handler going silent, just enough for you to suspect that things are eventually going to go very wrong. After all, if you have a time machine in the present day to go back to the past, you can be fairly sure that they will have one in the future too.

This kind of speculation remains very much in the background however, while the novel gets bogged down to diminishing returns in social interaction between the expats and the bridge getting hot under the collar sharing living quarters with a handsome heroic figure from the past. Even when serious incidents happen, they seem like just the backdrop to the progression of the novel into bodice ripper erotic fantasies about rugged naval officer shyly being introduced to the sexual inhibitions of the 21st century.

How much you will enjoy The Ministry of Time might then depend on what expectations you might have for it. If you are expecting a science-fiction time-travel adventure or the implications that playing with a time machine can have on future/past events, then this only really comes into play in a hurried reveal close to the conclusion. If you are looking to see some serious exploration of cultural differences between different time periods and their incompatibility, there are intriguing hints about the difficulties of feeling like we don't really fit in with the attitudes and behaviours of our own time period, but even this is somewhat under-developed. If you are happy though with the Romance category taking precedence over the Science-Fiction, then you might enjoy The Ministry of Time rather more than I did.

Brilliant premise and completely original - it starts out as a sci-fi time-travel experiment and then morphs into a love story and then into a thriller and is interspersed with flashbacks into Graham Gore’s time in the Artic and thoughtful commentary on race and climate change. A true original that I can definitely see being adapted for the screen.

A civil servant who has struggled and failed to pass the exams for field agent, is offered a mysterious new job at an improbably high salary It transpires that the Ministry has discovered the time door, through which individuals may be plucked from the past, and retrieved into modern life. Her job is as a 'bridge', to mentor an individual for their initiation. Her first ward is commander Gore, an English sailor who disappeared from Franklin's doomed expedition to find the North west Passage in the 1840s. As the Ministry is focussing on how the reclaimed people from the past may be turned into useful assets it becomes clear that someone is trying to take them out. Is there a mole in the Ministry.? Are there foreign agents? Its a classic fast moving spy thriller built on a sci-fi premise. Great fun.

Goodreads describes Kaliane Bradley‘s The Ministry of Time as ‘A time travel romance, a speculative spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingeniously constructed exploration of the nature of truth and power and the potential for love to change it’ and I’m here to tell you if that’s really true.

This book is certainly many of those things, but I think that description fails to highlight some of the key features of the novel, and more importantly (I think), the vibe. I can only describe this story as chaos. We have a slightly unreliable, often out of control narrator, who struggles with her own identity and place in the world, who’s given the responsibility of ‘ex-pat’ Commander Graham Gore (time-travelled by the government from 1847). Her job as a ‘bridge’, is to help him acclimatize to the 21st century. What could go wrong, you ask? Throwing these two together has several consequences, some of which are hilarious (see: chicken bag) and some which are heartbreakingly sad.

Our protagonist, unnamed, seems to make all the wrong choices - she has this unhinged way of justifying everything she does. I found it difficult to like her at times, yet still felt myself rooting for her in the end. She just seems slightly pathetic but still trying her best (aren’t we all)! I definitely understood why she did certain things but I still found myself going ‘oh no…….’ semi-regularly. The story is being told from a future perspective, and Bradley casually drops in several lines such as ‘If only I’d known how it would turn out’ which created a lot of great tension! I want to know how it turned out! (And once I did find out, well… let’s just say the payoff is good!)

The secondary characters are all brilliantly fleshed out - they’re all incredibly well researched, and my absolute fave is Margaret and her extreme conversion to feminism (legend alert). There are several other expats from different eras and their bridges, and she’s thoroughly researched each era with such care that you can very easily differentiate who is from when and how it affects the choices they make.

Bradley has also woven in some very serious topics, like racism, refugee politics, colonialism, slavery and inherited trauma. The expats are a microcosm of how real-life refugees are treated by our government, and our protagonist is modeled on Bradley herself, being British-Cambodian. I thought this was pretty clever, because she did as we were always told in English class - write what you know! And I found it pretty cool getting to know the author and her experiences through this character.

This book has a lot of fab elements: LGBT representation, serious topics, time travel twists and a couple of steamy scenes. However, my ultimate feelings about it are mixed. I thought it was well-written, well-researched, and had some quirky memorable characters. It’s an interesting concept too, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the BBC series turns out.

But I also think there was just too much going on. At times, I didn’t know what the intention was. It felt like it was trying to do too much at once, be the witty complicated romance between a modern woman and a 19th century sailor, but also critique the government’s treatment of refugees and explore subsequent generational trauma, BUT THEN also throw in some wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey time travel stuff? I felt like I didn’t know where I stood half the time. I liked what the book was trying to do, and I’ll definitely watch the series when it comes out, but overall, I give it a solid 3.5 stars out of 5.

The Ministry of Time will be published on 14th May at all your favourite retailers. Thanks to Netgalley, Hodder & Stoughton and Sceptre for the early review copy!

I was really looking forward to this book as I usually enjoy anything time travel related. Unfortunately this book was just a little too complex at times and I struggled to recall all the characters. Would make a fascinating mini series though!

This isn’t a genre of book I’d usually read however it was totally captivating from the first page. Reminded me of a Dr Who storyline, once again, not something I’m deeply into! It’s futuristic, romantic, scary in places and thought provoking, I did get a tad bored half way through but am pleased I pushed on through to what was a sweet ending. There were a few unexpected twists and turns throughout and I could see this being successfully adapted for tv or film.

Thank you to Netgalley the author and publishers for an arc in exchange for an honest review

I adored this book, a blend of so many of my favourite things: historical fiction and thriller, romance and time travel. It has some of the best dialogue of any book I’ve ever read and I have joined the leagues of readers to fall for the charms of Commander Graham Gore.

It’s funny and clever, thrilling and sad. Bradley is smart with her treatment of colonialism and the juxtaposition of a British-Cambodian woman with an officer serving at the height of the British Empire. She doesn’t shy away from writing about the devastating effects climate change will have.

Around the halfway point I started wondering if I “enjoyed” this read rather than “loved” it, mainly down to the main character’s (whose name we never learn) wobble in the story she’s telling. But it all gets so exciting in the last 25% and then wraps up so beautifully that I had to give it 5 stars.

Above all: it’s a book to read for three of the characters and the vividness with which they appear on the page. Their observations on the near-future modern love are absolutely wonderful: Commander Graham Gore (removed from the Franklin Expedition in the arctic where he would have died), Arthur (removed from the World War I battle he would have died in) and Margaret (who would have died of the Plague in the 17th century).

The Ministry of Time follows a civil servant who works for the Ministry. The ministry collects expats from different historical time periods to see how the time travels affects them. The expats died in their time period so bringing them to a new time period doesn’t damage time. She is in charge of 1847 aka Commander Graham Gore (who was a real man in history). Gore died on a doomed expedition to the arctic so its hard for him to adapt to the modern day with things like a flushing toilet and Spotify. He soon adjusts to his new reality but romance could be developing between Gore and his bridge.

This was fun, and I liked how different this felt to other time travel novels. However, I did start to lose interest after 25% because I just struggled to care about the relationship between the bridge and Gore. Overall, I am giving it 4 stars for its uniqueness. There has been some allegations of plagiarism but it’s my understanding that they are false claims by people who have not read the book so I definitely recommend giving this a try.

I loved this story that mixes romance, humour, time travel and made me think of a more chaotic and futuristic version of Jody Taylor's St Mary Chronicles.
Well plotted, entertaining, excellent world building and character development.
Loved it
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I really wanted to love this given the hype I've seen about it online. I really enjoyed the premise, but as with most time-travel narratives, it ended up being both woolly and overly complicated as it tried to come to a dramatic conclusion. I liked the first two thirds, but felt the final third left me feeling flat.

Found this a little slow paced but persevered and Found it to be a really good story. I enjoy books about time travel and this one is a little different to the norm. Glad I kept on reading.

People are being transported back from an earlier time to the near current day.
Each person brought back has a handler responsible for explaining changes and modern innovations to those transported back. They have to observe their partners for signs of mental instability and problems trying to cope.
What is the purpose of the experiment and what is the Ministry trying to achieve.
Who is the mysterious Brigadier and what is he trying to do in the program. Commander Gore is brought back from the doomed Shackleton expedition and seems to cope better than the others and his handler, a mixed race (English/Cambodean) woman finds herself emotionally entangled and tries to understand what her real purpose is and why the project selected Commander Gore.
Interesting take on time travel and how people from different eras react to changes in the modern world.