The premise sounds great, but the story is lost and rambling, right until the end where it gives you a lecture about the possible future of our world if we don't look after it. The story of the lost Franklin expedition is interesting, however fails to make a real connection with the plot. Some parts read ok, but others are like when a writer tries to write so cleverly and cryptically, but actually fail to make a lot of sense.

Completely brilliant, funny and heartbreaking. Who knew I needed a time-travel spy thriller romance in my life this badly?

A civil servant languages expert has been offered a high level job working with Expats from history she is assigned Commander Graham Gore rescues from certain death on a doomed expedition to discover the North West passage in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. Her job is to explain everything that has happened since 1847 from the concept of germs to the lack of domestic servants and to deal with him taking the toilet apart "to see how it works". We follow his and the other Expats progress, it's an interesting if somewhat bleak read. Highly inventive and not predictable.

A civil servant gets the job of a lifetime- she has been chosen to be a bridge for a time traveller! In the not too distant future, time travel is in its infancy. This experiment is too see how people who have died can be brought forward in time can adjust as well as see if this impacts on the timeline. Our narrator ( it is annoying that I can't think of her name!)is paired with a member of Shackleton's ill-fated voyage.

It is a fascinating concept with humorous, touching events. When our narrator falls in love with her bridge I really wanted there to be a happy ending. This was a wonderful & unusual book. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this super book.

Phew, this book was definitely.. something. The idea and general concept were super interesting and the characters were unique, gritty and real. Not necessarily good or relatable (for me) or someone I'd like to befriend, but they were real.

The biggest issue for me was the slow pacing and a ton of foreshadowing over the first half of the book, which never really got relieved or explained.. I mean yes, it does pick up the pace and there are a few unexpected twists towards the end, but in my opinion it doesn't explain the frequent repetition of "if only I had known"...

The whole love story also didn't feel relatable for me, because we see so little of it, yet it's supposed to be this great romance that spans time (literally). Only afterwards did I find out it was also marketed as Romance and I don't at all see why? I found it rather problematic with both characters somehow fetishizing each other while not really making time to learn each others' cultural and historical backgrounds 😬 The interesting parts for me were the adjustments of the "expats" to modern culture. Those scenes were endearing, interesting, eye-opening and I wish there would have been more of them.

The whole ministry-jargon and also many of the references to British culture and discussions between Simellia and our protagonist were completely lost on me, of course mainly due to me being not British and having no idea how their ministries (or any tbh) and the hierarchies there work. Thus the whole political intrigue stuff was mainly confusing, also because a lot of things were only alluded to but never spelled out, leaving anyone without pre-existing knowledge outside the metaphorical door.

Regarding the writing style, it wasn't really my cup of tea and I found it often a bit exhausting to read (also because Netgalley provided the arc as a PDF which was terrible to read on my phone). The metaphors often fell a little short or were so unusual that I had to think about them, which interrupted my reading flow. Still it's written eloquently, in a distinct style and with gritty details.

So overall mixed feelings, mainly just not my cup of tea I think, though the idea was really unique and interesting 😊

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion 😊

This is easily my favourite book that I’ll read this year. So touching, effortless, and compelling. I fell in love with the Expats and would do anything for more of them, but a standalone novel is all the better for having an ending, Truly exquisite.

In this intriguing twist on a time travel / espionage tale, we meet our protagonist as she is promoted from a low-level translator for the British government to a “bridge”, i.e., someone looking after one of the numerous people that have been extracted from their own place in time to the present day, for reasons not immediately made clear.

Her relationship with the Graham, the ex-pat Arctic explorer from 1847, starts as a humerous, odd couple-esque story, but quickly develops into a slow burn romance. As the intentions of the government ministry’s experiment become clear, the genre once again shifts to more of a spy novel, with action-packed sequences and some twisty turns.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. I found the writing really refreshing and fun, and loved both the main characters and the supporting cast. It was not quite like anything I’ve read before, but I think the blending of genres worked really well. I would recommend to any fans of time travel, historical romance and/or spy stories (not a sentence I've ever written before!)

My thanks to the author, NetGalley, and the publisher for the arc to review.

This novel did not live up to the hype, which was frustrating as it had so much potential! It possibly tried to do too many things at once. The writing style felt stilted, as there was something very clinical about it. This made it hard for me to connect to the characters and the overall story. It occasionally delved into the Bridge’s biracial identity, offering some potent commentary. Likewise, the discussion surrounding the concept of time was interesting. However, this was not an exciting story. It somehow made time travel dull. The logic used to back up the sci-fi elements was confusing. Despite its obvious attempt, the story wasn't even very romantic. I didn’t understand Gore’s supposedly magnetic appeal. The plot in general felt like nothing happened for the majority of it, before everything suddenly seemed to happen at the very end.

OVERALL: Somehow making a time travel story feel mundane, this novel failed to grip me or get me emotionally invested. I didn’t gel with the writing style, but there were a handful of insightful comments.

Would I recommend?... Unfortunately no... I don't understand the hype.

A fun and thought provoking time travel novel! To start, it reminded me of Jodie Taylor and a lot of other very enjoyable timetravel tales. There was a fish out of water element as the 5 people brought from Britain's past to a vague dystopian future struggle to get to grips with the world, especially learning the darker parts of history. Their handlers live with them full time to try and bridge this gap and ease them in gently. Lots of social commentary and some humour, then it took a sharp turn into a slow burn romance/ thriller! A bit unexpected for me, and I didn't enjoy the last part of the book as much. However, it was rapeally thought provoking and a definite page turner.

This was so far from my usual choice of book but I'm so glad I read it.

What I took away from it most is the wonderfully dry even melancholic sense of humour throughout.

I will be recommending this one for a long while to Come!

In the number of chapters I managed to get through, this book is riveting with a real attention given to the logistics and world building of the time agency. I’ll be purchasing a copy without hesitation!

With thanks to Netgalley and the author Kaliane Bradley for the opportunity to review this book.

I seem to be the in minority who didn't enjoy this book. It didn't hold my attention all that much and soon became a DNF book

Wow. Exceptional book. Time travel and interweaving narratives can be troublesome, or fall flat, but here, it shines. Every page, every chapter, there's a need to continue without breath to see how this unfolds.

This is time travel book of an unusual nature. People are brought from the past and looked after by a "bridge". they are observed and monitored as part of an experiment.

This "out of time" concept gives the author scope to comment on matters such as race, climate change, gender politics, class and modern society in general. In this it reminded me of Martian poetry which was written in British poetry in the late 1970s and early 1980s by people like Craig Raine In this poetry ,everyday things and human behaviour are described in a strange way, as if by a visiting Martian who does not understand them. Here the Martian/outsider is Commander Graham Gore whose most recent expedition was one to the Arctic.

There are other more minor characters from different historical periods who offer more varied perspectives.

This was an interesting concept and I particularly enjoyed the parts dealing with race and how there are ambiguities experienced by people of dual heritage.
The main relationship is between Gore and his bridge, which raises issues of trust, loyalty and betrayal. Also Stockholm syndrome is in the background as time goes on.
Plot wise I wasn't so sure about the "thriller" element and style wise there were a lot of similes (maybe too many?)

I enjoyed it on the whole, although I'm not sure if it fulfilled its potential. As a debut though it was brave and ambitious so I thank the author for that. I am sure she will go onto write even better books.

The Ministry of Time is an odd novel for me; for it has all the right elements of time travel and includes a modern ministry to deal with time travel issues. At the same time, it cleverly connects to the ongoing climate change crisis that the world is being gripped in and foreshadows future wars and how the earth will become terrible to live in. As someone who studied politics at the University of Portsmouth from 2015 to 2019, I witnessed the rise of the Far Right in American Politics and how it spread to European shores. And the reason is simple: People want more. People want to feel safe, and they will follow the rules without saying a word. Yet, when the characters from the past are transported into the 21st century it is an overwhelming transformation from their old pasts.

At the same time, I didn’t feel I was a part of the Ministry, nor did we get much perspective on different Ministry agents or how they dealt with time travel. I watched the original El Ministerio Del Timepio on Netflix set in Spain, which I felt was a better version. The reason is that the agents were recruited from the past, and they were dealing with the past itself. I find that format much better. I would say that the British version adopts a modern approach, in fact, more similar to Sky’s The Lazarus Project. This is a crossover between the Lazarus Project and Doctor Who, except more serious sci-fi. The characters within this novel have bubbling personalities, that resonate with their pasts and have some serious contrasts to the 21st century. Plenty of romance and chemistry between the vast and vibrant cast of characters pulls you into the story.

In the end, I would say that some parts of the story didn’t win me over when it came to the modern-day section. The pacing was slow in some areas, and some prose could have been improved rather it felt more like raw prose that hadn’t been rewritten. But still, I want to see more different formats of Time Travel Ministries being adapted to different cultures. The British version is another adaptation of this brilliant format. But I wish we would stop going into the modern day, and explore history. History is far superior to explaining the problems of the past. After all, the 21st century is the most comfortable period we live in, with fewer wars, and fewer famines, but human greed and politics always play a role because we always want more. Despite this, this novel is 100% worth a read. I would recommend picking it up.

I received an ARC of this book via Netgalley to review and was intrigued by the premise, particularly as I had watched the series that inspired the author. This was a relatively easy and quick read with the interesting twist on time travel of bringing people from the past into the present. There was a lot of rumination on colonialism and its lasting effects on modern-day multicultural Britain but, rather than feeling that the author was going on an endless rant at white people, Bradley created a very nuanced perspective. It does have a strong romance element from the single POV of the main protagonist and there were times where she was essentially sat at home wondering what Gore was up to. I think I may have preferred the book if it had sections from the POV of Gore (or any of the other people brought forward) as it would have been fun to see our world more directly through their eyes.

A unique idea 💡 in the over crowded romance market , I so wanted to adore this book ! It ticked all my boxes romance , time travel & one of the main protagonists was based on a real character from the tragic doomed Victoria exploration to the artic , commander gore . The tv series of this also based on an excellent book 📖 is a must . However I just found the ministry of time lacking for me , it’s incredibly slow , and there was so much i wanted to know about these people
Plucked from history . The romance also didn’t strike true for me . Sadly I dnf’ed which is a shame as it could have been a winner .

A fabulous debut novel
A wonderful mix of sci-fi, romance, mystery and comedy
Loved how it was told in the first person narrative and how you got to know the expats and their bridges - they were certainly unique characters, especially Commander Graham Gore
Tender, emotional and heart pounding all in one go and the thought provoking reflections of a future world that will stay with you look after reading the book
Thanks @kaliane.bradley @hodderbooks & @netgalley for the fabulous debut read

Whilst The Ministry of Time is absolutely not the book I was sold (or thought I was being sold), it is far better than that book could ever have been. Expecting a standard popcorn time-travel thriller, I was ready to tun my brain off for a while, but Kaliane Bradley's style and the wonderful characters soon put paid to that idea.

Well, that was a bizarre mix of... things. The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley's debut novel, is about a young British-Cambodian woman, working as a civil servant, who is recruited to act as a 'bridge' for one of a group of 'expats' - people plucked out of their own times shortly before impending death and brought to the present day. Our narrator is assigned Commander Graham Gore, once a naval officer on John Franklin's 'lost expedition' to the Arctic in 1845-8, now trying to adjust to the twenty-first century. For much of this novel, we witness our narrator slowly falling in love with Gore while she develops friendships with the other expats, who range from the very serious (Arthur, from 1917, escaping WWI, homosexual, traumatised) to the very wacky (Margaret, from 1665, escaping the Great Plague, prone to saying things like 'Pledge you will not chide me... I have engaged "Tinder" on my "phone"' and 'You mun remove those vile garments.') Then, at the end, this suddenly goes full time-travel-thriller, with handwavy fake-jargon explanations which only make it clearer that this is not the sort of time travel that makes sense ('You're uniquely duplicate in space-time').

For the first two-thirds of the novel I thought it was an entertaining if slow read, with some especially insightful material on feeling like a fish out of water and on our protagonist's British-Cambodian identity. She's sometimes white-passing, has visited but never lived in Cambodia, and is tired of people bringing up genocide: 'Pol Pot Noodle jokes on first dates, my aunt's crying jags, a stupa with no ashes, Gary Glitter, Agent Orange, we loved Angkor Wat...'. But the chapters are very long and every time I finished one I felt no real inclination to pick the book back up. Then, for a couple of chapters, after our narrator finally gets together with Gore, I thought this was going to be brilliant: their love story, at least this bit of it, is so convincing and moving, even though it also feels a bit like mad self-insert fanfic about a hot Victorian Arctic explorer (Bradley doesn't help herself here by including a photo of Gore at the end of the book). There's a real historical sensibility in how Bradley handles cultural differences. Rather than defaulting to the easy narrative, that our narrator needs to teach this archaic, privileged white man how wrong he is about everything, she instead makes her engage with Gore's totally different view of the world. As our protagonist realises, Gore, a seasoned traveller, has had to learn to be far more flexible and adaptable than an average person, and while sex reveals massive differences in their outlooks, this isn't about repression versus liberation: 'I didn't have the same sense of shame of it, but I don't think I ever had the same sense of holiness either'.

It's disappointing, therefore, that the last two chapters see the plot go into overdrive and Bradley trying to explain things about how time travel works in this universe that were better left unsaid, because they don't make sense. The conclusion is just too ambitious given what went beforehand, and raises a lot of stuff that Bradley doesn't leave herself space to explore (there are also earlier threads that get dropped, like some of the expats not being visible on body scanners). On a more micro level, I also found this novel a bit tonally jarring. Graham is a full human being but Margaret is a sixteenth-century stereotype who doesn't actually come out with 'Gadzooks!' but forever feels like she's going to. Is this a serious examination of empire, mindset, generational trauma, cultural difference, or is it a bit of a romp? I think Bradley could have held it together better if it wasn't for that ending. Similarly, she usually has an absolute gift for simile ('The light was even and soft, like carefully sifted flour') and metaphor ('I slept deeply and briefly, a plunge pool of REM') but every so often overlabours it ('Between the sullen rain and the cloy of the street-slung cobwebs, I felt as if I was forever in a spit-filled, cavity-bogged mouth'). Nevertheless, first novels often do throw too much into the pot, and I'm keen to see what Bradley does next. 3.5 stars.