This is huge fun! Bradley has taken a rather tired concept of time travel and given it a fresh shake-up: a shady government ministry is bringing people from various pasts into the present where they are allocated a 'bridge' to help them orient themselves and the main narrator is one of these 'bridges' - a biracial young woman whose Cambodian mother still carries the scars of trauma and who suffers microaggressions her 'passing' daughter is aware of but doesn't usually experience herself.

For most of the first half though these political concerns are shelved: the best part of the book is the character-driven subtle comedy of the narrator's relationships with Commander Graham Gore, a real Royal Navy officer who disappeared on the ill-fated Franklin polar expedition (yes, the one detailed in [book:The Terror|3974]!), Margaret, a hilarious and brash woman from the seventeenth century allowed to own her lesbian sexuality for the first time, and the more melancholy WW1 officer who is in love with Graham. The everyday details of these cross-pollinated historical friendships are both deliciously funny and moving. I could have read a whole book centred on these characters navigating the twenty-first century with delight.

But, of course, things are not all sunny: what is the ministry really up to? What is the mysterious weapon? Why is another bridge assassinated? And then the standard tropes of time travel narratives kick in: <spoiler>how to manipulate the present to achieve the necessary future outcome, travellers coming back from the future to change the past, that old chestnut of the future version of a self meeting the present version of the same person</spoiler> ray guns (or something) and people on the run from mysterious enemies are not really my thing and I sort of lost the head-spinning plot.

Nevertheless, there is so much that I enjoyed about this book despite the genre trappings that took over: Bradley's writing is engaging (though I was a bit bored by the short interspersed chapters from Gore's perspective of the Franklin expedition), genuinely funny and sharp, though never overstated, on a kind of adopted naivety that our narrator uses to fit in. There is light commentary on issues around refugees and assimilation, on how ideas have evolved across history, and the almost necessary diatribe on power differentials and who controls the narrative.

In the end my adoration for the characters is what I'll take from this book: Bradley has real empathy here and an imaginative ability to make these people 'real'. The time-travel plot? I loved the premise to get these characters together and as the basis of much of the humour, but as a driver it sort of left me cold, something I had to go with in order to enjoy the stellar characterization.

I listened to the audio book which is nicely done: the only thing I'd say is that Gore's voice sounds a bit old for a thirty something, even a Victorian one, which was a bit awkward when things got sexy! All the same, this is an audio - and world - I was eager to get back to even if, at times, the drive for plot slightly overwhelms Bradley's strengths at creating characters I adored.

the ministry of time is a lot of things: a sci-fi story with time travel, a comedy about a man trying to learn about current times, a romance about two very different people who are drawn together across all odds, and more. however, as a result, this novel feels more like a jack of all trades instead of something fully realized. this is made apparent in bradley's depiction of the main character's revelations about her own internalized racism as a mixed cambodian-british woman. if as much research was done to write fleshed out characters dealing with racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. as bradley clearly did in bringing commander gore (a real life figure) into the story, this could've been a masterpiece in the making given how cinematic the reading experience was. i'm not surprised this already has a tv deal as a result and will admit to being swept up by the main romance even though getting there had pacing issues.