Something about this just didn’t sit right with me. The plot sounded interesting but the writing was a bit wonky. The plot had no real surprises, everything is pretty evident from the beginning. The addition of Graham’s historic views seemed misplaced. They added nothing to the story. There were sex scenes that felt out of place as well. In my opinion the book would have been better as a whole if it had focused on all of the misplaced folks and their back/current stories instead of just mostly Graham. This would have fleshed out the story more.

The premise for this was really interesting, who isn't interested in time travel, right? I won't lie, the first 50% of this was pretty slow and tedious. I'm also all for expanding vocabulary, but some of the words chosen seem to have been chosen solely for the purpose of "I know this word, now go look it up" I wonder if it is supposed to reflect on the narrator or author. The back half of the book was more eventful. I feel like this book had a lot of potential and was really bogged down by the glacial ( 9et it?) pace and pretentiousness of it all. It's not a romance, it just has a romantic subplot. It is about time-travel, and yet time-travel is hardly discussed. This book is trying to do too many things at once, and doesn't really land anywhere, in my opinion.


Thank you to netgalley and avid reader press for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Debut author Kaliane Bradley has splashed deep into the lore of a doomed polar explorer, Graham Gore. And she has surfaced with a time travel romance/spy thriller that deals with mixed-race identity, inherited trauma, and not just living in, but doggedly working for, a country whose imperial legacy controls history. Maybe dogged isn't the right word for this speculative fiction novel's protagoniste, whose name we never learn, though we understand that her "bizarre Eurasion double-barrelled surname" offers a clue to her family history. As a Ministry of Time employee, she is assigned the task of acting as historical bridge to Graham Gore, a kind and exceedingly charismatic Victorian naval officer who has been brought from his time to hers, somewhere in the near future. An expat from history, the polar explorer refers to his bridge as "little cat," a nickname which hints at his feelings for her. The ensuing intrigue and romance that spark from this pairing fuses genres and ideas. The result is humorous and thought-provoking and had me rapt. What does it really mean to make history, to alter the future?

[Thanks to Avid Reader Press and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

I’m not capable of reviewing The Ministry of Time without gushing to you all like a total fangirl. Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel is the ultimate genre mashup and I found it absolutely riveting. It’s a unusual blend of speculative time travel fiction, spy thriller, slow burn romance, and workplace comedy with a through line of social and anti-colonial criticism.    
 
To give you a sense of just how many genres this book straddles, it’s worth mentioning that The Ministry of Time has been blurbed by both Eleanor Catton and Emily Henry. It’s comps include Ling Ma’s Severance, NK Jemisin’s The City We Became, Emma Strab’s This Time Tomorrow, St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, Chloe Gong’s Immortal Longings, El-Mohtar and Gladstone’s This is How You Lose The Time War and Zakiya Dalila Harris’ Other Black Girl.
 
Set in the near future, Bradley’s novel is narrated by a biracial British-Cambodian woman who has parlayed her experience as a translator for refugees into a top secret position at the new Ministry of Time. The government has discovered a method of time travel and has covertly plucked a handful of individuals from past eras and brought them to the book’s present time in order to test whether this new technology is practicable over the long term. The narrator has been hired as a “bridge” – a cultural liaison and caretaker – for one of these displaced historical figures and her job is to acclimatize him to modern society.
 
To my mind, this novel had three key threads: First, the romantic comedy.  Throughout the book, the narrator gets to know her assigned expat, the beguiling Commander Graham Gore, a real historical figure who embarked on the British 1845 expedition to the Arctic. Secondary characters include Gore’s fellow time travelers, such as Maggie, a spunky lesbian from the 17th century who is eager to get on Tinder, and Arthur, a very kind, melancholic WWI officer who is struggling with PTSD. They comprise a quirky crew and Bradley’s account of their adventures acclimatizing to modern times is charming, funny, heartfelt and just a total joy-ride. I could have read an entire book just about their friendship.
 
It doesn’t surprise me that this felt like the heart of the novel. In Kaliane Bradley’s foreword, she discusses her book’s origin story. After watching the AMC TV show “The Terror,” she became fascinated by a secondary character in the show based on real world events. Researching Commander Graham Gore led to writing fan-fiction for friends about Gore, which led to her writing The Ministry of Time. If you like reading relationship-driven books, and have ever dipped your toes in fan-fiction, odds are that you, too, will delight in this novel.
 
The second key part of this novel was its social commentary. The nameless protagonist is in an interesting position as a biracial woman and daughter of Cambodian refugee who is a government employee for the country who once had an empire that the sun never set on. Caught between her personal and professional identities, the narrator comes to suspect that her employer’s motives may be less than benign, and she herself occupies a very morally grey space in the novel, which I found fascinating.  The Ministry of Time reminded me a bit of RF Kuang’s Babel and Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s The Centre in its exploration of identity, race, inherited trauma, and colonialism. This aspect of The Ministry of Time was particularly thought provoking and set the novel apart from any other time travel stories I’ve encountered. I only wish the book had been longer and that Bradley had been able to delve deeper into these themes.
 
The last major feature of this novel was the time-travel / spy thriller element, which Bradley executed successfully in that I was utterly incapable of putting this book down and accomplishing any of my plans for the day. The somewhat dystopian near-futuristic setting of the novel captivated me. However, I think it’s worth flagging that this time travel novel is very light on the “science” and heavy on the “fiction” – which is to say that Bradley skates over the mechanics of time travel and asks the reader to generally accept its feasibility. That was A-OK with me since I was there for Bradley’s strong writing and storytelling as opposed to her knowledge of physics, but it’s worth noting in advance to any fans of hard science fiction.     
 
I will concede that I don’t believe the author completely succeeded in shifting the tone of the novel from a romantic comedy to a dystopian spy thriller without jarring the reader. However, I can forgive the imperfections in this effervescent, poignant and clever novel because I enjoyed it so damn much.
 
A huge thank you to Netgalley and Avid Readers Press for the advanced copy! I can’t wait for BBC to adapt this into a TV show. The Ministry of Time releases May 7th.

Tell me — what’s your favorite time travel book and is The Ministry of Time on your radar?

Based on the synopsis which describes this book as a time travel romance / thriller hybrid, I was very excited to dive in. While I was captivated by the overall premise, the witty banter, the lovable characters, ultimately this book was a bit of a let down for me.

First, what I liked:
- The dialogue was really well written, especially between the characters, the banter was witty, funny and endearing. The expats language felt very true to their eras.
- There are a lot of great micro moments that take place when they introduce the expats to inventions and norms in the present day that were very funny.
- The premise — I enjoyed the exploration of what it would be like to jump 200-300 years in the future and try to acclimate, what it would be like to try to date someone who comes from a past era. I also appreciated the tidbits of history about the arctic expedition.

What I didn’t like as much:
- The plot and pacing — It started strong, but quickly lost momentum and then plateaued for a lot of the book, where honestly, not much happened.
- Calling this a “speculative spy thriller” seems like a stretch, there’s not a whole lot of action and any that takes place is in the last 20% of the book, which all takes place so fast it felt rushed and convoluted.
- A nit pick, but I think the synopsis spoils too much of the story.

Thank you to Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

She had no idea what she was getting into when she applied for this job.

The narrator, a biracial young woman whose name we never learn, is working in a civil service office job but wishes she were a field agent. She applies for a new post that is only vaguely defined but comes with a salary far above what she is currently receiving, and finds herself getting it (she suspects in part because her mother was a Cambodian refugee). She is told that she will be a “bridge”, acting as a companion to help someone (an “expat”) become adjusted to their new life in present day Britain. The “present day” part is the key here….her “expat”, one of a small group of such people, has been plucked from the past and brought into the present via a recently discovered door that allows for time travel. She is now the roommate and personal support system for Commander Graham Gore, a Royal Navy officer and polar explorer who was part of a doomed 1845 exploration to discover the Northwest Passage. Instead of dying in 1847, Gore has been transported.into the future, part of a government experiment to map out the boundaries of successful time travel. A newly formed ministry of the government dabbling in the space/time continuum….what could possibly go wrong?

The Ministry of Time is a novel quite difficult to categorize, with elements of science fiction, espionage, romance, and satirical comedy all wrapped up into one story, but it is remarkable easy to get pulled in to the world it has constructed. Our narrator (as she is never named, let’s call her “little cat” as does Gore, aka 1847) is an endearing character, snarky but vulnerable, uncomfortable in being deemed and pigeonholed as biracial, and wholly unprepared to cohabitate with the genial, adventurous and attractive man who is now her job. 1847 (how typical of a bureaucracy to reduce people to a number) is a fascinating look at how a Victorian man (who existed in the real world, by the way) would struggle to adapt to a world whose mores are completely foreign to him and where the country he served is no longer the Empire he knew. The rest of the characters, other bridges and expats as well as the handlers and other functionaries who make up the ministry which has (with unknown but highly suspicious motives) undertaken this experiment in tinkering with lives, are distinct and well-formed. The plot is similary well=paced, with humorous scenes, minor rebellions, and the confused but irresistible stirrings of love between two people from very different worlds interspersed throughout. For readers who enjoy Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next series or movies like Time After Time (1979) and Kate and Leopoldo (2001), as well as people who want to read something that defies categorization but creates a thoroughly believable world in which to explore relationships, power struggles, and the clash of histories, The Ministry of Time is not to be missed. Many thanks to NetGalley and Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster for allowing me early access to this addictively quirky novel.

My rating is 4.5....
This was such a good read ! Not usually my type of genre but it hooked me right in from the start. The characters were well developed and not your usual suspects. The time travel aspect had a definite twist to it...(no spoilers). The writing flowed easily and the way the author structured the past and present worked for me. Highly recommend!

This is one of those uncategorizable stories—part sci-fi, part romance, part thriller. The idea is that in our near future, time travel is possible in a very limited way. Modern Britain has rescued some people from the past just before they died, and the unnamed protagonist is assigned to be the guide for a survivor of a 19th-century polar expedition. I don’t usually like first-person narration, but it was used to great effect here; the voice and tone were perfect.

I tried multiple times to get hooked onto this book... Made it to the 36% mark I finally gave up for the final time.
I liked the idea of the book but maybe it needed some more editing???

The concept of this novel is interesting. Time travel is usually an interesting trope, but this one fell flat for me. I couldn't really get into the characters or the reason the Ministry of Time even existed. Overall just an okay read but some may find it enjoyable.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for advanced copy, and I give my review freely

*Thank you to Avid Reader Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review*

A funky mix of scifi and historical fiction - The Ministry of Time mixes time travel and psychology to produce a slow burn novel. Towards the end, it even turned into a bit of a steamy romance! Do I need to do a deep dive into Antarctic explorations? Maybe. It is slow though, almost painfully so at times. But we do learn much of the ins and outs of the Ministry's bureaucracy, so that was kind of useful?

What I really enjoyed was the comparison of them as refugees assimilating into a new culture, especially as we explore a white-passing government employee who's tasked with supervising an 1865 expat from the past. Also did I miss them telling us the main character's name?? I can't remember it for the life of me and no one else has mentioned it in their reviews.

The Ministry of Time has been highly anticipated but sadly for me it did not hit the mark. It may not be the read for me.
I love time travel but this was not it. The book tried to be too clever. It busied itself with a LOT of history of a failed Arctic expedition which I'm sorry to say is not even that interesting, tragic as it was. As a history buff the author should choose its topic more wisely. She could have choose so many other more interesting leading men and history periods.
The book uses language like armour, disguising the boring and monotone pace of the book with intelligent words which will just alienate a whole host of readers if they have to constantly be looking up the meaning of words. There were just too many.
I had high hopes the book would be saved by the highly anticipated romance which was described akin to outlander. Outlander it was indeed NOT! To even compare it, is an insult! The romance is brief and dry. I get than the male lead is a repressed victorian however for fans of Jane Austin we know how a repressed Victorian can be written well and not dryly. There is some rushed and delicate sex tutoring by the female character to the male character but this does not last long either and the connection was not believable beyond some sexual attraction the author clearly had with the very real image of the male lead Gore.
The book does a last ditch attempt at saving itself in the last 20% of it when it decides to turn itself into an action/sci-fi/spy book with a couple of twists thrown in. Whilst it does redeem the book slightly the lacklustre ending left me saying "Thank God I finally finished the book!"
I honestly feel like it took me forever to finish it and felt more like a chore than a pleasure. I don't know how many times I contemplated DNFing it but I did soldier on.
I'm sorry it was just NOT for me.

This is an ambitious book that many people will love. It has a little bit of everything and that will excited many different kinds of readers. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me. It was a little too unbelievable and the characters were not as well developed for my liking. However, if you are in the mood for a light romp, this book will scratch that itch.

This book is… interesting. And weird. From what I understand, it started off as fanfic about a polar explorer that died in the 1800’s (you know, how all crushes start). I really enjoyed the history and the tie-ins to real life. The writing was not really to my taste, and very little seemed to happen for a lot of the book. I kept wondering when the spy thriller portion of the book was supposed to start. Overall it just wasn’t what I was expecting based on the description. It was a really interesting premise, but it felt confusing trying to understand the characters’ motives at times. Also, this is just a personal preference but I hate books where the characters smoke like fiends and do weed together.

3.5 stars

A time-travel tale where England is kidnapping people from past times where they are known to have died and then bringing them into the future through a time door. Why, you ask? Well, it's not altruistic. We follow one person's POV, a government employee who is tasked with being the "bridge" (ie. tutor) for a Navy man who is brought forward from 1847. There are also other out-of-time-people and their bridges as side-characters. Some of the accents were great, I'm sure it would be fun to listen to on audio.

Overall, I liked this book. Although it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I think, for me, that the first 25-ish% was amazing. I LOVED the dialogue and laughed out loud multiple times. It didn't keep that tone throughout though. The pacing dragged more in the middle, and then it got very heavy at the end. It's also an open-ending, so the resolution I wanted wasn't on-page.

Despite the time travel element, I wouldn't call it a SciFi. And it's not a Romance book (please don't believe that tag), although it does have a romantic subplot. Maybe LitFic with a speculative element? It brings up some very heavy topics: colonialism, emigration, refugee status, war, climate crisis, being of two different ethnic backgrounds, passing as white, and racism, among others. It felt a bit disjointed and even though I think the topics brought up were interesting, there were so many that it felt more touched-on than explored. But maybe that's just me.

I would be very interested to see what this author writes in the future.

Thank you NetGalley and Avid Reader Press for the e-ARC of this book.

The Ministry of Time - Sci-fi romance book about time traveling with a real historical figure - Graham Gore as one of the main characters and with some of the true historical events from the past.
Well I will try to avoid the spoilers, so the romance was a real slow burn. The action has started near the end. Our protagonist did not know anything, she was frankly quite annoying.
What I liked were the expats as they called the historical figures from the past and the writing itself.
So 3 stars from me, I liked it, but not loved it

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book.

The narrator, whose name we never learn, is in the sixth round of interviews when we meet her. She is interviewing with Adela, the Vice-Secretary of Expatriation. And she will be working with ex-pats from history. What in the world does THAT mean?

Well, the Ministry has recently gotten their hands on a machine which can scoop people up from anywhere in history and bring them to the modern world. And the narrator is to be a "bridge" to one of these "ex-pats" and work to assimilate them into modern-day Britain. Easy, huh?

Her ex-pat is a naval officer who served in the Franklin expedition of 1845 to find the northwest passage across the Arctic. Actually, he was scooped up in 1847, just before he would have died and when he didn't return from a hunting trip he was presumed dead by the others in his company. Referred to in the official documents as 1847, he is actually Commander Graham Gore, an actual person on that expedition who did disappear while hunting and was presumed dead.

The job of the bridges is to live with the ex-pats for the period of one year, at which time they hopefully will have learned enough about their new world to fit in and become just another British citizen. There are five bridges and five ex-pats: 1916, 1665, 1645, 1793, and, of course, 1847. They meet so the ex-pats can mingle, as can the bridges and Graham makes friends with 1916, Arthur Reginald-Smyth, scooped up during the Battle of the Somme, and 1645, Margaret Kemble, the Great Plague of London.

As the year progresses, there are hints as to what the Ministry's actual plan is, but it is not considered important for the bridges to know everything. But the truth does emerge and everyone is suddenly in mortal danger, both from inside and outside the Ministry, through shadowy forces.

I LOVE a good time-travel story and this is a really good one. It bogs down a bit on details, but stick with it. You will be glad you did.

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read this! I've had it for quite some time but when it was picked up in BOTM I finally decided to take the plunge.
I think this just isn't my style. I give it 3 stars because I did keep reading...but I just don't completely get it. I think it lacks some world building (at some point in the future that is very dystopian but not really clearly so we gain the ability to bring people back from various time periods and we do so....but with no real idea why). I am all for suspended disbelief and magical components...but I also need to really feel connected with the suspension, and I felt more I was left purposefully vague.
The romance is good but not great? The story itself gets a bit convoluted with some twists at the end that turn it more into a spy novel. The time travel bit starts to fall apart?
Don't get me wrong. I finished it. But I wouldn't go so far as to say I liked it.

4 STARS

CW: death, starvation, cannibalism, violence, gore, sexual content, racism, murder, mention of genocide, colonialism

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book really surprised me. When I started reading, I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did but the story really drew me in despite it essentially being a self-insert fanfiction about a Royal Navy Officer from the 1840s who actually existed and was part of a lost expedition to the Arctic. I have googled his picture and I must admit I do not share the author's opinion about his attractiveness (but that's subjective anyway, suffice it to say Graham Gore is not my type).

The set-up of the story is rather simple: time travel exists and a ministry has been established to get people from the past to the present. (Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm wondering what this is actually for... What's the merit of having people from the past that were supposed to die in the present where they're unfamiliar with the entire world at large?!) The time travelers include Graham Gore, the aforementioned Arctic explorer from 1847, Arthur from 1916 who fought in the trenches in WWI, and Margaret, a woman from 1665. (There were also two others but I didn't really like them as much alas..) I was very entertained with the vision of Margaret discovering feminism, being curious about social media and being allowed to be entirely her. Arthur was from the most recent past so it was super interesting to see how different these characters were. From our standpoint, the past is just one entity but maybe we should rather think about different pasts.

I have to be honest, I think I cared about the main character the least. She narrates her story but I really couldn't warm to her. She was annoyingly naive and it got on my nerves fairly quickly. Still, this story, the worldbuilding (despite some discrepancies) and the other characters and situations kept me engaged and I really loved learning more and more about the Ministry of Time and the various expats. Graham, on the other hand, was a very intriguing character and I loved his relationship with Arthur and Maggie especially.

From a narrative perspective, there were definitely some very interesting descriptions and I think if you read the book closely and pay attention, not many of the reveals will surprise you. The big revelation in the end was pretty unsurprising to me as I had figured it out by the mid-point. Additionally, time travel narratives always are fascinating to read for me because it becomes very mind-boggling to think about repercussions for events in the future and especially if multiple timelines are involved, it just becomes more and more complicated.

Overall, I really loved this story and I was surprised by that. There are some elements that made little to no sense to me but my reading was not hampered by them for the most part. (I think the end was actually my least favorite, I was very frustrated with how it turned out but at the same time liked that it wasn't all butterflies and rainbows.) If you like stories about time travel, I'd definitely check this one out and I'd implore you to check the description to see if it interests you in any way. It was also very easy to read (stylistically).

I wish I hadn't read this book. For real.

First off - I think the marketing for this book does it a major disservice. All of the marketing materials make this out to be a time travel romance? But it's not??? But then why did they make it a point to put a quote from Emily Henry on the cover?

Not only was this not a romance, but it didn't even feel like the kind of scifi I expected it to be! It was extremely slow-paced and VERY MUCH a literary fiction book. There were so many big words that I had to google because I couldn't figure them out from context clues, which made me feel like the author wanted to show her readers that we were stupid? It felt insanely pretentious and honest;y just made me angry.

I kept thinking this book would get better, but it didn't. It felt like it was trying to do too much and didn't do any of it well.

And the fact that this entire book was just fan fiction about a real guy from history? Weird af.

Clearly this one wasn't for me.