Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for my ARC of this book.

After seeing some people on Bookstagram sing this books praises, I was super excited to get to read it! But unfortunately it ended up being a let down for me. I don’t know if I had hyped it up too much in my head, but I found it quite boring and underwhelming and with flat characters who didn’t develop at all.

4.25 stars

What an absolutely marvelous story. Never did I think I would love this book as much as I do now. The whole premise of time-travel is by far nothing new, yet this novel is a surprise in every aspect. The Ministry of Time features an eccentric cast of characters—all from past, present, and future. The narrator, our female main character whose name we never learn, applies for this government job and everything snowballs from there. The nail-biting and mysterious plot, told through flawless writing, brings this book together and makes for a stunning mix of fantasy, as well as historical and romantic fiction.

I was so excited when I read the blurb for this book. Sadly though, even though the concept was interesting and intriguing, the style of writing and eventual path it took didn't quite do it for me.
I did finish but, maybe I shouldn't have as it did all feel a little flat.
What I did like was the way that people from way back when in history, who would have died, are scooped up and whisked back to the present day, paired with someone tasked with helping then acclimate, known as a "bridge" and then follow as they adjust to life in their new worlds.
I think maybe the main issue I had was that the people they scooped up were not at all interesting to me. Also I found the writing style to be a little heavy and arduous.
Even the ending wasn't enough to pull me back fully. Which was a shame.
But, as I always say, not every books suits everybody. Life isn't that easy, and would be boring if it was so... My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I was actually surprised at how much I did, being unsure exactly what to expect from it when I started. I ended up reading it in a single day, which I think says a lot!

The mix of *things* worked really well here. We have a spy novel, time travel and romance all mushed together to deliver a wild and incredibly clever journey.

The story is initially presented as a time travel novel, but I found it to be much more of a character novel. The time travel is never really explained in any sort of scientific way, and the focus is instead on how these historical people can adapt to the future they have found themselves in.

These historical people, our characters were by far my favourite part of it all. The 'expats', those who have been pulled from the past were wonderful, so well realised that I kept expecting them to walk through my door. They had their own vivid identities, and getting to learn who they were and who they think they want to be in this new life was fantastic. I would happily read several books about them and their friendship. Aside from the 'main' expat Graham, I loved Maggie and want her to be my friend for real.

As I said before, I read this incredibly quickly. The plot flowed well, with a gradual increase in tensions all culminating in a frantic dash as we reached the last 20%. Bradley writes in a way that I always enjoy too. snappy and just descriptive enough to set a solid scene but not overly so. The tone was also great, I described it as witty and serious at the same time. We have moments where characters are agonising over identities and purpose interspersed with humour that genuinely made me laugh out loud.

Overall, this was an excellent read. Entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure, and I think a lot of people will enjoy it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an arc in exchange for a review.

What a read and oh boy do you need your wits about whilst reading this one it was amazingly clever.
This is a story that has everything I love in a read it kept me completely immersed in the story and the pace just never let up right the way through till the shocking final conclusion which blew my mind and I was so surprised that I reread the previous few pages just to make sure I had it right !!
Apart from being so well crafted the book also has a lot of humour and romance and to be honest I don’t usually like romance books but this was done in such a good way that I actually enjoyed that part of it and I put that down to a very clever author who got the balance just perfect, she also dealt with the time travel element superbly well and with a cast of excellent characters also a big thanks to her for a wonderful 5 star read.
So a fabulous book and one I can highly recommend it’s very different and one not to be missed.
My thanks also to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a compelling and engaging cross-genre combination of time-travel, mystery/thriller, historical fiction, and romance. It had a lot to pack in, and it did it very well.

According to the blurb: “In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic.”

The first half of the story is establishing Graham and the other expats in the 21st century. This part of the book is a charming fish-out-of-water tale, as the expats try to adjust to cultural and technological differences from their own time. The main expat character, Graham, is incredibly likeable. He has a laid back, sarcastic take on the world, and his dry observations of what he seems around him are insightful and often pithy. I also really enjoyed the character of Maggie, from 1665, whose joyous and boisterous reaction to the pleasures of 21st century living were delightful, and made me laugh.

I don’t generally read historical novels, so it was an added interest for me that Graham Gore was a member of the Franklin Expedition, an ill fated expedition into the arctic.

The friendship between our main character (whose name, weirdly, we never find out) and Graham grows throughout the first half of the book, and continues to blossom as the story progresses. Most of the first two-thirds of the book are taken up with establishing the characters and the romance. There’s even a bit of smut thrown in, for those who like that in their books.

As the plot develops, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems with The Ministry, and our intrepid band of expats and ‘bridges’ are both caught up in, and try to navigate, the unfolding events. The time travel elements were quite satisfying - the time travel ‘door’ isn’t fully understood by The Ministry, and the cautious approach to time travel contributed to the plot. At about 80% of the way through the story, the pace picks up, things start to come to a head, and it became a real page turner.

Only one niggle for me: I would personally have preferred a different balance between the character/romance development and the mystery/thriller elements of the plot (less romance, more plot) - especially as, despite the focus and detail on their relationship, I never really felt the emotion in the romantic relationships.

But regardless of this, it’s a cracking story, with something for everyone, and a masterful combination of genres.

Thank you #NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton / Sceptre for the free review copy of #TheMinistryofTIme in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was good fun. After reading 'In Ascension' last year and loving it, I wanted to read more 'literary' science fiction novels. This is less scientific and a bit lighter, but it certainly fits the bill.

It is set in our time and the British government has somehow acquired a time travel device (we learn later how, and it's quite funny) and our main character - a young translator - is tasked to act as 'bridge' for one of the time travelers that is brought in from the past: a Commander in the British Navy teleported from 1847 during the lost Erebus expedition.

It is in fact the charming and quite brilliant Commander who carries this novel, as he gets used to (and appalled by) the 21st century with its lack of manners, dubious morals and mind-blowing technology.

When the Commander accidentally discovers a mysterious device, things take a dark turn and it appears they are part of a plot that involves multiple generations.

Set in the near future ‘the Ministry’ seemed quaint, old-fashioned and somewhat clumsy in what it was setting out to do. With the advent of a working time machine, they have plucked four random people, about to die from disease or in battle, out of a range of time zones (1645, 1665, 1793, 1847 and 1916) to study if they are able to habituate to modern times.

After a period in a health facility each person was assigned a ‘bridge’, someone to live with them and show them the ropes while still being regularly monitored for a year before being encouraged to find a profession or job and be self sufficient. Our narrator is assigned Commander Graham Gore from the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage. She is biracial with a Cambodian mother and British father, previously a language specialist in the MOD and is told only that she will be responsible for assisting an ‘expat’ from history and coordinating with the Ministry teams assessing them.

All seems to be going well for the first year as the ‘expats’ acclimatise to modern times, learning how to operate modern inventions, move around London and blend in (in their own fashion), however there is a spy in the Ministry with another Agenda that will place them all in danger and scuttle everyones plans.

This is an unusual blend of speculative fiction, scifi, spy novel, time travel, thriller and slow burn romance. It didn’t quite work for me, although the writing is strong, the story intriguing, and a lot of fun is had as the time travellers learn about modern devices and social changes. A lot of important themes were also explored (although generally not deeply) -refugees, immigration, war, climate change, time travel, racism, misogyny, homophobia to name a few.

Somehow it all works, although the time travel plot and the Ministry’s simplistic and inept handling of it wasn’t quite convincing enough for me (although it did feel very British!), particularly given that is set in the near future. I enjoyed the excerpts from Gore's diary, interspersed with the narrative, as the expedition goes disastrously wrong and the men are gradually lost. The build-up to the ending is also quite slow, but the ending was well done as was the major twist. I can see this working well as a TV series (the BBC has acquired the rights).

Beautifully written but quite meandering. A story about time travel that is not a thriller but rather a pondering on belonging (with a splash of romance).

Our unnamed narrator is what they call a Bridge, a guardian/caretaker bridging the gap between the expat’s past and their settling in the present. Between the often funny, sometimes difficult, journey of settling a Victorian naval man in the home of 21st century female civil servant, you may start to get an uncomfortable feeling that all is not right with the Ministry of time.

It’s time for me to accept speculative fiction isn’t for me. I enjoyed parts of this story but on the whole found it quite hard going. I could have done with someone explaining everything to me at the end.

It’s beautifully written and I really liked how self aware the narrator was, that she was complicit in something dodgy but that it was better and safer to be a part of it than on the outside. Those parts had 1984 vibes which I liked. I also found the parallels drawn between the time expats and the narrator’s Cambodian heritage really powerful, how neither quite fit into the box prescribed.

My main problem with this book was that it was both too much and not enough. Too many characters, too many genres and yet great gaps of pages where pretty much nothing happened. When something did happen, I’d forgotten which characters it affected and frankly it felt like it came out of nowhere.

I’ve heard loads and loads of great things about this book and this is just one bookdragon’s opinion.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for my review copy.

Really enjoyed this! A novel about the practical implications of time travel and the knotty ethical implications of how to integrate someone into a new time period without running roughshod over their intrinsic personality. There were plenty of twists and turns in the plot but this didn't obscure the very human nature of this experiment with time travel.

I felt the characters came alive with all their historical idiosyncrasies without feeling like caricatures - in particular I thought that the relationship between Lola and Commander Gore was well handled, especially with the tricky position of being a 'bridge'.

Would recommend this book - I can see myself reading it again in the near future!

This book is clever in so many ways. But also accessible, quirky and very different. Add it to you list of books for the summer - it won't disappoint.
Set in the not too distant near future it is about a woman who wants to fit in and do a good job, a man from 200 years ago, and a government programme which turns sinister very quickly. The characters are the best part for me, especially the historic cast who are funny, likeable and overall very entertaining. A little bit Ghosts and a little bit Men in Black. What's not to love?
I definitely recommend this one and I am really glad I read it.
p.s - Did anyone else have lots of ideas/dilemmas about who would play Graham in a film version? What a treat that would be.

Sadly a DNF, as realised time travellers are not for me,

Separately so many people are referring to it being a direct copy of a Spanish TV series?

With all the illustrious reviews by respected authors - nine in total, including writers whose work I love - included in the book blurb, I expected to be pulled in from the off. The problem with raising expectations so high is that the book has to work that much harder to please.

So it was with a 'show me what you're made of' stance that I approached The Ministry of Time. And in this frame of mind, I found The first half slow paced, and the over-reliance on verbal exclamations (er, hm) irritating. Then, the story and storytelling took hold.

An intelligent, unusual love story. The afterword, explaining the author's inspiration, adds pathos to the fiction.

As the title indicates, this is a travel time related story. The UK Government has discovered a way to bring back people from other times. Those people are called refugees, because of the needs they have once they are in our time. Soon, our MC gets too involved in this for her own good.
I found the story interesting, although the time travelling method itself is not explained. Of course.

I first came across this author – authors featured in the 2024 version of the influential and frequently literary-prize-prescient annual Observer Best Debut Novelist feature - and this book at the inaugural Women’s Prize Live event in 2023 when she was part of a showcase of new writers (and was giving away free first chapter samples).

I was, for that particular session, the only male in the audience (in fact another writer remarked at one stage how nice it was to have an all female audience at which I coughed rather nervously but audibly in the second row to general amusement) – but in a further coincidence, as this author and I discussed briefly when I asked her to sign the first chapter, I share a name with the historical inspiration for this book and one of its main characters – Graham Gore a 19th Century Royal Naval officer as well as arctic explorer: dying in the doomed Franklin Expedition looking for the North West Passage.

But the novel is far from a historical novel – instead it is a near future time travelling adventure, one which has already been optioned for a BBC drama series.

The unnamed narrator (“I don’t say my name, not even in my head”) was born in Cambodia but now lives in England (her mother referred to by others but not herself as a “refugee”), who having plateaued in her Civil Service career as a translator-consultant at the Ministry of Defence (specifically having failed the exams for a field agent) applied successfully for a highly secret role at an equally mysterious Ministry where she finds that her role is to act as a “bridge” personally helping with the adjustment process of some expats … expats from history … more specifically five people extracted shortly before their documented death: Gore, and victims of the 1665 Great Plague (a vivacious girl called Margaret – but like the others often known by their year so here as 1665 or ‘65), Victim, the Somme (a sensitive and rather traumatised man called Arthur), 1645 Battle of Naseby casualty, and the Great Terror of Paris. Arthur’s bridge is a black woman called Simellia and other key characters include the Vice-Secretary of Expatriation Adela (to who the bridges report) and a mysterious Brigadier – seemingly someone from the Ministry of Defence keeping a close watch on this new Ministry and its use of the time-door that has been used to extract the five historical figures.

Now I have to say that I find an issue with time-travel narratives is that any such account tends to rather tie itself up in physical if not meta-physical knots and contradictions. Generally I have found that the only really successful approach to this is either extremely hard to the point of unreadable science fiction, TV/cinema (think Dr Who) where visual effects and pacing can distract from the issues or – and most effective for me – short stories: as an aside two of my favourite short stories of all time: Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” (imitated to the point that the original can feel like a cliché) and “Let’s Go To Golgotha” rely on a single time travel twist, but would fail to hold up even as short novellas.

The ways in which Bradley deals with writing a fairly successful novel about the topic are varied but include:

Deliberately swerving the hard-science approach early on

By becoming, particularly earlier on, something of an social novel – the recruitment of the narrator as a bridge and the early on introduced idea of the time travellers as involuntary refugees/ex-pats leads to lots of discussions and ideas around for example colonialism, cultural appropriation, first generation/second generation dynamics, passing, assimilation; and further Graham as a character and the role of the narrator as a bridge to how he can adapt his social mores over time to function in near future culture allows plenty of examination of aspects of that culture (sexual identity, casual relationships, the way in which technology has and has not been used) and of the 19th century foundations of that culture (imperialism, Britain’s conflicted relationship with slavery, entrenched class and gender hierarchies) – and both of these come together in what turns out to be a crucial thing for the time travellers – the extent to which they balance their “hereness” and “thereness” and how that mental lives balance projects into their current day physical lives (for example their ability or not to be detected)

By some really strong writing – this is an author with a flair for language and metaphor, almost I would say to the point of overwriting

By genre borrowing.extension – for much of the novel after say its introductory first third it is:

Part Austen-esque Romance – Gore is clearly (and his historical picture and point of history renders this far from unreasonable) a Colin Firth Darcy character, and the cultural differences between he and the narrator as well as the awkwardness of their professional relationship makes their budding romance very much of the he does not like me/she does like me level of awkwardness, although when that is resolved it is a lot more explicit than Austen;

Part James Bond style thriller –with the mix of old fashioned British Governmental improvisation, mysterious devices and potential double agents, although as things develop the violence that emerges as the time travellers and their bridges and some ministry employees come the target, is far from the Bond-style cartoonish with the good guys always winning, but impactful and complex.

In the last third of the novel the time travel contradictions/complexities/paradoxes become more central to the plot – and while there are some nice twists I did feel, like with almost all time travel novels, that much of it was best not subject to too much scrutiny.

Nevertheless this was a fun and original (yes trolls – original) novel.

In February of this year I read an excellent book, and confidently I said it would probably be the best book I read all year. Quite fittingly, for this book, I wish I could go back in time, and un-make that assertion. This is probably the best book I will read all year.

The Ministry of Time is a most spectacular thing. It is a novel that is as narratively compelling, and thematically rich, as it is mechanically well-written. This is a book that is about love, as much as it is a book about post-colonialism, about the individual in the machine, about genocide, politics, government, and sense of self. Kaliane Bradley interrogates race, person-hood, the idea of individuality, and the homogeneity identity when you're following orders. She also presents some of the most delicate, heart-breaking, intimate developments of relationships I have ever read. This is a love story, not a romance, and it is the kind of love we all aspire to have. This is also a book about obsession, and hurting people, and about breaking yourself open again and again.

I cannot see the future, and yet I feel confident predicting great things for this novel.

This is the easiest 5 stars I have given in a long time. I am thrilled to have had the privilege to read this book early. I have so many things I want to talk about, and yet I would not dare spoil this book for anyone. Everyone should read this book.

This has to be one of the weirdest book that I have read, but like a good kind of weird. As in, I had no idea what's was going on but still didn't want to put it down.

Time travel can be such a hit and miss concept but I think the author handled it pretty well in the book. I think, one of the reasons that I found this book extremely readable was because of it main protagonist and the way she narrates the story. It felt so mundane rather than the complex web of stuff that was actually going on.

However, that's also where my main criticism comes from. Because, for the majority of the book, nothing really happened and then all of sudden, in the last bit, everything came to heed with too much information being divulged left, right and centre.

That said, this was also a very unique story and overall, I had a good time reading it.

I knew nothing about this book besides the fact that the cover was stunning and that the synopsis sounded too interesting to pass on. Had I not been approved for the advanced copy maybe I would have picked it up eventually but my GOD I’m so happy I got approved cause this was indeed very wild!

It was a proper rollercoaster that I ended up reading in less than a day and can honestly say I’ve never EVER encountered such a mix of comedy, thriller, and romance within the sci-fi genre.

The cultural discussions, subtle political undertones, the challenges people from different eras trying to adapt to modern society faced and the funny discussions this brought up—everything was engaging.
The unique romance subplot with the Victorian banter added another layer of enjoyment especially when the story took an unexpected turn into thriller territory.

I also loved the author’s explanation about how much of the story was fictional and how this book came to be in the Afterwords section. It was a thoughtful addition that showcased the depth of the author's investment in the story.

For me, this book deserves nothing less than a perfect score. Maybe it’ll be too much for some but it was an unforgettable experience that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thank you NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the digital ARC!

The Ministry of Time has a great and classic premise, in that it's about a world where the British intelligence services have gotten their hands on time travel technology (without really understanding it), and thoughtfully interweaves notions of post-colonialism, otherness, race and solidarity with what it might be like to be a person out of time. Our central character and narrator is tasked as a "bridge" (handler) for one of the "expats" (people brought to contemporary London from the past), and her experience as a biracial child of a Cambodian immigrant/survivor informs much of her narration.

It has great potential as a concept, but I can only describe the execution as 'clumsy' at best and 'cringey' at it's worst moments. The clumsiness is in the figurative language, which is labored, naive and too distinct in style from the rest of the narration: "He turned the white of used candle wax..." "He looked at me too intensely, and I felt his gaze sting my pores." The outright cringe moments come when a romance plot develops and the writing is, quite simply, wholly unsexy. Was the romance plot even needed? I suppose so, but don't include graphic descriptions of the sex unless you can do it without making your reader grimace.

Ironically, I enjoyed this book the most when it was at its most preachy. During a sequence in which the modern day agents give educational lectures to the 'expats' that are so heavily controlled by the Ministry that they are "to a sentence, dreadful," and in which the two women of color are deputised to give the lectures on multiculturalism and Windrush immigration, the narrator slips into a moralising I greatly appreciated: "In their [the lectures] much-edited correctness, their placid-voiced hectoring, they bankrupted the energy of the room. Ideas are frictional, factional entities which wilt when pinned to flowcharts. Ideas have to cause problems before they cause solutions."

Bradley has great ideas, but they may be better suited to essays than fiction.

Original, witty, beautifully descriptive, I was completely captivated. A great book for a book club, contains history and science, just what would time travel reveal to another generation and what will be affected. Must admit to being a bit in love with a certain G. G. The twists were great, the story compulsive. A brilliant debut.