I liked this book so much, I even read the Afterword and the Acknowledgements. I also devoured it in two days, which is the kind of thing I might do during the long summer holiday, but not over a weekend.
Due to be published on 7 May 2024, this first novel from Kaliane Bradley seems to have been inspired by the television adaptation of Dan Simmons’ The Terror, which I reviewed a while back. My biggest complaint about that TV series (and many other, similar, narratives) concerned the lack of women. Well, here Kariane Bradley offers a riposte: what if you took one of those hardy, desperate, frost-damaged men, and hoiked him off in a time machine to the ~21st century? And gave him a woman as a handler?
That Afterword gives a hint of this genesis: conversations with friends about all those lost men, the what ifs and so on.
Somehow, humanity has discovered time travel. As in most time travel narratives, we wave our hands as to the mechanism. Experimenting with what happens if they pull people out of time, they grab five people who were certain to die anyway and give them a year to adjust—or not. So we’ve got a couple of people from the sixteenth century, a traumatised soldier from the Somme, a woman from the 18th century, and Lieutenant Graham Gore from Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition.
What happens, how the time travelers adjust, or not, what the Ministry is up to, forms the basis of this narrative. The tone is elegiac: the narrator hints from the beginning that events take a turn, directly addressing the text receiver and expressing the idea that narrative itself is a form of time travel. She’s talking about Genette’s narrative hypostasis: there’s the subsequent narrator, positioned in space and time after the events she is recounting; and there’s the narrator-as-a-character in the story, an isotope who is moving through time, approaching but never quite becoming the person telling the story.
It’s not all doom and gloom of course. There’s light comedy in the culture shock aspects as well as poignancy. There’s a little bit of romance, some mystery: all the things.
Most of all this is entertaining and deftly written, an excellent debut novel.
This is a review of an ARC from Hodder and NetGalley.

I was so excited to read "A Ministry of Time" by Kaliane Bradley and I cetrtainly was not let down! I am a massive Whovian and huge fan of Tom Holt and Douglas Adams so this synopsis was right up my street! Time Travel, Thriller, Urban Fantasy, Romance. Seriously! I need a sit down!

Our protagonist is a civil servant and offered the promotoin of a lifetime, but there is a catch... the travel involved is not to distant lands, but to other era's. Acclimatising expats from different eras is not the easiest task, especially when contemporary sensibilities can make a grown man blush! However, Commander Gore adapts and adjusts with bloody minded determintation and a slow burn romance ensues. However, the course does not run smooth and there are certain "considerations" to take into account

The supporting cast is reminiscent of the Chaos in the last section of Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure, when they gather icons from history for their book report, but take the excellence of Bill and Teds and multiply in tenfold and you will still not be close to the awesome that this book personifies

So much fun and exquisitely written! I really enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to reading more from this author

Thank you to Netgalley, Hodder & Stoughton and the author Kaliane Bradley for this exceptional arc! My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It sucked me in right from the start. I liked the characters. It wasn't action packed but did not drag at all. I did not see the ending coming at all. Not sure you could call it a twist but it was definitely not where I thought it was going.

The Ministry of Time starts as one thing and becomes another, appropriately enough for a sci-fi/political thriller/romance/comedy novel!
I absolutely loved this rollercoaster of a tale, which careens around mind-blowing bends until you have to go make a cup of tea just to process the excitement.
Not since Heathcliff has a sexy, brooding, Gothic hero captivated me so much- I quite preferred him to everyone else although they are a compelling cast. I’m looking forward to seeing what this author does next.

Anyone who has kept an eye on my reading choices over the last few years,will know that I do love a good time travel novel, so I grabbed this one when I saw it on Netgalley UK
In this novel, the government has discovered a way of travelling through time and has chosen to visit a number of times in the past and rescue individuals from what look like certain death. These time travellers include a woman who should’ve died of plague, and a member of a doomed polar expedition who would have died of starvation, stranded in the ice when his ship could not escape.
We primarily follow the story of the sailor, and the woman who is assigned to be his handler or “bridge “ The story starts soon after the prime travellers have moved to our current time and follows these people as , stranded in a different time zone, they try make sense of modern life.
The author clearly has a interest in the way, spoken language changes over time, and in different situations, I particularly enjoyed the discussions of language and the difference in different time periods. I also thought the language that the narrator uses when she had a bad cold was quite amusing .
The story moves quite fast once the initial set up is over and there’s been quite exciting sections towards the end. The narrator and her time traveller are avoiding people who mean to do them harm .
The book is primarily and. action or story based novel there is some character, description and development. I personally would’ve liked more.
There is a sweet love story between two of the characters and a beautifully written sex experience, which I enjoyed
The novel is witty, intelligent and energetic, lots of things to think about is you read.
The majority of the novel is set in London and there’s a distinctly British feel about it.
As the novel progresses, we learn more about the polar Explorer and his past history. There are sections in different type face which takes the form of a story about his doomed polar expedition. In the acknowledgements at the end of the novel, you discovered that this person is a real character From history. Personally I found the sections a little bit divorced from the rest of the novel and they’re interesting well written. I felt that Story could probably done without as much information and historical detail. The interest to me in reading this book was the difference. The people were finding between now, and then in normal life experiences

I read early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK. The book is published in the UK on the 14th of May 2024 by Hodder and Stoughton, Sceptre.
This review will appear on NetGalley, UK, Goodreads and my book, blog, bionic, SarahS books.wordpress.com
After publication, the review will also appear on Amazon, UK

Three and a half stars.

So difficult to review this because there was so much to like and so much I didn't really understand.

Our protagonist, whose name we never really find out, is an English civil servant. Her mother fled from the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia to England and is married to an Englishman. Our protagonist is recruited into a top-secret refugee scheme, but instead of using her language skills to help dispossessed refugees from other countries she is helping time-travellers to assimilate into modern life. The Ministry has discovered that it can transport people who died but their bodies were never found into the present day and there is a varied group of people ranging from the 1600s to WW1 who have been brought out of their own time. Each time-traveller is assigned a 'bridge' and she has been assigned Commander Graham Gore, an arctic explorer who died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic in 1847 - just as we don't know our protagonists name, the travellers are more often referred to by their year of extraction than their names.

As some of the travellers start to suffer mental health issues caused by their involuntary extraction, the stark realisation that all their friends and family are long-dead, and the stresses of adapting to modern life, can an early Victorian naval explorer and a modern Englishwoman find romance?

The modern-day narrative is also mixed with short passages from Graham's arctic expedition. Alongside a faintly sinister Big Brother oversight of the travellers and the minutiae of their everyday lives is a discourse on 'otherness' and racism.

I enjoyed this but I'm not sure what it was trying to be. Maybe I'm not clever enough to understand, and TBH the longer I think about it the more questions I have - maybe that's the sign of a good book.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I'm very sorry to say this wasn't for me. I really liked the first 30% - it truly is a brilliant idea, absolutely genius. This is definitely going to sell ten billion copies / be a popular book among people who only read 3-4 books per year (sorry to sound like a horrible bitchy snob when I say that... but you know it's true). This is a good read for fans of Naomi Alderman's <i>The Power</i>.

I don't like it when books become very ACTION-Y i.e. the dialogue gets filled with lines like "You're in danger, do you understand?", people are running, screaming, shots are going off, loooooooong speeches are being made... not for me. I think <i>Sea of Tranquility</i> is a much more beautiful exploration of time travel and a much more CHARACTER-BASED story... the characters here imo got thrown under the bus of plot and that was just not for me. Maybe I should have read this book on an airplane. It's also worth saying that because this book has been so INCREDIBLY HYPED that I am likely judging it too harshly. This is why I don't like reading debuts until a few years later!!! So that I can be more objective!!! But I was hungry for something immersive and entertaining, a la <i>Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow</i> and I thought this book would do the trick. <i>Birnam Wood</i> is a novel that I think does a much better job of being VERY PLOT-Y, VERY DRAMATIC, VERY ENTERTAINING, and yet is also substantial and character-based. I wonder if 3rd person rather than 1st person would have been a better choice for this.

I do think this book engages with some really thoughtful stuff and is well-executed in parts - I really liked the parallel between time travellers and refugees / immigrants, and I liked all the moments that engaged seriously with the legacy of the British Empire. These parts of the book are definitely not dumb and fluffy. And Margaret is a fantastic character, arguably much more interesting that Gore (I had the feeling that the author really, really enjoyed writing the Margaret bits). Overall I liked the human bits of the novel but I didn't like it once the book became ACTION MOVIE, but many readers will not have a problem with that.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An intriguing and gripping story, I loved the characters and can't wait to read more by this author.

A real page turner.
Into a rather horrifying vision of the future of the world, and the UK in particular, several expats — refugees from previous centuries — arrive. All have been brought through a time portal, having apparently died in their era.
Each expat is given a 'bridge', someone from the 'Ministry' who is there to guide them through this unfamiliar century they have arrived in.
Among the horrors of the new era, relationships develop and there are charming descriptions of the 17th century, 19th century and early 20th century expats' encounters with the vagaries of modern life.
Some really funny moments amid a charming story that also relays an important message about what we are doing to the planet.
Thoroughly enjoyable.

This is a lovely read. The time travel part, particularly towards the end, is rather incomprehensible, but it’s still five stars for me - the writing is gorgeous and the characters really enjoyable. I love time travelling books, but in some ways this is almost more of a historical novel about the polar expedition than time travel as a narrowly understood scifi genre. If that’s what you’re after, I can see that you may be disappointed. However, if you want something engaging, well written and with great characters, it’s definitely a five star read.

This was an amazing read, I devoured it in one day. I love the whole concept of time travel so I knew this book would be up my street, but I wasn't expecting it to be so moving - it's less about the mechanics of how it all works and more about the impact on the travellers themselves and those assigned by a mysterious government department to be their "handlers". As the various relationships developed I found myself really invested in the characters. A really different and beautifully written meditation on what unites and divides us as human beings.

An incredible book. I’m stuck on it, having finished it and immediately wanting to re-read it. An interesting premise that is approached from a fun angle and filled out by loveable characters. Dialogue and narrative are excellent, and it was truly a joy to read. There are layers to it and I want to dig right in and live among them. I cannot recommend this book enough, it’ll be going right to my top favourites.

Many many thanks for NetGalley for early access in return for an honest review. This was a diamond read.

DNF at 20%

I am so sorry, but this book just wasn't right for me.

It is well written. The writing is beautiful, but sadly the book wasn't what I thought it would be. I thought it would read as a fantasy/science fiction, based off the cover and description, but that's my fault.

I am giving the book 3 stars for the writing style. I would read more books by this author.

I feel poorly placed to review this as I just don’t think this book was for me. I do, however, think it will be a big hit upon release, that it’ll sell a lot of copies and that it’ll find a big audience. This is the kind of accessible sci-fi romance that will appeal to a lot of people, and I don’t think my issues with it reflect the reception it’ll have.

This is a novel about a young civil servant in the near-future, who is successful in interviewing for a role in a secretive new department - the ministry of time. Time travel is possible - “how does it work? Don’t worry about it” - and the new recruit is assigned as supervisor, or ‘bridge’, to Graham Gore, Arctic explorer who has been brought from 1847 to (the book’s) present day London. The two of them are forced to co-habit, and a will-they-won’t-they relationship ensues while a nefarious time travel conspiracy plays out in the background.

This book had a fun premise, and I went in expecting something entertaining and plotty - and that’s not quite what this is. The first act sets up the fish-out-of-water scenario, and we see Graham (along with the other historical expats) forced to learn about modern culture, and all that has evolved in the centuries since they were last present. This is quite amusing, and Bradley’s writing is very likeable and witty, but I did find it a little tiring after a point. There’s a lot of this - actually, the bulk of the novel is this - and I’m not sure I was invested enough in these characters to really need so much of it. Think of the BBC’s ‘Ghosts’ but with a little less humour. There are whispers of a conspiracy plot here and there, but a majority of the novel feels like it’s lacking much propulsion in its plot. Readers expecting a romance novel might have less of an issue here, because if you really buy into the relationship between the characters then I’m sure this is a satisfying slow-burn love story. Anyone looking for more focus on the time travel aspects is likely to be a little underwhelmed.

All of this time travel plot is crammed into a baffling third act which I found unbelievably confusing - and not in a fun, complex and intricately plotted way. I really don’t know what the author was going for here and I just found it utterly incomprehensible. Not explaining how the time travel works is fine with me, that seems like a big ask - but this didn’t feel like it had much internal logic to the time travel at all, and it just made it a bit of a chore to follow. One unengaging action scene is followed by a pages-long exposition dump, full of nonsensical twists that have to be explained at length and still left me feeling like the consequences hadn’t really been thought through. It’s difficult to connect emotionally with the climax of the novel when you’re really not clear on what’s happening at all, and this had me thoroughly lost. It’s a real disappointment from a book with such a fun premise, and written with a clear and confident voice. It feels a bit harsh to complain - I was told up front not to worry about the time travel - but I wish that the novel had just worried a little bit more about it.

For me, this had its moments, and I think Bradley is a talented writer. Go in expecting something more in the vein of a romantasy novel and I think you’ll find this more satisfying - and I really do think this’ll have widespread appeal. An appearance on the Observer’s Best Debut Novels of 2024 list has done this few favours, and those expecting a new literary sci-fi classic are likely to be left underwhelmed.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sceptre for the ARC!

I think I've never felt so connected to a character whose name I don't know, this novel is warm, smart and totally enjoyable, loved it!

I revived a copy of this book to review from Netgalley.
This book is unique and brilliant. I have never read anything like it before and the writing is superb.
I look forward to seeing what the author writes next. This is sure to be a bestseller of 2024 and beyond!

Thanks to Net gallery for the ARC.

Such an interesting idea for a story. I did want more time travel and focus on the Ministry. That being said I loved the characters in this novel.

The development of the characters is wonderfully written.

Entertaining and funny. Very enjoyable. People are going to love this

I should have read the reviews in advance- especially the warning that you might not sleep! Subsequently I stayed up most of the night reading this. I loved it. It was a time-travelling, historical, love-story with Men in Black undertones. It was funny and very compelling. I literally couldn’t stop reading it. I was really thrilled to get an advance copy.