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.

WOW. WOW. WOW.

I was not expecting that book to put my mind in a vice and squeeze all the emotions out of it like that. What a ride!

The slow burn was so perfect here that when the main characters finally kissed I had to put the book away, as I was on public transport and blushing like a loon.

Riveting, hellishly clever, and overwhelmingly sensual. This is my favourite read of 2024 so far.

Ps. Cast Maya Erskine and Tom Hiddleston in the film adaptation NOW.

This is not my usual genre but as a lifelong Doctor Who fan I was intrigued by the time travel concept. In general, I enjoyed the book but some parts were glossed over rather quickly. We don’t get an explanation of how time travel has been arrived at- it’s accepted within the ministry as a fait accompli. There is a cast of ‘refugees’ from across the time frame ( kinda reminded me of the tv series Ghosts). Will they all survive? What can they offer the ‘present’ day? There is a strong relationship at the centre of the book which anchors the narrative. The ending was partly surprising but also obvious if the point of the story is remembered. If this is a debut, can’t wait for the next one! Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC.

This book is everything I love about reading. I read to escape (mainly, but not solely!), and so science fiction/ fantasy has always appealed to me. Now I’ve discovered speculative fiction, and it seems to be like both of these things wrapped up in a package with a label saying: “This Seems Plausible”.

The Ministry of Time is a clever book - it uses time travel and science fiction, with a touch of history that actually happened, and mixes it up with a hefty dose of romance, thriller and literary fiction. It doesn’t sound like it will work, but I’m here to say that it really DOES!

Ok, so a quick, yet vague, synopsis: the British Government has come into possession of a device that can go back in time and find particular people in the past. It’s been decided that the people they take are all in life-threatening situations. Those plucked from their time are placed with a “Bridge”; someone who will facilitate their integration into modern society.

The main pair is that of Graham Gore, a Polar explorer from the Erebus expedition, and his Bridge, a woman whose mother escaped the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Not an easy adjustment for a Victorian man. This Bridge is the narrator.

Graham Gore adjusts quickly to modern life, but is modern life willing to accept him? And what affect does it have on him and his fellow time travellers, to be so out of time?

There was so much to think about whilst reading this - I was completely immersed, and it ended FAR too quickly!

An extremely hyped book for a reason - I know exactly which readers to recommend it to, those who love a new buzzy high-concept novel that spans multiple genres (romance, sci-fi, spy thrillers). Not quite for me but that's not to say it won't thrill many readers, will be recommending. Found the first half very slow, but it definitely picks up at a certain point (no spoilers).

Whilst The Ministry of Time is absolutely not the book I was sold (lor 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.

It is a superb premise, what if there was a time door and what if the government set up an experiment with said door and brought back incidental figures from history and observed them in modern life? This is a clever, thrilling, superbly realised and impeccably researched novel that I can highly recommend. It is little surprise that the BBC are adapting the book into a TV series, and I look forward to that immensely.

Fantastic idea, really well executed. The characters leapt off the page and the love story was very well drawn. However I feel like the plot was stretched rather thinly and the book failed to hold my interest for that reason. A good, rather than a great read.

A woman of Cambodian and British heritage, known only to the reader as The Bridge, takes a top secret job in the new Ministry of Time. She's quickly told, with no fuss or fanfare, that the British government have discovered time travel and have “rescued” a number of people from the past just before they were about to die. She is paired with one “expat”, Commander Graham Gore, who is a real historical figure, an Arctic Explorer who died in 1846. As they grow closer over the year and blur their professional boundaries irrevocably, the Bridge is torn between her duty to the Ministry and her new loyalty to Gore.

Bradley is unflinching in how she treats the protagonist, who is avoidant in the extreme, while still narrating the book in a way that seems very frank, but also strangely defensive too. On reflection after finishing, I thought a lot about what the book has to say about individual responsibility even in the face of overwhelming power (like the Ministry) or in the face of other larger systems (in this book, racism and climate change), and even in day to day lives with our friends, family, colleagues and loved ones.

The underlying theme is that of displacement - the Bridge’s Cambodian mother displaced after atrocities in her home countries is somewhat aligned with Commander Gore displaced from his native time. Bradley also points to a vision in the future that we unfortunately can guess is really coming, which is the increase of displaced peoples as climate change makes more and more of our land uninhabitable. As Bradley writes so beautifully, “The rhythms of loss and asylum, exodus and loneliness, roll like floods across human history”

It's a strange book in some ways, and also just gas in others, and one I really underestimated but ended up so, so impressed with. I'll be thinking about it for a long while.