The Ministry of Time is an engaging read from start to finish. It takes the star crossed lovers meeting through time in the other direction than usual. So rather than the protagonist going back and being guided through a different time, the time traveller comes to a time slightly in the future, and the protagonist is the guide. It makes for an interesting premise. Even if you take away all the technological advancements, how could a man from the 19th century (or even 20th) deal with the changes in behaviour of both women and men? How could you get someone ready? Well, that's why the Ministry employ 'bridges'. These are the people tasked with adjusting these time refugees who have no idea why they've been plucked out of time to adjust to the modern world. And our 'bridge' is more than happy to help her charge, '1847' AKA Commander Graham Gore 'adjust' to modern sensibilities.

There's a lot of hype for this book. I'm not 100% sure it's deserving of that, but it is a great story. Somehow, I feel the story will suit its next incarnation as a TV series better than the written word.

The Book’s Basics

Title: The Ministry of Time

Author: Kaliane Bradley

Series: No

Genre: Near-Future, Sci-Fi

Length: 368 pages

Initial Reaction: Overall, I really enjoyed it. It was cute in places and through-provoking in others.

I received a galley of this book from NetGalley without charge in exchange for an honest review.

Britain has a secret governmental department that has time travel technology. It is quite new, so they have started a bridge program where they’ve taken people from periods in time where they were supposedly to have died so that they won’t be missed (and are called “expats”).

Our main character is a Bridge, someone to help their person from the past integrate into modern society and ensure they are healthy, gets paired up with Graham Gore. He is a man taken from the mid-1800s from an Arctic exploration mission which had gone horribly wrong.

The story follows how Gore and the others are adjusting, discovering modern inventions and ways of thinking, while also battling with leaving their old lives and families behind.

It looks into the Bridges and how they try to manoeuvre around the expats to help them adjust, but also to not make them too uncomfortable. They also have to wade through bureaucracy and learn when to question who is actually on their side.

I would recommend this book to most people, as long has they’re happy with some spice. It had elements of spy thriller, romance, history, and character focused writing, but with enough pace to not be slow.

I enjoyed the romance and Gore is adorable in parts of the book, both because of his Victorian sensibilities and because of who he is. He is charming, witty, and headstrong.

I disliked the main character for a bit, which I think was done intentionally, but it was done with purpose. The story does get darker towards the end – I wouldn’t consider this a “light” read, but it was reasonably fast paced.

There were some really great quotes, especially towards the end. I won’t share those because I don’t want to give away too much of the story. A lot were insightful, but my favourite is:

“If a black hole could sneeze, it might have looked like this.” – page 326

This is a book I will be returning to, both in my thoughts and through future re-reads (I’ve already bought my own copy).

I am an unpublished writer, but I’m working towards being published some day, so when I read a book I am trying to be more aware of the author’s craft and what I can learn from them.

One of the most important things when writing a story, arguably the most important thing, is how you make the reader feel while and after they have read the book. In this book, I feel like I’m grieving a man who died nearly 200 years ago. Not the character, but kind of through the character.

In reality, was a real man who died young and tragically. The story lets him live on in contemporary minds, even if it is a fictionalised version of him. In the Afterword, Bradley talks about how she pieced together the character of Gore through small notes about him through his words and others. She used these to weave the character of Graham Gore and I think did a really good job.

It left me with a sense of hope – a kind of second chance for Gore, and, certainly, a chance for his name to be known.

I’m not saying I’ll write fictionalised versions of real people in my stories, especially as my focus is primarily on Fantasy, but I think it could be an interesting study about how to make a character feel real from small tidbits of information – how small actions and reverberations of those actions create a whole character. The Afterward is very much worth reading as Bradley goes into how she created the character of Gore, primarily from what other people noted of him. That he is based on a real person gives it a certain weight of meaning, but I think even if he was entirely fictionalised the character would have felt real and what I’m feeling now having read the book would be similar.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Given all I had heard about this book, I was SO excited to start but it didn’t work for me at all. For all the things The Ministry of Time was trying to do I don’t think it succeeded at any of them. The prose was sluggish so every time I put the book down I was never anticipating picking it up again. I wasn’t invested in the romance at all and mostly found it cringey. I love a time travel story but that didn’t feel fleshed out either.

An intriguing premise - a recently established government. Ministry is gathering ex-pats from history to establish whether time travel is feasible. It’s set in the near future, and they have discovered a time travel door.

I found the first third of the book very strong . Particularly like the comment about the British empire, treating other countries like her father treated elastic bands dropped by the postman. Oh that might be useful. I’ll keep that for later.

Unfortunately, the second third of the book was a bit too much The Time Traveller’s Wife for me, but it picked up again in the last third of the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This was one of my Most Anticipated releases of the year and I’m happy to report that it pretty much lived up to my high hopes. I rightly had in mind that it would be a zany time-travel romance involving a modern-day civil servant falling in love with her charge, who was a real-life Victorian polar explorer. The blurb had me expecting something rather light and one-dimensional, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that this nuanced debut novel alternately goes along with and flouts the tropes of spy fiction and science fiction, and makes clever observations about how we frame stories of empire and progress.

The unnamed first-person narrator is, like Bradley, a young British-Cambodian woman. She is blasé about her government work in languages and relishes the chance to do something a bit different. After a rigorous set of interviews for the Ministry’s mysterious new project, she is hired as a “bridge” helping to resettle one of five “expatriates” from history in near-future London. Her expat is “1847,” 38-year-old Commander Graham Gore, rescued before his death on Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated Arctic expedition.

Two of the other expats, Arthur aka “1916” and seventeenth-century nonconformist Margaret Kemble (both queer), become Gore’s close friends. It’s a delight to watch these characters take up new vocabulary and technology and handpick the things they appreciate about popular culture. There are some hilarious scenes of the gang all together, particularly those involving music: Arthur and Graham put on a ‘disco’, the narrator teaches them all to do the electric slide before a clubbing outing, and they have a go on a theremin.

Gore lives in the narrator’s flat while she oversees his adjustment. At times he feels like her “overgrown son,” testing the boundaries and expressing knee-jerk disapproval of things he doesn’t understand. Gradually their bizarre housemate situation turns into an odd-couple romance. “He was an anachronism, a puzzle, a piss-take, a problem, but he was, above all things, a charming man. … I was concussed with love for him. I bent my head to the cudgel.”

Although this feels like wish-fulfilment (imagine choosing a historical figure you find vaguely hot, bringing them back to life, and then giving your fictional stand-in a chance with them), Bradley doesn’t completely gloss over the difficulties their backgrounds and mores would cause. Most noteworthy is his exoticization of her as a mixed-race woman. Occasional passages in archaic font introducing vignettes from Gore’s time in the Arctic suggest that his reaction to the narrator may be informed by a pivotal encounter he had with a bereaved Inuit woman. The expats undergo intense sensitivity training, but the imperial mindset is hard to root out, and even the narrator, whose mother was a refugee from the Khmer Rouge, isn’t sure she’s always getting it right when it comes to racism and assimilation.

Bradley’s descriptive prose is a highlight (“he looked oddly formal, as if he was the sole person in serif font”; “A great graphite pencil inscribed the diagonal journey of water on the air”), memorable but never too quirky just for the sake of it. At a certain point, plot starts to take over and pushes aside the quiet playfulness of the culture shock scenes. I did miss the innocent joy, but that’s Bradley’s point: mess around with the past and grave consequences are bound to follow. We learn that the Ministry has a double agent, that there are visitors from later centuries as well as previous ones, and that the narrator’s own future is at stake.

Maybe because I don’t read hard SF, it didn’t bother me that the explanations and world-building are a little bit thin here. You just have to suspend disbelief at the start and then go with it. The result is a witty, sexy, off-kilter gem. I haven’t had so much sheer fun with a book since Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, and I will be looking out for whatever Bradley writes next.

Such an unusual book ! So glad to have read it and enjoyed it -its about a woman who works for the ministry as a field agent or 'Bridge' and she is in charge of Commander Graham Gore who has been extracted from 1847 through a portal and is one of a handful from different times who have been bought back from the past. It is part love story, part thriller and part Sci-Fi - I loved all of the aspects of this book and I imagine someone will be turning it into a film.

I am a massive fan of time travel novels and knew a bit about Erebus (thanks to Michael Palin) so the concept of this, book, where in the nearish future the Government has found out how to transport people through time, and as an experiment has gathered people they knew were about to die (from historical documents) and transported them to live in modern day London with their handlers (bridges) is right up my street.
Graham Gore has been plucked from the ill-fated Erebus expedition and is placed with his bridge, who is a languages expert whose mother was a refugee. She is the narrator of this story. I was really unsure what direction this novel would take but it is less about the differences between times and more about human relationships and what it is to be an immigrant, geographically or temporally. There’s a fair bit of excitement towards the last quarter of the book where a revelation made me gasp out loud. Turns out that time travel makes life very complicated. Unsurprisingly.
This is a smart, romantic, and thoughtful novel.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

What would you do if you 'discovered' time travel? Would you (a) activate your device, use it and think about the consequences after or (b) take a more cautious approach?

The titular Ministry takes the latter approach and abducts several historically insignificant people just before they're about to die. Each of the five 'expats', another couple have died anyway, is paired with a civil service 'bridge' to help them acclimatise to the present and observe what effect time travel's had upon them.

Our nameless narrator is one such 'bridge'. Assigned to Commander Graham Gore, one of Franklin's lost Arctic expedition, they spend one long, hot, near-future summer together. Growing closer and closer as the time-lost Gore finds his feet in the now.

Throw a conspiracy into the mix and you have a quirky, rom-com, time travel caper. Yes, I don't usually do romance, but when I do it tends to be quirky and surprisingly enjoyable.

Maybe the conspiracy that underpins everything doesn't really hold up to close scrutiny, if you really think about it you start to spot gaping holes, but when the characters are as strong as they are and the use of time travel as original as it is that's something that you can almost overlook.

I've got my fingers crossed for a sequel. There are enough hints and loose ends to suggest that one could be forthcoming.

Thanks to NetGalley, Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton and the author for an advance review copy.

Fascinating! I really enjoyed the initial disparity between the “ex-pats” and their handlers, known as their Bridge.

Imagine travelling to the present day from the 1800s, where there is no internet, no Spotify, single men and women live together out of wedlock, women go to the pub, indoor smoking is prohibited and everyday words from your time, like “negro” are racist and you just don’t understand why! And as for no servants? Oh, but there’s a dishwasher and a washing machine, so no need to panic!

Commander Graham Gore is one of the few chosen to be transported from the 1800s to 20?? something in the near future. With a young, disgruntled civil servant as his “bridge”, the present day person responsible for helping the wide eyed time traveller transition into the current time. Their initial awkwardness grows into friendship and then a far deeper, romantic relationship.

This is a well researched, brilliantly written and serious book, but with a generous smattering of dry humour, which I loved. A refreshing and original book, which deserves every one of it's FIVE STARS. The mix of historical fact and fiction worked perfectly in this mixed-genre gem of a read. A time travel, spy, suspense thriller with romance and a bit of spice. Fabulous!

5 ⭐️ Thanks to Netgalley, Kaliane Bradley and Hodder and Stoughton for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Such an original engaging book.
The writing flowed and there was humour too. It was entertaining seeing our world through the eyes of the expats and the writer did a great job describing their reactions to things beyond their experience.
The sci-fi part was well done as was the intrigue at the Ministry although parts of the plot went over my head towards the end.

What fun The Ministry of Time is!

I’ve been describing it as part Catch-22, part Bond, part Time Travellers Wife. Our narrator is part of a government project which brings people from the past to the present (set in the near future). The narrator is to work as a ‘bridge’ for her time traveller to help him acclimatise. As the scheme continues, the motives and safety of it are called into question. Does good triumph over all? Good for who?

Genuinely had such a good time reading this. Sci-fi is not normally my thing but I thought I would give it a go anyways and I’m so glad I did. I could see this appealing to loads of different people, it would make a great holiday read - propulsive, intriguing and humorous. Save space in your suitcase by reading the same book as your boyfriend!!!

It’s not just a romp either - really interesting considerations of colonialism, culture and how it changes over time. This would make it a great book club pick too IMO.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the eARC - I had such a good time!

This book sounded so good, and I really wanted to love it, but I just felt the story fell a bit flat for me. This book is a bit of a time travel thriller romance- mixed bag and I loved the concept of having a person time travel from 1845 to the future and learn all about technology. I enjoyed the authors writing style and there were moments where I was laughing and enjoying parts of the book. I saw reviews for this book that said some people DNF’ed it and others loved it after they pushed through the beginning, therefore I was determined not to DNF it. The book did not really ever pick up for me. I have seen some people who love this book though so it seems to be a very divided opinion and you may enjoy it.

Oh wow, I am so in Love with this book. Like heart-pounding, pupil-dilating, sweaty-palmed LURVE!
The writing is fluid, very funny and perfect. The premise is genius. The characters are achingly fantastic. For those who have read this - did you not have a crush on Graham Gore? (Real life character - A Commander of the fabled Franklin/Erebus Arctic expedition).
Okay, so there’s time travel. And what I Love about Kaliane Bradley’s approach to the often knotty and mind-blowing concept of time travel is ‘It is what it is’ and you don’t feel at all cheated that the scientific workings are not expanded upon too much.
The slow-burning love affair (and I won’t spoil it and say between whom) is perhaps the most beautiful and visceral description of falling in love that I’ve ever read. Kaliane Bradley certainly has a ‘turn of phrase’ that is perfection.
Possibly my favourite book of the year!

Sadly this book did not quite resonate with me. Despite blending time travel, love and work-place politics the narrative somehow lacked pace and dynamism. The characters were superficially enigmatic yet flat. I could summon neither empathy nor enthusiasm for the resolution of their fates. I am certain lots of readers will love this book. It just wasn't for me. Special thank you to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for a no obligation advance review copy.

The Ministry of Time was one of my most-anticipated books of the year because it has such a wonderful premise. I absolutely loved the idea of "expats" who move through time, and the parallels that can be drawn with "conventional" immigration are fascinating.

My favourite thing about the book was the characterisation of the three central "expats". They were all warm, intriguing characters, each lovable in their own way. They often confounded expectations and defied easy categorisation, whilst their anachronistic quirks brought genuine humour.

This novel has been described as "genre-bending" which is definitely true. It blends romance, thriller, comedy, historical fiction and more. Some parts of the book worked better for me than others. I personally much preferred the first half (which was funnier and much more character driven) to the plotty, action-focused final act where, at times, I confess to getting a bit lost (unusual for me). This is just my own preference though, and I can imagine that the book will appeal to an extremely wide readership.

This book is highly discussible and well worth adding to your summer reading list! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free advance copy of The Ministry of Time in exchange for an honest review.

I really thought I would love this, the blurb made it sound like it would focus on the romance. A romance between a Victorian naval officer and a modern-day woman? It sounded amazing, I was ready to swoon.

Unfortunately, not only was the focus <i>not</i> on the romance imo, the parts that <i>were</i> about it just didn't work for me. There was a lot of telling, with the main (unnamed?) main character summarising things for us after they happened, so I honestly didn't really know what they saw in each other - they just seemed to be drawn to each other because they were sort of the only people around? Besides, her obsession with him wasn't endearing.

I didn't get attached to either of the characters. I gradually went from being undecided about the main character, to not really liking her (she fed butterflies to a spider because she was afraid of it?!), to actively disliking her and finding her annoying. Graham Gore, the Victorian love interest, wasn't particularly swoon-worthy for me. I didn't think we got to know him very well, and the parts we <i>did</i> learn weren't entirely to my linking. I was taken a little aback when I found out that he was a real historic figure! I wonder why the author picked him and his expedition.

I wish we would have had Graham's pov too. For me, seeing our world through a Victorian's eyes would have been so interesting. Instead, we got the FMCs pov only (I'm not counting the snippets about his expedition), which focused a lot on her struggle with her biracial heritage and her mother's experience of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. It focused on mundane interactions with other characters, some vague struggles with her job, and then later turned into a quasi thriller?

I suppose a lot of it is down to personal preference and expectations, but I think objectively the story-telling wasn't great, with <i>too much</i> telling. Too many themes and ideas, with none explored in-depth. I struggled to find some parts believable (or they just didn't make sense), and I was often confused by the dialogue, because I lost track of who was saying which line.

Overall, I really struggled with this one and could easily have set it down without thinking about it again. I just wasn't for me, although I thought the idea was great.

A fusion of time-travel, romance and spy thriller, this debut novel by Kaliane Bradley is engaging, compelling and humorous. The author has taken an historical event, The Franklin Expedition (1847) and woven it into this unputdownable read. The Ministry of Defence have ‘kidnapped’ people from their own timelines and brought them into the future. The government employees tasked with helping the reluctant time travelers climatise to their new time are called ‘bridges’. The characters are charming, funny and charismatic. This novel is expertly written and well plotted. Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley UK for the ARC.

An interesting title and potential for an entertaining story line. Historical characters are transported to the present where they are allocated a specially selected civil servant, a Bridge, who helps them to acclimatise. Commander Graham Gore, is extracted from 1847 from an ill fated arctic expedition. The historical details of the period are clearly well researched and there are interesting social and cultural insights as Gore tries to make sense of the modern world whilst his Bridge also tries to see things from his perspective. There is some interesting dialogue on topics including equality, technology, relationships and trust.

I enjoyed the first quarter of the book and Gore’s character is particularly well developed. However, the narrative style after a while became rather tedious and I struggled to see what the purpose of the time travel experiment was. There are some plot twists towards the end which felt rushed and I lost track of who was from which period. Overall, the story started strong but failed to keep me engaged.

The Ministry of Time is an inventive and totally absorbing blend of science fiction and romance with a dash of historical fiction and an element of mystery added for good measure. If this all sounds a bit of mishmash, think of it instead as a glorious cocktail of different ingredients that once you’ve downed it you immediately want to drink again… except this time surely it tastes slightly different?

I’m not going to try to summarise the plot for fear of spoilers but what I can say is you will meet some wonderful characters. Commander Graham Gore, obviously, but also Arthur (‘1916’) and Margaret Kemble (‘1665’). There’s a lot of humour as the ‘expats’ are introduced to modern technology, attitudes and concepts by their ‘bridges’. Margaret’s 17th century mode of speech and inventive cursing is both endearing and very funny.

But there’s also a serious side as well as the expats learn about world events that have taken place since they were ‘extracted’ from their own time. For example, Arthur, having been plucked from the Battle of the Somme, is horrified to discover that there was a second world war, although in other ways the modern world may be more accommodating than the one he left. Having all been rescued from certain death, survivor’s guilt is real for them. This is especially the case for Gore once he learns the fate of his comrades on Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition. He is haunted by the knowledge his markmanship might have made a difference to their survival. I particularly liked the sections which take us back in time to witness the ill-fated mission from the point of view of Gore.

There’s a sinister aspect to the way the expats are constantly monitored (in more ways than they realise), periodically assessed and tested by Ministry officials, and reported on by their ‘bridges’ who also exercise control over the information they are given. Just why these particular individuals were chosen to be ‘rescued’ becomes a source of mystery too.

There’s an interesting parallel made between the assimilation of the expats into the modern world (to misquote E. M. Forster, ‘The present is a foreign country: they do things differently there‘) and the experience of people moving from one culture or country to another. Gore’s bridge is part-Cambodian and the daughter of immigrants so she has had to be a ‘bridge’ for her Cambodian mother, helping her learn a new language and so on.

A wonderfully supportive relationship develops between the three expats and the narrator also becomes more a friend than a ‘bridge’, although this brings its own challenges for her. One particular relationship becomes the main focus of the story and if it doesn’t touch your heart I’ll be surprised.

Towards the end of the book, the author really ups the action and throws in a terrific curved ball that took my brain a while to unscramble. The message I had no difficulty understanding, though, was that whereas you can’t change the past, you can change the future. Oh, and the enduring power of love.

I thought The Ministry of Time was mindbendingly brilliant and definitely among the most enjoyable books I’ve read so far this year.

'The Ministry of Time' by Kaliane Bradley is a captivating debut that seamlessly blends time travel romance, spy thriller, workplace comedy, and a thoughtful exploration of power and love. The novel centers on a civil servant who is tasked with assisting Commander Graham Gore, a historical figure resurrected from Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 Arctic expedition. The characters, particularly the nameless British-Cambodian female main character (FMC), Commander Gore, Margaret Kemble, and Arthur, are richly developed and convincingly portrayed, evoking a strong sense of historical and emotional authenticity.

Bradley's humor is a highlight, skillfully balancing self-awareness and dry wit to address time travel tropes and paradoxes. The narrative delves into themes of colonialism, inherited trauma, slavery, racism, racial identity, climate change, gender, and LGBTQ+ sexuality, all interwoven with clever, plot-relevant commentary that never feels preachy.

However, the novel's ambitious scope becomes a double-edged sword. As the story progresses, the plot developments accelerate and the reveals become increasingly awkward, making the ending feel rushed and overly complex. Despite this, the book remains an imaginative and engaging read, with its vivid characters and inventive premise leaving a lasting impression. Overall, 'The Ministry of Time' is a smart, witty, and thought-provoking novel that deserves a solid 4 out of 5.