I was disappointed after all the hype this book received but I’m afraid it was just not for me.
The premise of time travelling did not phase me and I did find an odd bit comedic such as learning to bike ride .

I ordered The Ministry Of Time based on glowing reviews I read online. The marketing/PR department of the publisher have done a great job hyping the book. However, I found it a bit of a slog to get through. I couldn't really suspend my disbelief and just go with the premise of taking people "who wouldn't be missed" (as they would have died at that point in time anyway) from the past and bringing them to the future where they have to be given a "bridge" helper to navigate life in a hush, hush government programme. Really? and why? I thought the story would be a tight mystery or espionage drama but it mostly settled into a light romcom about cultural differences and misunderstandings. I just found it all a bit strange.

I enjoyed this spy-thriller-time travel-romance and thought the author had really found a unique way of approaching the story. The interaction of time travel with the UK civil service was particularly well done - of course time travel would be subject to bureaucracy like everything else in the world.

I found myself researching the history of the real Graham Gore and becoming a little bewitched by his dimpled smile in the daguerreotype, so I think I can see where the romance aspect might have come from!

A recommended read. I can't wait to see what this debut writer comes up with next.

A very well researched book originally intended for an audience of five but I am sure the readership will far exceed that. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to ARC this book.

I have mixed feelings towards that book. On one hand, I really appreciate the inclusion of commentary of a few important topics, but the plot has honestly lost me a few times.

I've liked the characters but I've never felt like I really knew them, and I've never became truly immersed in the book. I think the plot was interesting but also, for me, not really well paced.

Overall, it was a nice read, but it didn't really wow me. I'll be interested to see what this author does in the future though.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sceptre for providing me with an e-ARC for this book.

This book exceeded my expectations. From the concept I knew it’d be hit or miss for me and for the most part this was great! Really this felt like two books in one and I definitely preferred one side of it. The main romance here worked really well for me but the highlight was the small found family that formed of these characters from across time. Scenes of them just together and navigating their new world were excellent and in general all the characters here were fantastic and kept me reading!

The other half of the book revolves around the ministry conspiracy and this generally didn’t really grip me. I understand its place in the story and it was executed well, but I feel it could’ve been better integrated into the character interactions, especially earlier in the story!

Overall, this book was a really good read. I found the setting and its consideration of the future of the climate crisis very interesting. I also loved how the book handled its queer characters; it was a great surprise! The book has such great discussions and themes and it’s definitely worth the read.

REVIEW
cw: trauma, PTSD, death, racism, fascism, anxiety, depression, queerphobia, brief mention of suspected r*pe

In the near future, a linguistic civil servant earns a place on a top-secret project, though she has no idea just how much her life will change. A new government ministry is extracting 'expats' from across historical epidemics, warzones, and natural disasters. Places where they won't be missed, and would otherwise have died. She is tasked with being a 'bridge' for Commander Graham Gore (a member of the doomed Franklin Arctic expedition of 1845) assisting his assimilation into the 21st Century, living with, and recording his progress for the ministry. But over the course of a year, their dynamic develops, and she finds herself falling in love. But there are higher stakes than love at play.

What a debut! This was such a darkly funny, yet often heartbreakingly poignant story that hooked me immediately. The author seamlessly blended all the necessary elements of a spy novel with political intrigue and the potential of environmental disaster, alongside an exquisite slow-burn love story. There's also the sensitive retelling of a real-life historical event. If you've seen the TV series 'The Terror' (and if not, I highly recommend watching it) you'll know just how horrifying the Arctic expedition that Gore was part of became. His recollections of the expedition are retold in each chapter in diary form, and give the reader another dimension to the expat version of Gore. Graham was such an interesting and fully formed character. I loved his stoicism, his sassy humour, his sharp brain, but also his charisma. It was easy to see how his bridge would fall in love with him, and there were some truly delightful moments between the two of them. His response to 'germs' was hilarious and I loved the scene where he learnt to ride a bike. The romance was so wonderfully interwoven, and Graham's nickname for his bridge was adorable. I found his final diary entry to be so profoundly beautiful.
We never learn Graham's bridge's name, but I loved her fallibility, as well as her sense of humour. I found her hopes, fears, and imposter syndrome well-written and her memories of her family were incorporated perfectly into the overall story. I promise not to spoil the details, but it was at its most impactful when it dealt with the very real reminders of our past and the eerily prescient forecasts for our future. It also raised so many ethical questions, as well as confronted some of the most shameful moments in history, including slavery, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and the Holocaust. I couldn't help but wonder what Graham would have said about the current horrors unfolding in our world. While the book dealt with many heavy themes, there was also so much humour. Some of my favourite moments were centred around Graham and his bridge's interactions.
But the supporting characters only made this story better. My two favourites (by far) were two of the other expats: Margaret and Arthur. Arthur was a WW1 captain brought from 1916, and I found his PTSD well-observed, I loved how Gore was able to talk him down, especially during his scans, but my heart broke for Arthur so many times. He was such a sweetheart. My favourite expat was Margaret, who came from the 17th Century and loved Tinder and cinema. I adored her gregarious nature and her colloquialisms were both obscure and hilarious. I particularly enjoyed her friendship with 'bridge', and how she was able to flourish in the 21st century. Arthur's bridge, Simellia, was such an interesting character, and her conversations with the FMC about racism and The British Empire were sadly accurate. I also loved Adela's sass, whenever she became exasperated with Graham's bridge. Again, no spoilers, but chapter nine absolutely broke my heart, and I have still not recovered (I might never, particularly regarding one specific event). There's a truly satisfying ending, and this book will make you laugh and cry. But it will also (hopefully) leave you hopeful.
A truly original, hilarious but also deeply moving debut.

Overall Rating: ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
Heat Rating: 🔥.5

p.s. Graham would HATE all of this effusion over social media (IYKYK) 😉

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own*

Favourite Quotes:

The Empire regarded the world the way my dad regards the elastic bands that the postman drops on his round: This is handy, it’s just lying here, now it’s mine.

‘I should warn you that these days, blowing up an Arabian port because you want to claim it for the Empire is generally frowned upon.’

‘Some charming young women – out on the heath – addressed me quite boisterously – what is a “dilf”?’

Ah, love, life’s greatest catastrophe.’

‘Apparently I can pass as an eccentric. I suggested that somewhere like Scotland, Arthur and I might simply pass as Englishmen. One of the panel was a Scotsman, and I think he liked that.’

You can’t trauma-proof life and you can’t hurt-proof your relationships. You have to accept you will cause harm to yourself and others. But you can also f**k up, really badly, and not learn anything from it except that you f**ked up. It’s the same with oppression. You don’t gain any special knowledge from being marginalised. But you do gain something from stepping outside your hurt and examining the scaffolding of your oppression.

God, he was a dreadful dancer. Stiff and keyless. Victims of hangings kicked with more vim. I’d never in my life wanted anyone as badly as I wanted him.

It was a teaching moment that I fumbled; worse, it was a moment I’d created and my actions had consequences. But what could I have said? That the Holocaust was one of the most appalling, most shameful stains on the history of humanity, and it could have been prevented? Everything that has ever been could have been prevented, and none of it was. The only thing you can mend is the future.

'...you know, you can make yourself feel lonely and miserable and out of joint just by falling in love with someone who can’t or won’t love you back. Perhaps they’ll fix that in another two hundred years.'

‘You asked the lesbian from the seventeenth century about modern-day dating.’
'Yes. I am aware of the irony of the situation.’

Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time-travel.

I was OBSESSED with this book. It broke a significant reading slump with it's inventive and thought provoking plot and engaging characters. I had no expectations going in but have seen so much justified hype since finishing. Personally enjoyed the speculative approach to the future (climate change, tech etc), deep research into the various time periods that pays off in a natural way throughout without feeling "educational" and really didn't anticipate being so enamoured with a dead polar explorer. Beautifully done, can't wait to recommend to anyone who will listen and reread later in the year. Can't wait for their next book.

Despite the intriguing premise and the enormous potential to create either an engaging sci fi plot or a character-based story around the "what happens when you throw people from the past in the 21st century", the author opted to spend most of the book trying to tie everyday life scenes with her main character's struggled with her identity (which is self inserted for the author herself).

The result was quite dull for my expectations.

Thank you NetGalley and Sceptre for the ARC!

I began this novel expecting something light-hearted. A 19th century polar explorer thrust into the 21st century certainly has plenty of potential for humour, and so there was, but as the story develops, certain themes emerge and the novel develops a reflective feel, before pivoting again into a dystopian thriller. It feels like it shouldn’t work, but it does. Just.

It’s the BBC comedy ‘Ghosts’ meets the author R F Kuang meets ‘1984’.

Identity is a key theme of the novel, and this is what made me think of the novels ‘Babel’ and ‘Yellowface’ by R F Kuang, and George Orwell’s ‘1984’. I wasn’t expecting this angle and I found it quite powerful, as the narrator explores her place in the world and considers what progress has been made since the era of the polar explorer she has been tasked with assimilating into the modern world.

Though the novel is narrated by his ‘bridge’, I enjoyed the small portions where we get to witness the thoughts, feelings and experiences of Commander Graham Gore, who we learn at the end of the novel was a real person. The inclusion of a photograph took me completely by surprise, though he wasn’t quite how I had pictured him when reading!

As the novel pivots into its third act as a thriller, the theme of climate change rears its head. This seems to be a new trend among fiction recently. In any case, it rattles the story along towards the conclusion.

A really enjoyable read, surprisingly emotive and with something for everyone, including some romance (very predictable but you just know readers would have been disappointed without it!)

Thank you very much to the publishers and to NetGalley for the advance copy on which this review is based.

Every so often a book comes around that makes me remember why I love reading so much. Reading the first few lines of a book and knowing you are going to love it is a magical feeling and when the book turns out to be inventive, clever, witty, romantic and sexy against a backdrop of dystopia. sci-fi and historical fiction then it is a very special thing indeed. I've never read anything like this before, I loved it so much. An absolute page turner with moments of real peril and heightened emotions. Fabulous.

An effective mélange of speculative thriller (near-future time-travel) with buddy comedy, political commentary, and slow-burn romance. Our unnamed narrator is a British-Cambodian woman whose job as a "bridge" involves acclimatising RN Lt. Cdr. Graham Gore—killed, in our timeline, on the ill-fated Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin in 1847—to the twenty-first century. The Ministry for which she works, however, is not telling her or the "expats" (their word for people plucked out of time) everything, or even most of the things, about the project's rationale and ultimate goals. Bradley manages something quite brilliant: she shows how sickeningly easy it can be to become an apologist for fascism through your desire to belong—a phenomenon that accounts for the persistent right-wing voting habits of socially disenfranchised people, and the existence of Priti Patel—whilst also writing extraordinarily funny, wry dialogue that turns on the incongruity of being displaced from time. Margaret Kemble, a seventeenth-century Londoner who dies of plague in our timeline, is a particular bright spot (living in a future where her wit, skills and lesbianism don't have to be buried under misogyny and poverty in quite the same way, she gets Tinder and Instagram as soon as the Ministry allows it). A book of glorious fun that also passes the Kindred test of seriously considering the racial/social implications of time travel tech; superb.

Time travel is possible, and of course, the UK Government first needs to create a shady, slightly shambolic-run department to deal with it! The Ministry of Time hits on a range of themes, blending genres well. Part sci-fi, spy thriller, romance, and historical fiction, with a powerful commentary on post-colonialism, genocide, and refugees throughout. The plot follows a language specialist hired by an obscure new department, where ‘refugees’ from the past who were destined to die are brought to our present and looked after by a Bridge. The Bridge helps them to acclimatise to the twenty-first century and scientific research is carried out on them to see the lasting effects of time-travel. The end spiralled a bit for me and there was a slightly heavy-handed approach to the discussion around gender, sexuality, and race, but in a way that felt fitting to the often clumsy approach expected by the civil service. But overall well-paced, witty, unique, and highly entertaining.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

I really wanted to like this book, but in the end I felt it was just ok. Maybe I was expecting a little bit more on the romance, as that was a very slow burn and I personally think if it had started earlier in the book and was highlighted a bit more, I would probably be more invested. I struggled to like the main character, mainly as she felt slightly detached from the recounts of her youth/past. I like the commander as he felt as a realistic figure from the past/his time and the parts recounting his story are probably the ones I enjoyed the most. The premise is quite interesting and the secondary characters quite memorable and successful in carrying the plot and pace of the story. there were points were I had to push through and there were bits were I felt rewarded but overall I don't thing this book was for me. It is worth a read and I think potentially good book club material.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my review copy, all opinions are my own.

Writer and editor Kaliane Bradley’s entertaining debut novel’s partly inspired by Dan Simmons’s The Terror his take on the doomed Franklin expedition to the Arctic in the mid-nineteenth century. Bradley’s story imagines a not-so-distant future where Britain has top secret access to time travel technology. This portal between past, present and future is central to a hush-hush government project. The Ministry of Time heads up this mission in which a disparate group of people are grabbed from the past and thrown into the present, each carefully pre-selected because their disappearances seem unlikely to disrupt the current timeline. One of these is Lieutenant Graham Gore, member of the ill-fated Franklin party. Each time travelling-subject’s assigned a handler or “bridge” ostensibly to guide them but also to keep them in check.

Bradley’s narrative’s a retrospective account by Gore’s bridge of how the project played out and her part in its outcome. The narrator’s British-Cambodian, like Bradley herself, and part of her job is to tackle Gore’s outdated values particularly his Victorian colonialist assumptions. But their uncertain interactions slowly morph into a full-blown, love affair that’s then threatened by treacherous individuals operating behind the scenes at the Ministry. All of their lives take a more sinister turn when two mysterious agents try to hunt the time travellers down and assassinate them. But who’s behind this deadly pursuit and why?

Bradley’s novel criss-crosses genre boundaries from speculative fiction to steamy romance, ending up in decidedly murky territory – think Orwell spliced with Graham Greene. Bradley’s narrator’s formative experiences and Gore’s assumption that empire was simply the ‘natural order of things’ opens up a space to tackle issues around race, Britain’s unsavoury past and less-than-stable present. At the same time Gore’s struggles with the aftermath of abrupt temporal displacement enables an oblique exploration of wider experiences of displacement - what it is to be torn from one cultural context and thrust into another. Questions that are linked to Britain’s possible futures especially its likely response to devastating climate change and the mass migrations that will inevitably follow.

I thought Bradley’s story was an inventive vehicle for tackling well-worn topics, often managing to render them fresh and intriguing. Her opening sections were particularly fluid, well-paced, frequently hilarious, as Bradley richly detailed the time travellers’ immersion in this strange new world: from sixteenth-century Maggie finally able to embrace a lesbian identity to Arthur snatched from the battlefields of WW1 who slowly comes out as queer. But, at least for me, this didn’t entirely fulfil its initial promise. Towards the end I was bogged down in a morass of fast-moving plot developments and awkward reveals, and I felt Bradley was trying to cover far too much, far too quickly. And, although their purpose becomes clearer towards the end, I found the sections featuring Gore in the Arctic a little distracting. That said this is a more-than-decent escapist-but-thoughtful read, a great candidate for a travel or beach companion. I can see why it’s already being adapted for television and I’ll definitely be watching.

Rating: 3 to 3.5

I found out about this book on social media where it was being compared with the Spanish tv series "El ministerio del tiempo" and I became curious about the plot of the book. The blurb does make both of them sound very similar, but the book is very different.

The negative part of the blurb is that it is very misleading. Most of the book is not an espionage story with time travel, but a romantic comedy about the daily lives of the main characters. It's funny at first because both characters are from very different time periods, but I was expecting more action and adventure. What kept me reading is that we get small hints that there is something mysterious going on that will be revealed at some point.

All in all, this book is ok as a romcom that shows the daily lives of two very different characters and it has very funny scenes, but it leaves much to be desired as an espionage novel with time travel.

I love Commander Gore.

From the moment I started this, until the moment I finished it, I didn't want to put it down. It felt like the closest I'd ever get to reading about Jamie Fraser in the modern world.

Will be recommending.

Really promising debut from an incredibly talented writer not afraid to break genre boundaries

Is it a time travel story? Romance or sci-fi thriller? It's a bit of everything!

Id say this was a 3.5/5, but I've rounded to 4/5 as 3 is certainly not enough.

Things I loved:

- the use of real historical figures for the time travel elements. So much thought went into the creation of Graham Gore, in particular, and he was a very likeable character, despite being from 1800s. I found myself reading more about Graham Gore and the arctic expedition, this was a really nice touch and gave him depth
- the writing style. Although I am glad I read this on my kindle, so I can highlight a word for a dictionary definition, as there was a lot of vocabulary I was unfamiliar with. I enjoyed learnjng some new words despite being in my 30s! But some may find it OTT. It slows the pace down when constantly defining unknown words.
- some of the twists at the end were really clever and I enjoyed them
- there wasn't over emphasis on the functionality behind the time travel and I found this refreshing, many books and TV shows centre around the concept and how it was created. This is more, time travel exists in this world, this is what could happen as a result.
- the second half of the book was pacey and exciting

Dislikes
- some of the characters at the ministry didn't make sense to me. I won't elaborate as it would spoil the story, but I finished the book feeling like one key character's actions and motives were unexplained
- sometimes the narrator was repetitive and overly descriptive. I love scene setting but I felt the pace between during 30-55% of the book chugged a little. As mentioned, from about 55%, the pace really picked up and I found myself glued to the story
- I wasn't sure of the constant emphasis of the narrator's heritage added anything to the story. Perhaps it was diversity, which is great if so, it just felt like it was going to tie into the story but never did as it continually weaved into the narrative, but maybe I missed something?
- while I enjoyed some of the twists at the end, some were a little convoluted and I didn't get that neat 'wrapping up' satisfying feeling, as without going back and re-reading some elements, they didn't make sense.

I'd love to see what this writer does next. Clearly a promising author, with a strong debut.

Beautiful use of language, and engaging plot, and a great twist on the classic sci-fi time travel trope.

I did find it quite difficult to connect to the narrator. We find out very little about her, other than her conflicting feelings about being mixed race. (which seems to be all she talks about). She did feel like a 'self-insert' character, rather than a fleshed out creation.

Rounded up from 3.5 stars

I really enjoyed the premise of this book and the characters were great fun! I sometimes felt like the narrative was disjointed and I didn’t really understand what was happening sometimes.

It could just be personal preference so I would highly recommend reading it for yourself and making your own opinion .