The Ministry Of Time, by Kaliane Bradley is, of the recent Sword & Laser picks, the most recent one I’ve finished as of this writing. It was an interesting read, but tonally it’s all over the place.
The Ministry of Time is, ostensibly, a time travel romance story – at least that’s how it was described in the book briefing, and various other descriptions I’d read around the book. It is kind of that, but it’s also kind of not.
The book follows a British-Cambodian woman who is a civil servant (the author is also British-Cambodian), who has been recruited to be the “minder” for a group of expatriots not from another country – but from another time. Each is drawn from various periods of history, and were recorded as having died (in some cases in ways where their body was not found at time of death, but their location of death was generally known) – so they could, theoretically, be safely drawn into the future. The minders’ purpose is to ease their culture shock as they adjust to not-too-distant-future society. Our protagonist’s person is Commander Graham Gore, an officer on the crew of the HMS Terror on her final voyage with the Franklin expedition
Throughout the story, she helps Gore adjust to the modern day while also reflecting on her experience as a child of refugees from Cambodia, and her relationship with the UK in general. She also ends up getting involved in the mystery of why exactly this time travel program came to pass. Also, yes, she ends up falling in love with Commander Gore.
Look, it’s really easy to look at the discussion of the protagonist’s experience as a child of refugees from Cambodia, her perspective on British colonial history, and her working with Gore, and see a discussion of how the protagonist is falling in love with Britain in the process of falling in love with Gore. It’s a pretty slow pitch in context. On the one hand, there’s a lot more to the story than that. On the other hand, what more we get in the story feels not like an afterthought, but something that feels like the author had some problems moving organically into the story.
Let’s start with the mystery around the Time Travel. Throughout The Ministry of Time, the topic comes up, with the protagonist’s supervisor having their concerns about the topic, though the protagonist wants to keep her head down and do the work. Eventually some shady doings happen around the protagonist’s supervisor, which helps to up the stakes of the plot. However, this happens with some significant gaps in between. On the one hand, this does get the reader to let their guard down, making the moments when the conspiracy comes up feel like a surprise. On the other hand, it makes for situations where I, as a reader, found myself going “Oh, right, yeah, this plot – I forgot about that. Who is this Colonel guy again?” It’s frustrating, as a reader, to try to have and wrack my brain to try and remember who some very plot-important character is because he’s consciously been absent from the plot for a while, only to figuratively burst in the door guns blazing. And it’s not like the book has a massive cast that you need a character index at the front (or back) of the book to keep track of.
For the record, I was reading the book on my breaks at work, and on my commute. If the plot of a book with (relatively speaking) this light a cast can’t withstand that reading schedule, I don’t know what to say to you.
And as far as the romance goes, things feel somewhat abrupt. It’s not an unearned abuptness – the characters had been warming up to each other over the course of the book, and their first hookup does have the feel of “Glad To Be Alive” sex. But as the relationship persists, there is a bit of a sense of “Outside of long-term proximity, these people are going steady… why?” It’s a bit like assuming characters who are room-mates and have compatible sexual orientations have to be banging. On the one hand, if you’re doing the “Falling in Love with Gore as Metaphor for Falling In Love with Britain”, this arguably has to happen. On the other hand, that read still feels a little too simplistic and on the nose even for my Autistic Ass. They had good friendship chemistry, but I never quite got that they had strong sexual chemistry.
In all, I thought The Ministry of Time was alright, but it’s not something that I feel a need to re-read, and I don’t exactly know if I’m going to keep an eye out for the author’s next book, necessarily.
If you want to pick up the book, it’s available from (affiliate links) Bookshop.org and Amazon.com.
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