Ministry of Time

It's hard to call this scifi since it's written so well. It is more of a literary achievement.

That said, as I am from the US, much of the UK vernacular was lost on me. But more than that, although I consider myself at least somewhat worldly, the character's motivations and emotions came a bit too quickly and deeply for me to keep up. (I only had one critical literature course in university.) It was quite interesting to experience though.

I might have to reread to see if I can catch more.

I really enjoyed The Ministry of Time.

I was frustrated with the protagonist for big chunks of the book for not realizing obvious things. The author repeatedly tried to defend this with "I bet you're thinking 'I would have realized this right away', but" and in a world where I know time travel exists, I absolutely would!

However, the writing is very good, and it kept me engaged. The combination of themes around time travel, colonialism, and refugee life really worked, and I feel like it allowed them to be explored from different angles.

I'm kind of let down by the inconclusiveness of the ending, but on the other hand they avoided most of the cliché time travel tropes, so overall I guess it balances out.

#SFFBookClub

Excellent read!

I'd be curious what genre readers enjoy this, as it choppily blends historical fiction, romance, time travel, spy thriller, and reflections on genocide. Only the first two seem a strength here, and they're not my taste, but I would have settled in more easily for a slow burn romance across the last few centuries if the author hadn't kept interrupting me with the rest.

Time travel stories usually follow the exploits of someone rocketing through time to change history. This person ponders the various time travel paradoxes or wrestles with the implications of an ever-splitting multiverse. All of which is to say that Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is a unique look at the perils of time travel. Instead of travelers deliberately injecting themselves into history, a mysterious British Agency has used a recovered time machine to “rescue” five Britons from the past from their inevitable deaths by pulling them into a future ravaged by climate change. Our narrator is one of the few civil servants in on the secret, selected to help acclimate one of the “expats” to life in the twenty-first century...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.