The Ministry of Time

August 26, 2024 6:35 PM

The Ministry of Time is a fun, sexy, action-packed yet emotional novel. Time travel! Spies! Romance! Mystery Plus some good ol' bureaucracy and workplace comedy with some of the most charmingly endearing characters you’ll ever meet. (Staff Review)

Guardian: It’s very smart; it’s very silly; and the obvious fun never obscures completely the sheer, gorgeous, wild stretch of her ideas.

posted by Lucubrator (1 comment total)

I just finished this last weekend! My main takeaway was sheer admiration and delight at the chutzpah of the thing: godspeed you, Kaliane Bradley, for publishing your The Terror self-insert fic about a time travel romance with some rando 19th century arctic explorer, and making it actually pretty good. Even if I looked at the single surviving daguerreotype of this man and thought him?? this is your man??, I admire the sheer commitment to fleshing out Commander Gore and making him a tremendously charming, interesting character without making him wish fulfillment.

I thought the plot fell apart at the end, and ultimately I think the blend of genres--rom-com, scifi, spy thriller--doesn't fully cohere, in such a way that the use of each genre feels half-baked and unsatisfying. Like, definitely do not sell this book as a romance to any romance-reader friends, it does not fit the genre requirements in terms of its ending. But the prose was great, it was just plain fun to read, and the questions it raises are thought-provoking.
posted by yasaman at 3:57 PM on August 27