The Ministry of Time

The Ministry of Time sits somewhere on the chronal courtship continuum between The Time Traveller's Wife and This is How You Lose the Time War. Apparently I've got a soft spot for timey-wimey romance.

Our protagonist is a “bridge” working for the Ministry of Expatriation. What that means is she's a live-in keeper and guide to the 21st century to one Commander Graham Gore. Instead of dying somewhere in the Arctic in 1847, Gore has been pulled into the present by the British government who have recently discovered time travel.

It's a bit cozy for a secretive government agency. Snatching random folks across history into the present, to hole them up in a lovely flat with a modern day member of the opposite sex is about as convoluted a meet-cute as you're going to get. The sci-fi equivalent of the busy big city executive going back to her home town to meet the chiseled Christmas tree vendor who's had a glow-up since his nerdy high school days. But hey, I'm all for a suspension of disbelief.

And it is interesting to see how these folks adjust to the new world. It's not just Spotify, airplanes, and washing machines, but the Holocaust, Hiroshima and 9/11. And what does it mean to exist centuries out of your own time? How does one maintain a “hereness” so fully removed from your temporal origins?

But that's all speculative window dressing to the slow burn romance on display. Bradley could have just as easily relied on the wonder of the sci-fi conceit, but instead the prose sparkles and Gore is overflowing with old world charm. He's got charisma for days, freed from the constraints and cold of a tireless Arctic expedition. In fact, all the temporally displaced “expatriots” are wonderfully realized eccentrics with a penchant for snappy dialogue. I just love the way Bradley turns a phrase.

There are disappearances and double-crosses, not to mention casualties and conspiracies to ratchet up the tension but in the end it's the characters on the page that won me over. This is made for adaptation and ripe for a sequel. I can't wait to see more from Kaliane Bradley!