The Ministry of Time review: Fabulous time travel novel is part-thriller, part-romance

The Ministry of Time
Kaliane Bradley (Scepter (United Kingdom); Avid Reader Press (US))

When you read a lot of novels for work, like me, it can be difficult to enter a new one at first. You must continue. But The Ministry of Time By Kaliane Bradley made me directly from her little prologue. About 150 words about a man who crosses the snow and hearing his ship to make him signal, and I was there. It is a tip to make.

The book, the choice of this month for the New Scientist Book Club, proved to be a successful success since the publication last year, and rightly so. This is the story of a young official who postulates for a new job without knowing what it implies. It turns out that time travel has been invented, but is kept secret, and people have been moved from the past in the present.

These “expatriates” need to take care, as you can imagine, and therefore our nameless heroine is to become the guardian, or “bridge”, for one of them. Her name is Commander Graham Gore, and she has to live in a house with him and help her integrate into the world as he is now.

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It is not a book that lingers on the mechanics of time travel or examining too much if a government would really leave travelers around the world in the world with only a civil servant to take care of them. But the novel exposes with such confidence that this reader, at least, was able to sneak without worrying about the details.

Now, a piece of genius at the heart of the book is that Gore is (or rather, was) a real person, even if not that most people have heard. He was the first lieutenant of the unfortunate expedition of John Franklin to the Arctic, and he died in 1847 or 1848. The exact details of the last days of the expedition are not clear. In this novel, however, he is torn off just before death, and threw modern London.

Bradley de Gore’s rendering is the second piece of genius in the book. She describes him so brilliantly that he jumps from the page like a real man, breathable, passionate, fantastically brilliant and interesting. It is indeed rare to find a character so strongly drawn in a novel.

And therefore our young bureaucrat and this dynamic officer of the Royal Navy colonialist must enter a house. London, or this version close to it, is a lot for a man from a lost world. But then again, Gore is a resilient officer and perhaps, and if someone can adapt, he can. This is by far the most pleasant part of the novel, while the two merge, each teaching something about their world.

The book turns into a love story and then a thriller. It probably ends at around 40% science fiction, 40% Romcom and 20% thriller. I preferred the first section from afar and I was not sure that the end of the thriller-y really worked. But none of this observes the fact that the book is a delicious treat, so if you are looking for something really pleasant to read, look no further.

At the end of the novel, Bradley includes a copy of a gore photograph. I found it very moving to see him there, as he was, after having known a fictitious version of him so well. According to Bradley’s post-writing, he was described by a contemporary as “a very good officer and the sweetest temperaments”.

What an extraordinary touch of history that this gentle temperament officer should be in a successful novel almost 200 years later. Bradley certainly made the most delicious hero of him.

New Scientist Book Club
The Ministry of Time is our new reading. Register here: Newscientist.com/Bookclub

Emily also recommends …

The Persian boy
Mary Renault (Virago Modern Classics)

It’s not science fiction, of course; It is a historical fiction. But that gives life to another historical silhouette – Alexandre le Grand, seen through the eyes of a enslaved Persian boy, Bagoas. For me, this book and its prequel are the only ones you will need to read on Alexander.

Emily H. Wilson is a former editor -in -chief of New Scientist and author of The Sumerians Trilogy, which takes place in the old Mesopotamia. The final novel of the series, Ninshubar, was released in August. You can find it on emilyhwilson.com, or follow it on X @emlyhwilson and Instagram @ Emilyhwilson1

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