The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is about a lot of things, time travel being one of them. It is clear from the synopsis. The narrator is a mixed- heritage civil servant, and her charge is Graham Gore. Commander Graham Gore or ‘1847’ should have died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic. The story is told from the first- person point of view of the nameless civil servant, and it’s really interesting to observe through her viewpoint.
But as a bridge for Graham to fit into the new century, our narrator observes a lot of things. Initially his discomfort, then his curiosity and penchant for cigarettes. Then it descents into something more than just a world between two people.
Just to show you the cover I got from the library
Characters
We have Adela, Vice Secretary of the Ministry. The other bridges are a blend of people, like Ralph and Simellia, who look after expats like Graham Gore. It is easy to follow once you get used to the terms. But it is the handles that I can’t quite grasp. You get Graham Gore sometimes as 47, the year he was taken. It can be disorienting when the conversation jumps from their names to sometimes a number.
You know who the side characters are by the lacklustre voice in the book. Even with the expats, the relevant ones show up a lot and have a unique identity. So if you suspect something, you may well be right.
In The Ministry of Time, you wonder a lot about the lives of the expats if they haven’t died. They are picked for various reasons, but mainly because no one knows who they died and no one missed their absence.
Story
I like it because it’s not your typical, hey I’m just gonna time travel story. This is an unorchestrated kidnapping of sorts. Add a government department, plenty of tests and weird observations. You have a conspiracy on your hands! The time-travelling aspect might draw the scifi nuts (like me) in; I stay for various reasons.
Graham is an absolute funny of a character. He’s got his own thoughts and chapters in the book to flesh him out a little more, and that helps me relate to his story. Then the narrator becomes slightly unreliable at times. Her past, upbringing and her culture colour her views on how she treats Graham. But that is part of the charm of the story.
What I didn’t like
The story. Yes, I am contradicting myself. Hear me out.
It doesn’t actually make sense. Once you think deeply about what the antagonists are trying to achieve, none of this time-travel thing makes logical sense. The novel is written like a memoir of sorts, but it has Graham’s voice in it. Then the ending is sweet, but kinda hard to understand what she was trying to achieve. With time travel, there are set rules to make the story make sense. You have time theories like: change a thing, change the past, the time branch like Avengers, or the time loop that states you can’t really change the big events of the past.
Yeah… that’s my problem.
Verdict
I enjoyed The Ministry of Time because it’s complex. Kaliane Bradley does the main characters so well that it’s like looking through a lens, watching two people from different eras interact. I admit it was fun watching them struggle. But the storyline and logic are hard to grasp… like not much sense.
If you like sci-fi and would like some really interesting descriptions and characters, I’d recommend it.
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