A highly-anticipated new time-travel mystery

A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time…

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible — for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how — and whether she believes — what she does next can change the future.

I first heard about The Ministry of Time from a friend of the author’s, in the summer of 2023, and I’ve been eagerly anticipating it ever since. I started reading it a few days after its release, and I’m happy to say that I very much enjoyed it — it’s a witty, interesting take on time travel mysteries.

Adela shrugged. “We have time-travel,” she said, like someone describing the coffee machine. “Welcome to the Ministry.”

From pretty much the first page, one thing becomes very clear: Bradley is a very witty writer. The novel is filled with witty and amusing asides, observations, and metaphors (Guinness is “angry Marmite”, for example). This is especially true for the first half of the novel, after which the plot really kicks in and events don’t exactly lend themselves to quips and jokes. (Although, there are some moments of levity that remain.) While I enjoyed what I was reading, I would have preferred it if the plot kicked in a bit sooner — as it is, everything is wrapped up rather quickly in the final act of the book.

Much of the author’s humour comes through via the experiences of the “expats” — the handful of individuals brought forward through time. I particularly liked the idea of choosing people to move forward in time, rather than messing about in the past: each of the people brought to the present were carefully selected because they didn’t have futures. Typically, I’ve found the time travel in stories to have been either accidental or purposeful. Here, those brought forward in time didn’t really get much of a choice, which leads to some discussions about agency and power over others. Because, let’s be honest, the Ministry quickly shapes up to be a rather shady outfit (official part of the government and all…)

In the case of Graham Gore, he was chosen to bring forward because he originally died during Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition (the same one as forms the basis of Dan Simmons’s The Terror, in case you want some fiction based on those events). Because it is believed that he died on the expedition, it was therefore assumed that taking him out of his time wouldn’t have messed with any historical events. Given Gore’s strong belief in the British Empire — shared with at least two other expats — there are a few moments when he learns of how the Empire collapsed, and the changed way people today think of the Empire and the ways in which it was acquired — not to mention the more diverse population of London. The narrator, Gore’s “bridge”, is of Cambodian descent, and has her own thoughts and opinions on imperialism, which are explored during the novel.

So far as I understood the British Empire, other people’s countries were useful or negligible but rarely conceived of as autonomous. The empire regarded the world the way my dad regards the elastic bands the post deliverer drops on their round: This is handy, it’s just lying here; now it’s mine.

The Ministry of Time is told in the form of a (very detailed) account or report on the events of this year-plus, by the unnamed narrator, Gore’s bridge. Through her experiences with the Ministry, with Gore (who she quickly falls for, and he for her), and the strange goings-on that seem to surround her work for the Ministry, we learn more about the time-travel method, and the different ways we see ourselves and those from the past — and, sometimes, our own place in history.

While I certainly enjoyed reading The Ministry of Time, I do think some of the synopsis at the top oversells things. It’s not a workplace comedy, for example (a strange suggestion, in my opinion). For readers of science fiction, you may not find many of the SF aspects particularly original or innovative, but Bradley has done a very good and interesting job of playing around with time travel as a trope and concept.

If you’re looking for an intelligent, witty science fiction read, then I would certainly recommend The Ministry of Time. I’m very much looking forward to reading whatever Bradley writes next.

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Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is out now, published by Avid Reader Press in North America and Sceptre in the UK.

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Review copy received via Edelweiss