Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time ** 1/2

The Ministry of Time is a science fiction romance that involves time travel. The narrator is a (roughly) contemporary English woman who falls in love with the Victorian-era polar explorer she has been assigned to help transition to the twenty-first century. The Ministry also needs to keep an eye on the "expats" to see whether they survive the time travel.

The story prioritizes the budding romance over the sci-fi elements (until the final chapter), which is fine except that Bradley isn't a very good writer. Evelyn and I took turns reading aloud while the other person washed dishes, and both of us stumbled over confusing similes and awkward sentence construction. Evelyn frequently complained about the narrator's immaturity, and I found the characters' motivations confusing.

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