“The Ministry of Time,” by Kaliane Bradley, doesn’t quite fit into any genre. It’s primarily a time traveling science fiction novel, but it also includes elements of romance, historical fiction, and contemporary fiction. The novel opens on a woman who is starting her new job with no knowledge of what it entails. She soon finds out that a government agency is using newly developed time-travel technology to bring humans from different historical periods into our current era to test the consequences of the technology on both the human body, and reality itself. Her job is to spend a year living with one of these “expats,” to help them acclimate to modern life and monitor their response. The story begins at the start of her year with a naval commander who died on an Arctic expedition, and follows their relationship as the full details of the Ministry’s experiment come to light.
The book starts off at a slower pace, but the plot continues to pick up speed as more details are revealed, and the last section of the book moves at what feels like a rapid fire pace. At the beginning of the novel, I took my time, enjoying the humor and standout sentences peppered throughout the scenes more than the actual plot. However, as the story drew on, I became much more deeply invested as the characters were fleshed out and the plot twisted. The characters are all flawed in different ways, but their humanity makes the reader care about what happens to them. The author uses time travel as a tool to draw attention to the injustices and problems with our world that we as a society may have normalized.
It’s hard to believe that this is a debut novel, because of just how potent Bradley’s writing is. She drops lines that resonate so deeply in the middle of seemingly mundane scenes, and her writing is what bridges this book’s many genres, and binds the plot and characters together into such a powerful novel. This is ultimately a tale of what it means to be human, and to love even in the face of an unknowable fate, but it is intertwined with themes of technology, morality, and colonialism.
Most readers seem to love it or hate it, with few in between, but since it’s a standalone book of only around 300 pages, I would recommend trying it out, because you may just love it. Be prepared to be confused at times, and shocked at others, and for it to not line up with your expectations. If what really gets you to love a book is strong, impactful writing and themes, you’ll love this, but maybe less so if you read mainly for the characters and plot. Don’t read this expecting a normal sci-fi novel, or any one genre, because the strength in this book lies in how it incorporates themes and tropes from across the spectrum to create something wholly unique.