Book Review – The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

I have always been a sucker for time travel stories.

Probably a lot of us are.

After all, given the chance to change the past or influence the future for the better appeals to most of us.

Bookcover for “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane BradleyBut Kaliane Bradley takes a different tack in “The Ministry of Time.”

British Intelligence has “discovered” a way to travel through time. Rather than send people back to the past or into the future, they decide to pluck people who will not be missed out of the past. People who were just about to die were taken from “historical war zones, natural disasters and epidemics.”

And the public doesn’t know.

Needless to say, these travelers from the past centuries will need to be helped to adjust to modern times in London, so the government hires top secret guides or “bridges” as they’re called to assist in acclimating their charges to the future.

The protagonist is a young woman serving as a “bridge” who is charged with guiding a young Victorian naval officer snatched from an ill-fated polar exploration expedition that saw all of his shipmates die.

(As a side-note, this naval officer character is a real-life person that the authoress discovered in researching polar expeditions and who, in real life, vanished during the expedition).

The story is a “slow burn” for the first ¾ of the book. There are a few hints of spy thriller actions, some romance, some comedy. But it doesn’t really pick up until the last quarter of the book and then it’s like an uncontrolled downhill ride in a vehicle with wooden tires and no shock absorbers.

Needless to say, all was not what it seemed.

I have vacillated back and forth on whether I liked the story or not. The end leaves open the possibility of a sequel and my feeling that I would like to read that sequel forced me to land on the answer that, yes, I did like the story.

You might too.

Recommended.

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