The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

“An interesting premise with some fun parts but I almost DNFed it because I didn't feel connected to the FMC and this novel seemed to have a hard time deciding whether it was humor or mystery."

⭐⭐

Pros: It was an interesting premise/Gore is a saucy man and he and the FMC have a fun repartee

Cons: The FMC had no name so, I felt disconnected from her/The FMC seemed to go from being catatonically depressed, to terrifyingly bewildered, back to depressed but even then her emotions felt forced and fake/It was hard to keep all of the "Expats" straight since they referred to each other by name while also sometimes referring to each other by the years they were taken from/This tried to be a thriller but Bradley's sardonic writing style just didn't work for me.

Full Review:

FMC lands a job as a “Bridge” at The Ministry of Time. They've managed to extricate a handful of people from the past. She’s to help Commander Graham Gore, who was taken from a failed Arctic expedition in the 1800s and put into the modern world.

Gore and the FMC live together and she tries to help him adjust to how things are, since so much has changed. He’s amazed by Spotify, disgusted by TV, and starts getting stir crazy after a week. The other "expats" have varying levels of success acclimating as well. While the Expats appear to befriend and care for one another, the FMC finds herself growing increasingly distant from her co-workers.

Her handler, Quentin, goes MIA, one of the other Bridges, Simellia, gets angry and offended by something the FMC says and basically ghosts her. And of course, it eventually turns out that there's a mole in the Ministry.

It all comes to a head of course. People are killed, loyalties are tested and the truth is questioned. And though I ended up appreciating the end, this was a tough read overall. I liked the FMC/Gore's repartee but everythig else from the Ministry, to the Mole, to assassinations felt flat, overdone and forced.

Comments

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