For this month’s book club, I listened to the audiobook of The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley, read by George Weightman and Katie Leung. The premise of this novel is intriguing—a civil servant becomes a “bridge” (a guide) for a time-traveler from 1847, acclimating him to near-future times.

The time-traveler is Graham Gore, a commander from a failing Arctic exploration. The Ministry of Time takes Gore right before he dies, theorizing that that won’t change history and will give him a second chance at life. Gore and other time-travelers are guinea pigs, testing to see if time-travel is safe for humans.

According to the book’s page on Amazon, this is “One of of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of Summer 2024, A New York Times Bestseller, Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Science Fiction, A Good Morning America Book Club Pick, A Best Book of the Year: NPR, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Vox, Good Housekeeping, The Independent, Parade, Kirkus Reviews, and More…”

I haven’t a clue why.

What I liked about the book

The time-traveler’s and the bridge’s backgrounds are interesting and well-researched. I liked the details of the failed Arctic expedition and the relationships between those men. And Bradley does a good job comparing life in the 1800s to how we live today and (possibly) in the near future. Graham Gore is an interesting and likeable character, struggling to deal with living with an unmarried woman in a short skirt, while navigating cell phones and smart cars and befriending neighbors.

What I didn’t like about the book

I thought the book was a science fiction, spy time-travel and listened to it as such, annoyed that it was panning out to be a romance. I’m not a fan of romances. Then, after I’d finished the book, I looked back at the description. Sure enough, it’s described as “A time-travel romance.” My mistake.

Beyond that, there is so much I didn’t like about this book.

First, the romance was too obvious and too typical of the romances I’ve read–the protagonist is a supposedly professional woman behaving very unprofessionally. And why did the ministry have Gore deal with the morality of living with a single woman when there is so much else for him to deal with? Side note (and a bit of a spoiler): their first sexual encounter, which is also his first with a woman, details her teaching him how to perform oral sex. I found it very hard to believe a man from the 1800s would not be prudish about that, especially as he was a virgin.

I kept expecting the historical backstories to be interwoven with the rest of the plot. That never happened.

In much of the book, the characters sit around, smoke, get sick, sit around some more. Not a lot happens.

The last third of the book finally gets back into the sci-fi and spy aspects, but it’s so muddled it’s hard to understand what’s going on. When this has happened with other books, I’ve re-listened to them, but I just didn’t care enough about this story to do that.

Mostly, I think this is a confused book. It was as if Bradley wanted to write a romance between a modern day woman and a historical figure and thought, “Why not throw in some sci-fi time travel spy intrigue?”

I wanted more (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing)

As you’ve guessed by now, I wanted the characters’ backstories to be woven into the major story and I wanted more clarity on the time-travel/spy aspects of the book.

How this book has affected my writing

I’ll definitely keep to the promised genres of my books and have both my editor and my critical readers keep me in line if I stray too far.

The Ministry of Time gets 👍🏻  for muddled genres.