Book Recommendation – The Ministry of Time

I waited a long time for The Ministry of Time to come out as an audiobook. On a recent trip to Barnes and Nobel, I found it and bought it. Shortly after I bought it and began to read it, the audiobook was released.

I read the first 3/4 of it, and listened to the end of it. Before I go further, here is the Goodreads Synopsis:

A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.

This was unlike any other time travel book I have read in that the time travel has already happened when you begin the book. The main character is one of the chosen agents to watch these “expats.” They are people from the past who have been brought to present. They must learn how to live in this new environment.

The story was actually pretty good. There was a section of the story that went into a bit too much detail about a sexual encounter. I could have done with out that, and I’m not sure it was important to the story.

The way it is described above is fairly accurate. It is like a spy thriller that has some romance to it. There were twists that I didn’t see coming and the story wraps up in a way that there could be a sequel if the author is inclined to write one.

3.5 Stars out of 5