by Kaliane Bradley
Avid Reader Press, 2024. 339 pages. Science Fiction
In the near future, a British civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams to work on a top-secret project. 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.
This time travel novel of a different sort focuses on the time traveler's experience of adjusting to a new reality instead on the thrill of travelling to a new place. The story starts a little slowly, but the plot builds with humor, swoon-worthy romance, and intrigue. I personally loved the overarching message that looking to the future doesn't necessarily require time travel: forgiveness and a willingness to move forward from past mistakes is a type of time travel of its own.
If you like The Ministry of Time you might also like:
by Amal El-Mohtar
Saga Press, 2019. 198 pages. Science Fiction
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival time travelling agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. What begins as a taunt, a battlefield boast, slowly grows into something more.
by Matt Haig
Viking, 2018. 325 pages. Science Fiction
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history—performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life. So Tom moves back to London to become a high school history teacher, and begins to fall for the school's French teacher. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him.
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