Reviews with content warning for Death - The Ministry of Time

Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

235 reviews

clovetra's review against another edition

4.0

funny lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

crazy i’m saying this about a book im giving a 4-star review but. i’m really surprised i didn’t like this more. i am super surprised it wasn’t a knockout for me. i think this won book of 2024 at my local bookstore. so tbf i had insanely high expectations. and most were delivered on!

i’ve gotta say the highlight(s) of this book are the expats. holy shit gore. i love gore. not only is he funny, but he is rugged and, get this, funny. he earns double funny because i love him. he is my pookie. so what he’s like 300 years older than me????? and margaret. oh my god pookie pie. someone bring this baddie to 2025 PLEASE

LET ME LEZ OUT WITH HER!!!!!

. the other expats were alright i guess… arthur had a small role but was still baby girl, and other than those three i didn’t care about any other expat. sue me. sorry i love gore and margaret too much to allow any other room in my heart.

the writing style of this book is fucking delectable. magnificent. beautiful. i truly cannot describe just how good this book is written linguistic-wise unless you’ve picked up this book. i don’t know what enamoured me but god damn did i love it!!!!

now on to what i didn’t really live laugh love…. the plot. now i don’t know what i was expecting after reading the blurb of this, but it certainly wasn’t what i read. ok sure yes i knew at some point MC and gore would be dating the blurb literally tells you that. but idk i expected more scifi!!!! this is tagged first and foremost scifi and there’s barely any. most of the focus is on the romance.

which is ok like i said gore can get it. but mannnn don’t mislead me!!! i was hoping for some more interesting things related to the time travelling! and ok yes i get the in-text reason is that MC isn’t a scientist and doesn’t understand the technical aspects but like!!!! your mc doesn’t have to get it!!!! you just have to have other characters be annoying about the physics and then have mc be lost in the convo or something like that. i mean at the very least the concepts related to their time travelling e.g. can they appear on CCTV, what happens if they catch a sickness from the modern world. like those parts were great!!!! the story just needed more of them. and not only more moments, but a better pacing with the actual plot. up until 60% of this book it fully felt like i was just reading a slice-of-live novel with hints of Something going on. and then all the action is crammed into the last 15% of the book and im annoyed because it seemed interesting!!! but it wasn’t given enough time to develop, so instead i had explanations of what was going on in the background whilst the mc was being a horndog thrown at me and then wow ok its over. like what were we doing the rest of the time????? not only was the plot non-existent, but the pacing of when The Plot was actually introduced was so random. i can imagine if someone is not able to simp over gore or project onto the mc they would hate this because nothing happens except “gore finds out about something that has happened after the 1850s and so he has to be given an explanation on it” but like. repeated 70 times. it’s cute ill admit, but without anything other than the romance or the comedy tying me to the story, i was left slightly disappointed. slightly.

because look, i had a good time. i had fun. i was invested. kind of. really i was only invested in the romance if im honest. but i think this concept has such potential!!!!! i just think the scifi aspect of this book was a letdown & the pacing of the main plot felt erratic.

in other news i wanted to let you all know even though gore is depicted as a young guy i could not stop picturing him as charles from the walking dead s1 game. was very jarring to my stubborn brain every time his Not Grey Hair was described.

that is all.

Content Warnings

booksandbujos's review against another edition

2.75

mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book was sci-fi according to Goodreads, but I agree more with storygraph and classifying this as a romance. The parts of this that is sci-fi is really only the time travel and that is soo not the focus of this book. It is the tool to bring Graham to the time the story takes place, but doesn’t really come in to most of the plot aside from that. In reality this book is about our nameless narrator falling in love with Graham, though I honestly never felt the chemistry between them. Our narrator says that she finds him attractive and he does a few nice things for her, but those alone do not a romance make. And then the ending felt too rushed. Like that was the interesting part. That is where the time travel and the mystery of this novel really come in, but we’ve already spent 80% of this book on a relationship with no chemistry so I’m only given like 50-75 pages of intrigue and time travel and spy antics and then the book ends and I am left with so many questions, but not in a good way.

Content Warnings

annaekwan95's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

beccaand's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

coming back to this review after listening to Kaliane Bradley's interview with Becca from Meet Cute, because I loved this weird and wistful, heady, atmospheric and oppressive (like the London summer) story

Content Warnings

fluffballpanda's review against another edition

2.75

adventurous reflective sad tense medium-paced

Just kinda weird. I wanted to love it wish it was either mystery or romance

Content Warnings

sxndaze's review against another edition

2.5

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

"And in the heat of your obsession," he said, "did it occur to you to remember that I am a person too?"

i have a strange relationship with this book, if you can even call it a relationship. i like the premise and the writing. it’s fascinating and the treatment for the most part is quite lovely. the novelty of seeing characters who are plucked out of time and living in the present world and doing mundane things is my cup of tea. but the connection to the high stakes plot feels disjointed and at times, out of place.

the romance makes sense, but its execution is clunky. the turn it takes is something i like, but again, im not sure about it in the grand scheme of it all. the individual parts of this book are good, but put together and im not sure they mesh very well. at some point, i felt like i was slogging through it even though by all accounts, i should have been enjoying it. i felt a sense of distaste at times too, and im left feeling confused and overall dissatisfied.

Content Warnings

geekmom's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book is incredibly grabby (Jo Walton's fantastic word for a book that pulls you in and won't let you get anything else done because you are compelled to read it). It never occurred to me to wonder about the answer to the question "If Connie Willis wrote about what would happen if a bunch of UK academics had a time machine, then what would happen if the UK government did so instead?" But I'm glad Kaliane Bradley decided to write a book in answer to that question.
The result is a very interesting book that succeeds at what it tries to do, but is at times just a little bit heavy-handed with the interpretation of the issues it explores.

Content Warnings

alisonvh's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This book was fine. I doubt it’s anything that will stick with me for long, but it was a fun read. At times the pacing seemed to drag a little, but I did enjoy watching the MC slowly realize the Ministry might not have the best intentions.

Content Warnings