Review by litprof - The Ministry of Time

litprof 's review for:

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

3.0

funny lighthearted slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Why all the hype? The first 40 pages amused me, but most of the novel lagged with very little plot development but tedious attention to character description and romance I didn’t care about (and found troubling—

why were Gore’s unacceptable desires never addressed?

), until the final 100 pages rush into a chaotic mess, trying to cram all the plot and quasi-world-building in at the end. The beginning is polished, but the end seems poorly edited, thrown together, imbalanced, unresolved, and unconvincing.

Moreover, why are people calling this science fiction? It read to me (an SF scholar) like a realist novel stealing time travel as a premise. The author ducks away from any real engagement with the speculative.

One line (p 159) really resonated with me as an accurate reflection of academia: “Who thinks their job is on the side of right? They fed us all poison from a bottle marked ‘prestige’ and we developed a high tolerance for bitterness.”

Content Warnings