First things first: Britain has acquired the ability to time travel. Now they’re testing it out by retrieving a small number of men and women from different eras and monitoring how they respond. Can a body survive time travel? How about the fabric of space-time? Is human experimentation wrong if the subjects were already slated to die in their own timelines? The British government is willing to take the risk.
The main character of The Ministry of Time is an unnamed civil servant who stumbles into a new career opportunity: monitoring one of the time travelers, referred to as expatriates or “expats.” It’s her job to be a “bridge,” to help an expat who has traveled from the past assimilate to present-day Britain. And who is her assignment? Commander Graham Gore, from 1847, a member of an ill-fated polar expedition. He was plucked from slow, cold starvation and certain death on the doomed ship Erebus, and thrust into the here and now. Our bridge must introduce him to a new world wildly different from his own.
This fish-out-of-water story works on multiple levels. There is some laugh-out-loud humor as Graham tries to wrap his mind around current times. “You can send dioramas through the ether and you’ve used it to show people at their most wretched,” is his take on daytime television. There are also moments of intense poignancy, as when Graham pensively talks about how everyone he once knew is long dead. Graham has been liberated from his intended death in the Arctic but is he any less stranded now that he is a man out of time?
While Graham swaps polar exploration for the exploration of modern life, our civil servant realizes that things aren’t adding up at the Ministry. Her handler has been dropping mysterious hints about shady activities, suspected spies are all around, and her expat has witnessed something that he shouldn’t have. Are they in danger? Our bridge must navigate an increasingly precarious position at the Ministry and figure out the feelings she has developed for Graham.
The Ministry of Time has elements of science fiction, romance, historical fiction, and mystery – it’s got it all! Pick it up for a riveting, emotional read that will have you wondering about the meaning of time and our place in history.
