Ministry of Time

It's rather 2.5 stars.

I liked parts of the book. In places, however, I felt the book was not thought through to the end. And for me there were too many stylistic breaks in the main character's text passages as well as blocks were things seemed to be missing in her train of thoughts. I also felt that the change in her moods was not well described stylistically, but seemed more like something that was put in to emphasize her character but was not done in a progressively well done way. The course of the plot itself was also not sufficiently logically explained to me in some places, but seemed erratic.

In general, I felt that the written portrayal of the main character and her emotional actions and reactions, which were strongly based on (supposed) logic, and her rationalized, sometimes fashistiod attitude and decisions were well portrayed. However, her room for maneuver or lack of maneuver due to her strong self-centeredness also leaves many questions unanswered about the structure of the ministry and its power and environment. In my opinion, there were discrepancies here in particular between the developments hinted at and the way they were handled (for reasons of course, that the reader learns later on, but still seems a bit off at parts), but even this was not elaborated enough to avoid ending up in speculation.

The comparison between the forlornness of different types of immigrants was niceley done, but also here, the lack of deeper talk of her Dad and his influence on her mother and thus, possible grounding effects of him in comparison to her and her charge, fell short.

All in all, an interesting approach that unfortunately didn't talk enough about the background (e.g. why were there still resources to build the machine, ...) and that has left too much in the way of possible alternatives and plot developments for possible speculation.

I'm not sure if. this book knows what it wants to be when it grows up, spy fiction, romance, time travel mystery, It's a bit of all of that, and never quite lands any of them for me.

I enjoyed this and thought it was an inventive story. Apparently, some readers didn't like the writing, but I thought it was fine (OK, there were a lot of similes; I noticed that, but it didn't bother me). I guess I would describe it as mostly a romance, with sci fi, historical and thriller elements. Some of the romance stuff didn't completely work for me (e.g., an expat gets to the point where he's regularly using a motorbike, a cell phone and a laptop, and yet somehow he still has Victorian ideas about courting). However, the sci fi/thriller aspects kicked into higher gear in a pretty satisfying way toward the end. I liked the tie-in with the Franklin expedition and was glad to see AMC's The Terror thanked in the acknowledgments.

As I write this review, I'm once again finding myself on the goodreads page for this book (no idea why I do this, like I want to check my own taste against that of 'the people'?) and I'm very surprised to find that The ministry of time is an extremely polarising book. One star ('I'm thankful to this book for providing some needed perspective on what a bad book is'), or five star ('the author is a genius'), kind of thing. I would have thought it would be a solid 3-4 star crowd-pleaser. To me, it reads like one of those addictive Netflix series with a quirky plot, fun dialogues, and just enough nods to social issues to make it possible to watch without feeling completely gross afterwards.

The basic plot (very minor spoiler) revolves around a young, British-Cambodian public officer, whose job is to help / monitor a British explorer that has just been kidnapped from the 19th century, and ends up falling in love with him. The story touches upon some 'serious' issues: colonialism and its effects on the present, migration and experiences of outsiderness, individual agency and responsibilities within state apparatuses, climate change. It does so in a way that is both clever and relatively superficial. Intentionally, I think, because the author's main goal is to write a fun book, that blends time-travel novels, some elements of a spy thriller, and others of horny fan-fiction.

Time travel - if considered a genre, is a favorite of mine. (I especially enjoyed The Psychology of Time Travel and If/Then). I found this was such a cool premise, having people return from centuries past and see how they adapt to the modern world, however, it was slow going. For me it picked up a little toward the end.