I read most time travel books and I picked up this one because of this quote:

“Utterly winning…Imagine if The Time Traveler’s Wife had an affair with A Gentleman in Moscow…Readers, I envy you: There’s a smart, witty novel in your future.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

I read both The Time Traveler’s Wife and A Gentleman in Moscow, and I gave them 4 and 3.5 stars respectively. It was also advertised as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of summer 2024. The Time Traveler’s Wife is, in my opinion, the best time travel book I have ever read. How how could I resist this novel?

In the near future in London, a civil servant is offered is offered a job to work as a “bridge” to assist a time traveler to adjust to modern life. To study the feasibility and safety of time travel, the government extracts a few figures from history who were about to die and brings them to the current time. Commander Graham Gore is such a person. He died on Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition to the arctic along with all other shipmates. What’s the harm in extracting him from the arctic of 1847 and bringing him into the 21st century to observe?

I found the story contrived and bland, and there wasn’t much action to move it along.

The Ministry of Time is Kaliane Bradley’s debut novel. I found the writing stilted and pretentious, and full of descriptions that just didn’t make sense to me. This is how Chapter Five starts:

September found me in Pimlico, on a bench with Margaret Kemble. The air  was bisected by an iron hinge of autumn cold. Sparrows gusted along the curb, waltzing with the limp yellow leaves.

I lasted about 42% into the book, at which time iron hinges of autumn cold were no longer enough to keep my attention.

As always when I don’t finish reading a book, I refrain from rating it.