Book Review: The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bradley

This starts out as a delightfully silly and charming book about the bureaucracy of Time Travel and ends up as something darker and more thought provoking.

What would happen if the UK Civil Service had access to TIME TRAVEL!?!?! It's a brilliant idea for a novel and is written with a seemingly-real understanding of the number of forms, systems, emails, and subterfuge needed to set up such a premise. It is perfectly observed - both in terms of the protagonists' lived experience and their trauma.

Along the way it touches on Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, moral relativism, and whether people can be absolved of their involvement with The Empire.

What starts as a fish-out-of-water comedy (how does a Victorian officer feel about Grindr?) slowly morphs into a terrifying confrontation with cold-blooded bureaucracy. It is a story about how people find themselves moulded into the shape of their own oppressors, and how love can spring from nowhere.

It is a delightful tale, well told, expertly researched, with just the right balance of humour and tension. I'm tempted to knock off half a star because of its mention of What3Words - but that would be most ungallant.