The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bradley

This book had a lot of potential and it was squandered. The premise was interesting, take historical figures out of time and make them live in the 21st century. THATS THE COOLEST STORY EVER IF YOU DID IT RIGHT.

Here's what I liked:

- I liked Graham Gore. He is a stoic sailor with a desire to learn about the era he was dropped in. Curious about food and curious enough to dismantle a toilet to see how it works.

-I liked that all the expats got to hang out with each other and learn about their timelines and such

-I liked that there was a struggle between their 'hereness' and their 'thereness' I felt like there was a really good set up for the characters to maybe fall out of time and be lost to the universe and its inevitable self correcting timelines.

Here's what I didn't like:

-This book was a self insert with a fictional* character.

-The narrator addresses me as a reader in the recounting of the tale... I don't want to remember that I am sitting here reading this story.

-This is a science fiction book with action and our author is unable to write action scenes to save their soul. I had no clue how we got to point A to point B during any type of scene regarding motion. I am lucky my imagination is solid bc I filled in the majority of the movement while reading.

-This book deals with a secret government agency that is breached and for some reason before the collapse they allow enemies behind closed doors. I can suspend my disbelief only so much. I would assume that if there were suspicious characters muddling about that the government would neutralize them immediately.

-This story had a lot to do with time travel and what the potential effects that time travel would have on the body, that is where I thought the story would go/how it would end. If she fell in love with him and he was taken away due to the physical abnormalities of time travel it would have been a great story.

-This book was somehow a romance? I was falling in love with Graham as a person, for nonsexual reasons, because he was a solid character with loveable qualities. The moment he and our author got spicy with each other I was immediately put off. Romance can be suggested to our audience with feeling and emotion. This book didn't need a sex scene. It was vulgar at that.

-I find out in the author's note that Graham Gore was a real fucking guy. You bastardized a REAL MAN for a story? You made him go down on you and make you 'come' and this guy was a real man lost to an exploration that ended in horrors unimaginable?? WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL.

-This story had a lot of potential to be a commentary on global warming, colonialism, the overall idea that society has become too complicated and controlled by the government, and racism. It wasn't. It instead was a shitty A Sound of Thunder/Avengers Endgame knockoff.

I could probably go on about how this book betrayed me, but I don't care to keep writing. I literally never even write reviews this long, but I felt like this story had a lot of potential. This book needed and insane amount of editing that it probably never received. I was mildly entertained for the 1st half of the book, but that is about all I can say.

1 star