skygiants | (no subject)

There are some books that I can't read until I've achieved a pleasing balance of people whose taste I trust who think the book is good, and people whose taste I trust who think the book is bad. This allows me to cleanse my heart and form my own opinion in perfect neutrality.

As it happened I hit this balance for The Ministry of Time some time ago, but then I still needed to take a while longer to read it because, unfortunately, I was cursed with the knowledge that a.) it was Terror fanfiction and b.) it was on Obama's 2024 summer reading list and c.) I had chanced across the phrase "Obama says RPF is fine" on Tumblr and could not look at the front cover of Ministry of Time without bursting into laughter. And I wanted to come to this book with a clear heart! an open mind! so I waited!

.... and then all of that waiting was in fact completely fruitless, I was never going to be able to come to this book with a clear heart and an open mind, because, Terror fanfiction aside, I'm like 99% sure that it's either a direct response to Kage Baker's Company series or Kaliane Bradley is possessed by Kage Baker's ghost. Welcome back, Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax! The mere fact that you're so much less annoying this time around means I'm grading on a huge curve!

Okay, so the central two figures of The Ministry of Time are our narrator -- a second-gen Cambodian-English government translator whose mother fled the Khmer Rouge, and who has gotten shuffled into a top-secret government project working with 'unusual refugees' -- and Polar Explorer Graham Gore Of The Doomed Franklin Expedition, who has been rescued from his miserable death on the ice and brought forward into the future by the aforementioned top-secret government project.

The project also includes a small handful of other time rescuees -- Graham Gore is the only actual factual historical figure, and frankly I think the book would be better if he wasn't, but that's a sidenote. Each time refugee gets a 'bridge' to live with them and help them acclimate; in Gore's case, that's our narrator. The first seventy to eighty percent of the book consists mostly of loving, detailed, funny descriptions of the narrator hanging out with the time refugees as they adapt to The Near Future, interspersed with a.) dark hints about the sinister nature of the project and the narrator's increasing isolation within it that she repeatedly apologizes to us for ignoring, b.) dark hints about the oncoming climate apocalypse, c.) reflections the narrator's relationship to her family history, and d.) intermittent bits of Terror fanfiction about Gore's Time On the Ice.

I do not think this part of the book is necessarily well-structured or paced, but I did have a great time with it. Does it feel fanfictional? Oh, yes. The infrastructure that surrounds this hypothetical government project is almost entirely nonexistent in order to conveniently allow the narrator long, uninterrupted stretches to attempt to introduce Graham Gore to various forms of pop music;

genarti described it cruelly but perhaps accurately as "Avengers tower fanfic". But I like the thematic link between time travelers and refugees, and I like the jokes, and I like the thing Bradley is doing -- the thing Kage Baker does, that I am extremely weak to -- where just when you're lulled into enjoying the humor of anachronism and the sense of humanity's universal connection you run smack into an unexpected, uncrossable cultural gap and bruise your nose.

Now, this only ever happens with Gore, because Gore is the only one of the refugees who is a real person in several ways. Margaret (the seventeenth-century lesbian) and Arthur (the gay WWI officer) are likeable gay sidekicks, and then there's a seventeenth-century asshole whose name I've forgotten. At one point Arthur tosses off a mention to his commanding officer 'Owen who wrote poetry' and I nearly threw the book across the room. Have the courage of your convictions, Kaliane Bradley! None of these coy little hints, either do the work to kidnap Wilfred Owen and Margery Kempe from history or don't! But Gore is obsessively drawn and theorized and researched, because, of course, the whole book is largely about Being Obsessed With Gore, about interrogating why the narrator, a not-quite-white-passing brown woman from an immigrant family, has built her whole life around this sexy British naval officer turned time refugee, symbolic of the crimes and failures of empire in six or seven different directions. A bit navel-gazey, perhaps, but as a person who spent five books begging Kage Baker to think at all critically about the horrible British naval officer turned time refugee she'd built, I'm just like, 'well, thank God!'

And, again, for the five people who care, I cannot emphasize enough just how similar Gore is to Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax and yet miraculously how much less annoying. They both have a code of ethics formed by the loyal and genuine belief in the good work done by the British Imperial project (thematically and historically reasonable); a shocking level of natural charisma combined with various secret agent skills at weaponry, deception, strategy and theft (extremely funny, extra funny with Gore because as far as I can tell what we know about him From History is 'normal officer! popular guy!'); and -- such a specific detail to have in common! -- Big Sexy Nose That The Man In Question Is Really Self-Conscious About.

And both of them, of course, end up struggling to navigate their positionality in the Imperial machine, between government operative-with-agency and experimental-subject-with-none.

So that's the first seventy to eighty percent of the book, and then, in the last twenty to thirty percent of the book, the dark hints finally resolve into the actual plot, in which it turns out that:

a.) the sinister people who have been showing up to possibly do crimes are far future refugees trying to prevent Britain's crimes in the future climate apocalypse
b.) the narrator's mean boss is in fact the dark future version of the narrator herself, who has been engineering the entire project to ensure The Future happens the way she wants
c.) in The Future, Gore and the narrator have a mediocre marriage, Gore has risen to head of the whole evil time travel government service, and the two of them are together responsible for Britain's future climate apocalypse crimes
d.) but in THIS timeline, things are different, because at a critical point the narrator told Gore about The Holocaust instead of 9/11 which means that now he's consumed with worry about crimes against humanity instead of being consumed with worry about protecting imperial interests from terrorism

On the one hand, the book is very interested in complicity and the different kinds of trauma that push displaced people to try to find a sense of safety by collaborating with the forces in power at the expense of people they care about, and thematically having the narrator and Gore build the very cage that has been closing around them the whole book is really fun! it makes emotional sense and brings the themes full circle!

ON THE OTHER HAND THE WAY IT'S EXECUTED IS SO SILLY. the whole sci-fi edifice around which the plot and themes are constructed is a folding table with three broken legs. So I keep saying 'well, it worked for me thematically!' and then stopping and going 'well, did it work if it didn't actually work ....'

And then on the third hand, it is making me annoyed at the whole genre of literary crossover sci-fi -- not the authors but the publishers thereof -- because I feel like this book kind of exemplifies the way in which coherent sci-fi worldbuilding is discouraged in that genre in favor of Feelings, Themes, and Vibes. All of which would in fact hit harder if the worldbuilding and plots were in fact coherent.

So I go back and forth on all of this; for the past two days

shati and

genarti and I have been holding extensive philosophical discourse and I hope they post their takes soon. On one thing however we are agreed: it is absolutely wrong that this book attempts to hold out hope for a happy ending where the narrator finds Gore in Alaska after he's fled the ministry. In order to make the Terror fanfiction bits thematically coherent, the true ending is the narrator setting out to find Gore in Alaska and then dying tragically of starvation on the ice.

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From:

coffeeandink

I am absolutely convinced the narrator is deluding herself at the end (she is very good at it!) and that if she actually does find Gore and Margaret, it will end in horrible tragedy. Best case scenario is Gore kills her, worst case scenario is she accidentally delivers them all back into the unloving, in fact murderous hands of the imperial state.

Maybe her dying alone on the Arctic ice is the happiest possible outcome.

Edited Date: 2025-07-26 02:36 pm (UTC)

From:

skygiants

you can find a kind of sublime transcendence in the inevitable tragedy of dying horribly alone on the Arctic ice! my understanding is that this is one of the fundamental lessons of The Terror!

(& yes I absolutely agree, there is NO good outcome from finding Gore and Margaret)

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