The Ministry of Time

[psocoptera]

The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley, 2024 novel. My first problem with this book was that I couldn't buy into the premise; the set-up as given did not feel like a way anyone would go about doing what they were ostensibly doing, nor did that thing even make sense to me, so it seemed like something else must be going on, and I was not very interested in plodding along waiting for a reveal. My second problem was a turn towards romance where I was put off by the ship. In the end the whole thing felt muddled and contrived - Bradley's interest was clearly in this one historical blorbo, to use the fannish term (possibly literally a fannish blorbo if the genesis of this book was in Terror fandom) and she knew what beats she wanted in the story about them and had tried to assemble a plot that would give them to her. But to me some of them felt arbitrary and under-motivated and the whole thing didn't quite hang together.

I do get to rank Hugo novels now, though.

The nominees:

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

I nominated Sorceress and still like it best of these, although I would have liked City in Glass more, grumble grumble. Tainted Cup was fun and I guess that leaves me with Someone You Can Build a Nest In third, since I think it was better than this one. I'm not reading either Tchaikovsky book so I guess I'll rank Bradley above them for at least being a book I was willing to read? Thus,

1 - A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
2 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
3 - Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
4 - The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Or maybe I'll leave off Bradley and figure if she's fighting it out with Tchaikovsky I'm already going to be so grumpy about this year's results that I just don't care. Hm.