Ministry of Time

It's rather 2.5 stars.

I liked parts of the book. In places, however, I felt the book was not thought through to the end. And for me there were too many stylistic breaks in the main character's text passages as well as blocks were things seemed to be missing in her train of thoughts. I also felt that the change in her moods was not well described stylistically, but seemed more like something that was put in to emphasize her character but was not done in a progressively well done way. The course of the plot itself was also not sufficiently logically explained to me in some places, but seemed erratic.

In general, I felt that the written portrayal of the main character and her emotional actions and reactions, which were strongly based on (supposed) logic, and her rationalized, sometimes fashistiod attitude and decisions were well portrayed. However, her room for maneuver or lack of maneuver due to her strong self-centeredness also leaves many questions unanswered about the structure of the ministry and its power and environment. In my opinion, there were discrepancies here in particular between the developments hinted at and the way they were handled (for reasons of course, that the reader learns later on, but still seems a bit off at parts), but even this was not elaborated enough to avoid ending up in speculation.

The comparison between the forlornness of different types of immigrants was niceley done, but also here, the lack of deeper talk of her Dad and his influence on her mother and thus, possible grounding effects of him in comparison to her and her charge, fell short.

All in all, an interesting approach that unfortunately didn't talk enough about the background (e.g. why were there still resources to build the machine, ...) and that has left too much in the way of possible alternatives and plot developments for possible speculation.

It's hard to call this scifi since it's written so well. It is more of a literary achievement.

That said, as I am from the US, much of the UK vernacular was lost on me. But more than that, although I consider myself at least somewhat worldly, the character's motivations and emotions came a bit too quickly and deeply for me to keep up. (I only had one critical literature course in university.) It was quite interesting to experience though.

I might have to reread to see if I can catch more.

I'm not sure if. this book knows what it wants to be when it grows up, spy fiction, romance, time travel mystery, It's a bit of all of that, and never quite lands any of them for me.