The Ministry of Time

A British Cambodian government worker is requisitioned to a top-secret program helping one of the people kidnapped from the past adjust to life in this century. She’s assigned the distantly charming and handsome Commander Graham Gore of the Franklin Expedition as a housemate and surveillance target. She’s instantly attracted to Gore, but getting a promotion is much more attainable. Besides, there are more important things to ignore, like digs at her race, why the government has sunk so much in finding refugees from the past, and whom she’s really reporting to. Bradley’s captivating debut is uniquely suited to audiobook format, living as it does in the spaces between words. Its melancholic longing is matched only by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War. Katie Leung’s performance is taut and precise, just how a buttoned-up civil servant would be. She forces listeners to understand the weight of Gore in her world and how her experience navigating her ethnicity deeply affects each facet of her life. George Weightman’s interstitials as Gore are enlightening and all-too-brief.