Pun Salad

This was a book recommendation from Reason's editor-in-chief, Katherine Mangu-Ward. And she's not alone! The Amazon page will tell you, it was one of Barack Obama's favorite books of Summer 2024! A Good Morning America Book Club pick! The Goodreads Choice Award for science fiction! And on, and on.

Reader, I was not that impressed. But unlike the author (Kaliane Bradley) and the book's (mostly) first-person narrator I am not a woman.

The overall plot is intriguing, though: in the near future, Britain's titular Ministry has access to time travel tech. The Ministry's experimenters want to avoid well-known paradoxes, so their efforts are restricted to retrieving people from past eras who would otherwise (in their timeline) imminently die alone, without notice.

The primary "expat" is Graham Gore, extracted from 1847. He is one member of Franklin's lost expedition, an actual, doomed, British attempt to navigate the Northwest Passage. The book's unnamed female narrator is assigned to be Gore's "bridge", helping him to adjust to life in modern times.

It is very unclear why the Ministry thought this would be a good idea. The narrator comes across as someone with no particular relevant skills or training. (Although there may be an explanation near the end.)

It's billed as "literary" fiction at Amazon, which means the prose gets kind of loopy and flowery on occasion. There's a lot of action violence in the latter part of the book, as it develops that there are insidious forces at work. Not soon enough to make me care, alas.