Tag: Sci Fi

Thanks to the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy.

In a near future our unnamed narrator, a British-Cambodian translator with the British Ministry of Defence, is selected for a lucrative position with a new secretive agency aiding high-value refugees assimilate to society. What she doesn’t realize is just how far away these refugees have traveled; not merely from across the globe, but across time.

The “expat” she is assigned is Victorian polar explorer Lt. Graham Gore a real life historical figure who died in the ill-fated 1845 Franklin expedition, here plucked by the British government via time travel technology just before meeting his doomed fate and installed in our narrator’s modern day home where she is to be part roommate, part case worker, and most importantly a guide to modern living. As intimacy and romantic feelings begin to develop her loyalty becomes divided between her well-mannered and handsome Victorian ward and her increasingly sinister government employers.

The Ministry of Time is a fresh, genre-bending romp; something along the lines of speculative fiction meets spy thriller meets historical adventure meets rom-com. I liked the broad strokes of the story and appreciated the deeper themes it teases at such as historical narrative shaping our reality, imperial/colonial critique, and the displacement felt by those impacted by empire.

There’s a lot going on here and I wouldn’t say it all fits together seamlessly, but I sort of enjoyed the chaos of it all and I loved learning this book began as pandemic era Graham Gore fanfiction for Kaliane Bradley’s friends!

This book ended up being something different than I had anticipated, though I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting. The vibe is not unimportant to the success of the story and it’s a little hard to pin down. I think Lindsay Lynch of Parnassus books comes closest that I have seen describing it as: like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure had a baby with a spy thriller and that baby was raised by Emily St. John Mandel.

Tell me: if you could time travel to a different time in the past or future when would it be?

We Are Satellites is a story set in a very near future where people eager for the next new technology are implanting a device into their brain which promises to help them multi-task. One family is caught up in the haves and have nots of it all.

Interesting premise, disappointing execution in my opinion.

I thought a lot more could be done with both the bigger picture (politics, capitalism, consumer culture, pervasiveness of tech, our brains on tech, this could have gone so many directions!) and the interpersonal dynamics of a family where two members opt in to the device (one with a positive experience, the other negative) and the other two don’t (one chooses not to, the other has a medical condition which renders them ineligible.)

Plus, honestly, who wants to undergo brain surgery just to become more efficient at multitasking? This holds no appeal for me. At least make the tech cool!

The most interesting thing to me was the idea that its hard to know how other’s brains work compared to our own, which had me questioning what’s normal? Am I normal? What is normal? Like, we only ever really see things from our own personal perspectives and we can never fully convey our POV to another person bc they’re receiving it from their own individual perspective filter. Being a person is weird when you start to think about stuff like this.

Anyhoo, do recommend contemplating how your brain works vs other people, do not recommend this book.