Book Review of “The Ministry of Time� by Kaliane Bradley:
Summary: it feels like yet another Imperialist propaganda masquerading as “anti-imperialist�.Book Review of “The Ministry of Time� by Kaliane Bradley:
Summary: it feels like yet another Imperialist propaganda masquerading as “anti-imperialist�.
What I LIKED:
I liked the premise. The idea of time as a “limited resource� was clever and probably unique in the genre. The idea that maybe time travel might be biologically fundamentally unsafe for the human body was interesting. It was intriguing to read a story around THAT uncertainty because I had never thought of it that way.
I hated the execution.
What I DISLIKED:
1. The “Forced Proximity� trope.
2. The gender swapped ‘’born sexy yesterday � trope. In fact, the time travel “fish out of water� aspect makes it way worse because Graham Gore is absolutely dependent on his female “Bridge� who essentially is his quasi-parent, and he is psychologically “younger� even though chronologically they're both probably about the same age? Gore , as a 19th century man knows absolutely nothing about the 21st CENTURY, is forced to learn from his assigned “teacher�, his “bridg� to the 21st century. He is also essentially a kidnap victim, making the whole “romance� story kinda “Stockholm Syndrome� too? Swapping the genders didn't make it any better for me. In fact, he is also described as physically attractive and having a “charm� that's “not directed at anyone in particular�. Those are literally part of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope.
3. The sex scene was not believable for me because I don't think a 19th century White man from 1847 would have cared that much about consent? Remember that marital rape was legal back then because wives were legally subservient to their husbands, essentially “property�. Age of consent was 13. Even today in UK, age of consent is 16. It's 14+16 in many European countries. Disgusting! And even outside marriage, rape was rarely prosecuted although technically illegal. The only way it was believable was because of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope. He may have cared about consent purely out of fear of repercussions from pissing off his kidnapper who had institutional power over him. This power imbalance is barely explored.
4. Gore, a British naval officer, expresses shock at learning about the Holocaust. This is disingenuous hypocrisy at worse, and pathetic naivety at best. The British Christian colonizers killed far more people than Hitler. The Bengal Famine of 1770 alone killed 10 million, ok? And their Tasmanian genocide nearly wiped out the Indigenous locals. The British Christian colonizers committed MULTIPLE genocides, atrocities and massacrss even before 1847, during the lifetime of Graham Gore. If such a White man from 1847 expressed shock at the Holocaust, I would NOT fall in love with him. I'd be disgusted at worst, and pity his naivety at best.
5. This gets me to the author's own motivation for writing this book. By her own admission, she wrote it because she had a crush on Graham Gore, a real historical figure from the 19th. She found him physically attractive and liked his “cute dimples�. Then she started writing short stories based on her attraction even though she knew so little about him as there's hardly any info. It makes it very self-indulgent.
6. The author does redeem herself a little bit at the end by implying that the Ministry's Imperialist actions had horrible consequences 200 years from now but it's too little too late for me as a reader because it didn't feel like the main part of the story? Especially because the power imbalance regarding Consent from above were barely discussed.
7. The way it ended it also feels like not a real story but more like this whole thing is an “audition� for a TV series or something else? It's clear I am not her real “customer� but merely the “end-user�. The real customers are Imperialist organizations, corporations and global intelligence agencies. And sure enough, I discover that it's being made into a BBC TV series.
I might write a more detailed review on my Substack later but for now, this is all I have to say....more
I may post a detailed review later. I liked parts of it but didn't like other parts, such as;
1 Tokenism, 2. Lack of intersectionality 3 Appropriation I may post a detailed review later. I liked parts of it but didn't like other parts, such as;
1 Tokenism, 2. Lack of intersectionality 3 Appropriation of the Civil rights movement and making it about dragons.
That said, I do want to debunk reviews claiming it's "transphobic" and "terfy".
By their own admission, some of them didn't even finish the book. Please don't write public reviews if you have not even finished the book because you only spread misinformation.
In the book, trans women and even a few boys also undergo "dragoning". Ok? so, stop making false accusations! Cut that out!
I do like the excellent portrayal of how horrible White men were in the 1950s!
However, the book lacks focus because even though it's supposed to be an allegory, its lack of focus makes it unclear what exactly "dragoning" is a metaphor FOR!
It would have been better as a series of interconnected short stories.
So, basically it's a mixed bag. Hence my 3 star rating. Not bad but not great!...more
I am saying very little here because my main review is on my Substack. Go read it over there:
Summary: I don't I am saying very little here because my main review is on my Substack. Go read it over there:
Summary: I don't even consider this to be a story at all, let alone a good story. I consider it to be dehumanizing Hinduphobic propaganda with narrative choices resulting in queer erasure of trans identity. Therefore, transphobic in impact, intentionally or unintentionally. Remember: Impact over Intention!
The author claims it's a "retelling" of our Hindu epic "Mahabharata" but it's more like a mockery of it. It's more like a Greek story in "Hinduface", made for the Hinduphobic Western Gaze.
The gist of it:
DEHUMANIZATION: Dehumanizing language including the use of the words “animals� “monsters� and “uncivilized� to describe characters from the major Hindu epic "Mahabharata". This is literally a colonial portrayal, the same portrayal that the British Christian colonizers portrayed us Indigenous Hindus as.
And Yes! Back then too, they used self-hating colonial agents for this. Remember that there were Hindu soldiers who fought for the British Christian colonizers even back in the day. Today we call them “Brown sepoys�.
DEHUMANIZATION happens in 3 different ways: 1. Demonization/Villainizing: Almost all male characters are described using essentially hate speech: “monsters, “animals � and “uncivilized � "violent" bloodthirsty warmongers.
Even our major deity Shiva is villainized as “trapping� and “chaining� a Goddess in his hair. This is at best a shallow childish understanding of the original source material. At worst, it's Hinduphobia.
Imagine if an author wrote a similar portrayal of Allah or Mohammed! The Western left would be up in arms!
2. Exoticization: This is the other side of the same coin in the "Demonization Exoticization False Binary", a subset of the "Good Evil False Binary" within "Black-and-White-Morality". First of all, most of the amazing women from the Mahabharata are completely erased. The handful of remaining female characters are sidelined, downplayed and/or reduced to the Victim Hero trope. Showing people as only having positive Qualities (and even those very limited) is a form of dehumanization too because it reduces a multidimensional human being into just a trope or archetype. I call this “Exoticization� or “Exotifying�.
3. Infantilizing: She turned a powerful Goddess Ma Ganga into her main character but repeatedly portrayed her as more like petulant child and a “victim� than the Goddess with agency she actually is! This is essentially infantilizing her.
CALL FOR G*N*CIDE?
“Would the world be better off without the Kuru line? If my son died, he would come home to me. And the rest of them� I did not believe them worth saving, worth ruling� (from Chapter 24).
This seems like an open call for our g*n*cide?!
QUEER ERASURE and TRANSPHOBIC NARRATIVE CHOICES:
Then there's the queer erasure and misgendering of the character Shikandhi from the Mahabharata. The author has changed his story and completely removed his queer trans identity as a trans man. This is openly transphobic.
I know why she did it of course: because this is not written for us Indigenous Hindus but for the Western gaze, she doesn't want the Western reader to have even the slightest hint that ancient Hindus had trans people and accepted trans people or were aligned with modern-day “progressive� values.
For this reason, Arjun's genderfluidity story is also completely erased. Even Queen Draupadi's polyandry was hardly mentioned but King Shantanu's marriages to multiple women was mentioned repeatedly.
The agenda of all this erasure is of course Hinduphobia but unfortunately, queer erasure of trans identity is also transphobic, even if not “intentional�. Hence, there's nothing “progressive� about this choice. Impact > Intention.
(And using people as props for your propaganda by reducing them to tropes and archetypes is dehumanizing and therefore counts as bigotry. Doing it to trans identities is therefore also transphobic in impact)
INVERTED NARRATIVE and INVERTED MESSAGING:
Much of the original Mahabharata is inverted to its OPPOSITE to fulfill the author's Hinduphobic agenda. Please be careful when you read it because much of what she wrote here didn't even happen in the original Mahabharata.
PROJECTION of CHRISTIAN SUPREMACY onto INDIGENOUS HINDUS:
It's hinted that us Indigenous Hindus did “witch hunts� and were afraid of women with special abilities. It's actually what the Christian Colonizers did to us Indigenous Hindus and other Indigenous people all over the world. This inversion of history itself is insulting to our women ancestors who suffered at the hands of these Colonizers and Imperialists.
At one point, one of the main male characters is literally given a line taken straight from Genesis 1:28 (without crediting the source of course). He is portrayed as saying men should have “dominion over Nature�. This is Christian Supremacy and Abrahamic Supremacy projected onto us Indigenous Hindus.
It's yet another inversion of history because we love, respect and even worship Mother Earth as “Ma Bhumi�, a Goddess.
In fact, we are portrayed repeatedly as hating, “using� and destroying Nature.
CONCLUSION: Skip this Hinduphobic mockery of the largest largely intact Indigenous culture and people left Earth: us Indigenous Hindus. (There are over a billion of us).
In addition, both the Ramayan and parts of the Mahabharata are sacred to some of us Indigenous Buddhists too. (500 million+ global population) The author's previous book "Kaikeyi" also made a mockery of the Ramayan. So she has a pattern of writing bigoted stuff ....more
Huge issues with this ridiculous book: 1. Glorifying pedophilia. 2. Full of the Demonization Exoticization False Binary, a subset of the Abrahamic SupreHuge issues with this ridiculous book: 1. Glorifying pedophilia. 2. Full of the Demonization Exoticization False Binary, a subset of the Abrahamic Supremacist Good Evil False Binary. 3. Full of the White man's fear of retaliation projected onto Indigenous people.
Typical predictable New Age colonial nonsense! Don't waste your time with this!Typical predictable New Age colonial nonsense! Don't waste your time with this!...more
This book, especially the title essay, is an essential read to learn the truth about how colorism actually came to India and to debunk colonial narratThis book, especially the title essay, is an essential read to learn the truth about how colorism actually came to India and to debunk colonial narratives masquerading as 'social justice" and "Decoloniality", ironically.
We didn't have colorism before British Christian colonialism and Isl*mic Colonialism. In fact, we actually considered the color black to be the most beautiful color. The proof is in our ancient vedas and even in Marco Polo's writings.
Please read it to deprogram and decolonize yourself from Hinduphobia and self-hate. Especially if you claim to care about "justice". Then you should care to know the truth....more
The very fact that an entire BOOK had to be written with the title "Caste is not Hindu" shows the level and depth of Hinduphobia in the world.
And now,The very fact that an entire BOOK had to be written with the title "Caste is not Hindu" shows the level and depth of Hinduphobia in the world.
And now, in at least 4 states in the United States, these bigoted Hinduphobic false narratives are being used to try to criminalize the largest largely intact Indigenous culture and people on Earth, us Hindus!
Caste is NOT Hindu. Caste is a creation of the Christian British, Portuguese and Spanish Colonizers.
This book clarifies exactly where "Caste" comes from while also clarifying our Indigenous Hindu terms "Varna* and "Jati".
And no, "Varna" and "Jati" are NOT "Caste" either. For example, Varna was horizontal, NOT hierarchical. Nor was it based on birth. And people could change their Varna. And most importantly, it was just a philosophy, NOT ground reality.
"Jati" WAS ground reality but it's not "Caste" either. Read the book to learn all this in detail!
This is a very necessary book for our times, especially if you truly want to "decolonize " instead of ironically always falling for ironically colonial narratives masquerading as "Decoloniality ", bigotry masquerading as "social justice ". Yes, Western Imperialists have ironically colonized "Decoloniality" itself! Lol. So cunning!
If you have not read the book yet, what are you doing?! Read it ASAP. Especially if you want to stop being Hinduphobic! Just read it!...more
Who it's for: 1. People who like to read diverse mind-bending science fantasy stories about ConsciousnI am writing this review in the following format:
Who it's for: 1. People who like to read diverse mind-bending science fantasy stories about Consciousness, past lives and reincarnation centered around the topic of climate change, climate justice and difficult relationships.
2. People who like to read about marital conflict in which the conflict is not because of adultery, violence or abuse but around our visions of the future, especially about the very planet itself, and how it impacts your relationship. That said, there is a power play move near the beginning that shows domination that might be triggering for some.
3. People who want to read about intricate magic systems in which the story is deeply tied into the magic system itself and the relationship conflict that creates. I say this because in some fantasy stories, the magic feels like just an afterthought, like you could have told the story without the magic system at all. This is not that kind of story. The magic system is deeply embedded into this story.
4. People who want to decolonize from the Abrahamic Supremacist Good Evil False Binary and the Savior Complex.
5. People who don't mind reading with absolute focus, attention and presence because otherwise it might get confusing for you. That is, it's not the story to listen to if you are driving and you just want to "zone out".
Who it's not for: 1. People who want to read easy cozy stories that don't require much attention.
2. People who want to read about every detail of a character such as their hobbies and what they eat, etc..yes it's a character driven story but not THAT kind.
3.. People who to read "diverse books" but still want it to be Abrahamic Supremacist or Imperialist, just with Black or Brown faces. I call this "diversifying oppression" instead of actually dismantling it.
4. Westernized people with colonial mindsets and epistemological privilege who find it hard to read non-Westerm non-Abrahamic stories.
Overall, this is a wonderful read but definitely NOT for everyone....more
Review of Brida by Paulo Coelho. By Kundan Chhabra
Tldr: this is waste of 6 hours of your precious life and valuable time, especially if you are on a jReview of Brida by Paulo Coelho. By Kundan Chhabra
Tldr: this is waste of 6 hours of your precious life and valuable time, especially if you are on a journey of actively decolonizing from Abrahamic Supremacy. It's a book full of cultural Appropriation and Epistemicide of multiple cultures + cr*p full of Abrahamic Supremacist propaganda, misinformation and manipulation.
Here's my review proper. I am writing most of this review in the following format: simply giving you a list of who it's for and who it's not for.
WHO IT'S FOR:
1. For New Age Christians who still want to be Christian but in a new bottle that gives them absolution from Christian guilt-tripping and also guilt for all the harm caused by Christianity but don't want to actually give up Christian Supremacy.
2. Imperialists who love to appropriate multiple cultures and commit Epistemicide.
3. Naive people who buy into the Abrahamic Supremacist New Age propaganda about "twin flames", "soulmates", etc.
4. Unethical people who enjoy the erasure of Global Indigenous People and revisionist history that harms the most marginalized people on Earth.
Who It's Not for:
1. Ethical people who are actively decolonizing from both Imperialism and Abrahamic Supremacy.
2. People who would rather read nuanced stories rather than easy stories that erase entire cultures and completely rewrites their history, replacing them with overly simplistic false propaganda.
Example of revisionist history in the book: when he says that Tarot was turned into a game because the Christianized "god" wanted to make it easy to learn.
Not only does the book erase Romani culture by turning one of their core practices into a mere plot device, but this line in the book is false revisionist history that contributes to their continued oppression today. For example, Italy and the Czech Republic are still kidnapping Romani children including even newborn babies away from their mothers and trafficking them into Christian foster homes. Yes I use that language on purpose because it's indeed essentially legal state-sanctioned kidnapping and trafficking.
And no, the Romani people turned Tarot into a game to hide from constant oppression, ok? "God" didn't do it. Romani people did it. Enough with the Epistemicide!
But even as a story in its own right, it's boring and unoriginal. Just a waste of 6 hours of my life! ...more
UPDATE: After thinking about it some more, I am knocking 1 more star off it because The Vanished Birds by Simon JimenezÂ
Book Review by Kundan ChhabraÂ
UPDATE: After thinking about it some more, I am knocking 1 more star off it because the problem I highlighted below is even more insidious than I realized before. Scroll to the end for that update.
This book is a space opera spanning a thousand years featuring a diverse cast and queer relationships, covering heroic resistance in the face of Imperialism, Capitalism and Colonialism.
It begins with showing you the high personal cost of space travel on your personal/intimate relationships due to time dilation. It's brilliant how it makes such a big complicated scientific concept feel personal and intimate.Â
 (And it doesn't explain what "time dilation" is. It assumes you just understand it I don't think it even uses that term at all?. So just go with it because this novel doesn't really explain any science concept nor the tech to you. It's just there. Lol. ZERO "info dumping").
However, even though those first 50 pages might confuse you and have you questioning what all this has to do with "space opera", just be patient and stay with it because you will be well rewarded later on. Once you get near the end, you suddenly understand why that setup in the first chapter is so important because you now can viscerally empathize with the contrast in "technology", and what it does for people's lives).
That first chapter is also like its own Short story: very touching and poetic!
It's one of the ways the author has made this story feel both VAST (such as spanning a thousand years) and intimate (the minutia of our lives such as our intimate relationships during one brief life of a few decades).
It's also about found family and the "clever" cunning stupidity of corporate greed (yes another set of opposites the author has brilliantly brought together).
My only gripe about it is that because its portrayal of imperialism is stripped from its relationship with Abrahamic Supremacy, those parts of the book do feel flat and hollow at times.
Just like he doesn't explain the science and technology, the author doesn't really explain the imperialism and Capitalism. It's just....there. He assumes you understand it all already?
In that sense, it's also a depressing thought: are we still going to have Imperialism, colonialism and Capitalism as a species even a thousand years from now? Yes he does balance it out with the heroism and heroic fight against it which is a nice balance of course. But we're still having to fight against it even a thousand years from now? Wow smh. Ugh!
For these reasons, I am docking 1 star out of the 5 stars.
That said, that's all I am going to say about the book because it's better if you know as little about it as possible going in.
It's a great book for you especially if you enjoy space opera but feel it's intimidating because of its huge scales as this one manages to solve that problem very elegantly. Especially if you also enjoy stories of “found familyâ€� and “motley crewâ€�.Â
It's definitely not the book for you if you like to whine about "diversity" and queer relationships in books nor is it the book for you if you are too much of a Capitalist yourself.
My UPDATE: The fact that Imperialism still exists in this world feels like it's by design. This ties in with the concept of "manufacturing consent". For example, Imperialists came out with the movie "Civil W*r" last year. They pretend it's to warn us and prevent it from happening but actually they're openly telling us their plans and trying to desensitize us by making it "entertainment" and making it seem acceptable, trying to manufacture our consent.
Likewise, through this story "The Vanished Birds" and others like it, they're openly telling us they intend to continue inflicting Imperialism for a thousand more years. That's why the story also ends with a kind of "open loop", with no real closure, to keep us feeling nervous, anxious and helpless.
This is also related to the fact that the depiction of Imperialism is stripped from Abrahamic Supremacy: it's because Abrahamic Supremacy including anti-Indigenous Marxism drives the plot, especially their Good Evil False Binary and its subsets, such as the False Binary that a "curse = bad" vs "blessing = good". In non-Abrahamic Indigenous religions, curses and blessings are seen as both good AND bad.
1 MORE UPDATE related to this 02/19/2025: Lots of Western science fiction is heavily influenced by the Marxist bigoted idea that religion including Indigenous Religion is just a "developmental stage". That is, if you are religious, they consider you to be basically a primitive s*vage". Remember that Karl Marx himself was an anti-Indigenous Hinduphobic Dharmaphobic anti-Semitic anti-religion bigot who called religion 'the opium of the poor" and wrote the openly anti-Semitic essay "On the Jewish Question". Basically he was projecting his trauma with Abrahamic Supremacy onto ALL religion including Indigenous Religion because of course Hueless people like him think they're the only humans on Earth.
The whole storyline about Kaeda, his supposed "curse", and his people fearing the boy Ahro thinking he was cursed too - and portraying them and this belief as a primitive backwards uncivilized "development stage" is more Marxist anti-Indigenous anti-religion propaganda because of course Kaeda's people are a stand-in for Indigenous people.
It reflects yet another False Binary: religion vs science. But in our Dharmic Indigenous religion for example, science and religion are deeply intertwined. For example, if you ever had surgery or been to the dentist, you owe it to us Indigenous Hindus because we came up with both dentistry and surgery.
If you use computers including your phone, you owe it to us Indigenous Hindus too because we Indigenous Hindus (and Indigenous Mayans independently) came up with the number zero. But not only that: we Indigenous Hindus also came up with the "number base" concept itself. For example, we usually use Base 10 but computers use Base 2: 1s and zeros.
(And in reality, we even came up with Newton's Laws of Motion " including Gravity long before Newton).
So who is the 'primitive" one here? The reason why we came up with all that is BECAUSE science and religion and spirituality are all deeply intertwined for us Indigenous people. It's not a "developmental stage". So just stop being a bigot, okay?!
For these reasons, my reservations against the book have increased despite the many things I like about it, especially the poetic prose....more
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