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God's Junk Drawer
God’s Junk Drawer is a mind-bending tale of mystery and adventure set at the dawn of time.
Welcome to the Valley …
Forty years ago, the Gather family—James, his daughter Beau, and his son Billy—vanished during a whitewater rafting trip and were presumed dead.
Five years later, Billy reappeared on the far side of the world, telling an impossible tale of a primordial valley populated by dinosaurs, aliens, Neanderthals, and androids. Little Billy became the punchline of so very many jokes, until he finally faded from the public eye.
Now, a group of graduate astronomy students follow their professor, Noah Barnes, up a mountain for what they believe is a simple stargazing trip. But they’re about to travel a lot farther than they planned …
Noah—the now grown Billy Gather—has finally figured out how to get back to the Valley. Accidentally bringing his students along with him, he’s confident he can get everyone back home, safe and sound.
But the Valley is a puzzle—one it turns out Noah hasn’t figured out—and they’ll need to solve it together if there’s any chance of making it out alive.
Pulling from Earth’s past, future, and beyond, Peter Clines has created a complex, dangerous world, navigated by a dynamic ensemble cast, and a story that is thrilling as it is funny and heartfelt.
Welcome to the Valley …
Forty years ago, the Gather family—James, his daughter Beau, and his son Billy—vanished during a whitewater rafting trip and were presumed dead.
Five years later, Billy reappeared on the far side of the world, telling an impossible tale of a primordial valley populated by dinosaurs, aliens, Neanderthals, and androids. Little Billy became the punchline of so very many jokes, until he finally faded from the public eye.
Now, a group of graduate astronomy students follow their professor, Noah Barnes, up a mountain for what they believe is a simple stargazing trip. But they’re about to travel a lot farther than they planned …
Noah—the now grown Billy Gather—has finally figured out how to get back to the Valley. Accidentally bringing his students along with him, he’s confident he can get everyone back home, safe and sound.
But the Valley is a puzzle—one it turns out Noah hasn’t figured out—and they’ll need to solve it together if there’s any chance of making it out alive.
Pulling from Earth’s past, future, and beyond, Peter Clines has created a complex, dangerous world, navigated by a dynamic ensemble cast, and a story that is thrilling as it is funny and heartfelt.
17 pages, Audible Audio
First published November 11, 2025
About the author
Peter Clines
36 books4,591 followers
Peter Clines
is the author of the genre-blending
-14-
and the
Ex-Heroes
series.
He grew up in the Stephen King fallout zone of Maine and--inspired by comic books, Star Wars, and Saturday morning cartoons--started writing at the age of eight with his first epic novel, Lizard Men From The Center of The Earth(unreleased).
He made his first writing sale at age seventeen to a local newspaper, and at the age of nineteen he completed his quadruple-PhD studies in English literature, archaeology, quantum physics, and interpretive dance. In 2008, while surfing Hawaii's Keauwaula Beach, he thought up a viable way to maintain cold fusion that would also solve world hunger, but forgot about it when he ran into actress Yvonne Strahvorski back on the beach and she offered to buy him a drink. He was the inspiration for both the epic poem Beowulf and the motion picture Raiders of the Lost Ark, and is single-handedly responsible for repelling the Martian Invasion of 1938 that occurred in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. Eleven sonnets he wrote to impress a girl in high school were all later found and attributed to Shakespeare.
He is the writer of countless film articles, several short stories, The Junkie Quatrain, the rarely-read The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe, the poorly-named website Writer on Writing , and an as-yet-undiscovered Dead Sea Scroll.
He currently lives and writes somewhere in southern California.
There is compelling evidence that he is, in fact, the Lindbergh baby.
He grew up in the Stephen King fallout zone of Maine and--inspired by comic books, Star Wars, and Saturday morning cartoons--started writing at the age of eight with his first epic novel, Lizard Men From The Center of The Earth(unreleased).
He made his first writing sale at age seventeen to a local newspaper, and at the age of nineteen he completed his quadruple-PhD studies in English literature, archaeology, quantum physics, and interpretive dance. In 2008, while surfing Hawaii's Keauwaula Beach, he thought up a viable way to maintain cold fusion that would also solve world hunger, but forgot about it when he ran into actress Yvonne Strahvorski back on the beach and she offered to buy him a drink. He was the inspiration for both the epic poem Beowulf and the motion picture Raiders of the Lost Ark, and is single-handedly responsible for repelling the Martian Invasion of 1938 that occurred in Grovers Mills, New Jersey. Eleven sonnets he wrote to impress a girl in high school were all later found and attributed to Shakespeare.
He is the writer of countless film articles, several short stories, The Junkie Quatrain, the rarely-read The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe, the poorly-named website Writer on Writing , and an as-yet-undiscovered Dead Sea Scroll.
He currently lives and writes somewhere in southern California.
There is compelling evidence that he is, in fact, the Lindbergh baby.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 541 reviews
January 29, 2026
This was a boatload of fun!
I felt like this was part Jurassic Park, part the Lost World and part science-fiction nerdiness. The sci-fi never gets too heavy or boring, and the few twists here and there easily kept me listening.
Ray Porter is the narrator of this, and he's my absolute favorite. I always feel like Porter works well with certain authors and series and this is definitely one of them.
With the end being what it was, I am postiive another book is coming, and I would pre-order that audio right now, if I could.
This was so much fun, and a phenomenal distraction from what is happening in the world today.
Highly recommended!
*I purchased this audio from Audible.
I felt like this was part Jurassic Park, part the Lost World and part science-fiction nerdiness. The sci-fi never gets too heavy or boring, and the few twists here and there easily kept me listening.
Ray Porter is the narrator of this, and he's my absolute favorite. I always feel like Porter works well with certain authors and series and this is definitely one of them.
With the end being what it was, I am postiive another book is coming, and I would pre-order that audio right now, if I could.
This was so much fun, and a phenomenal distraction from what is happening in the world today.
Highly recommended!
*I purchased this audio from Audible.
March 12, 2026
4.5 ⭐️s
I definitely would have just stayed in the Valley until I got torn apart by dinosaurs.
I definitely would have just stayed in the Valley until I got torn apart by dinosaurs.
November 8, 2025
Wow, this book took me on a RIDE. I may not have fully understood all of the sciency/math stuff, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it.
Also, I LOVE the idea of God having a junk drawer, not that I believe it actually exists, but how fascinating!
Billy Gather, his dad, and his sister Beau abruptly find themselves in a very strange valley while literally going down a raging river. There are forests that suddenly change to other climes, and none of them would ever coexist at the same time on Earth. Also…dinosaurs?? Neanderthals. Random artifacts that seem to be from both the past and the future. It’s a mishmash of time periods—kind of like what’s shoved into that junk drawer we all seem to have, except on a much bigger scale.
Billy is somehow returned to his time after a few years and gets absolutely roasted by the public. He changes his name and dedicates his life to returning to the valley.
The novel then cuts back and forth from young Billy to him as a man, when he finally figures out a way to get back to his own personal “Land of the Lost.” Trouble is, a bunch of grad students manage to be right next to him when he does, and EVERYONE is taken along for a ride that they never would have agreed to otherwise.
It’s here where things get really intriguing. Billy the grown-up thinks he knows everything there is to know about the valley and its inhabitants.
He’s about to get a GINORMOUS wake-up call.
———
As mentioned above, I really liked this story, but be warned, it does meander a bit, and it definitely gets weirder and weirder. I was invested, though, so I was open-minded about the eventual revelations as they came. And the reveals are FASCINATING.
Also, I think it’s important to mention that when there are injuries and/or deaths, they are extremely gruesome, detailed and shocking. Some of them will be hard to get out of my head. YMMV.
4.25 stars, rounded down.
Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion. All views are my own.
Also, I LOVE the idea of God having a junk drawer, not that I believe it actually exists, but how fascinating!
Billy Gather, his dad, and his sister Beau abruptly find themselves in a very strange valley while literally going down a raging river. There are forests that suddenly change to other climes, and none of them would ever coexist at the same time on Earth. Also…dinosaurs?? Neanderthals. Random artifacts that seem to be from both the past and the future. It’s a mishmash of time periods—kind of like what’s shoved into that junk drawer we all seem to have, except on a much bigger scale.
Billy is somehow returned to his time after a few years and gets absolutely roasted by the public. He changes his name and dedicates his life to returning to the valley.
The novel then cuts back and forth from young Billy to him as a man, when he finally figures out a way to get back to his own personal “Land of the Lost.” Trouble is, a bunch of grad students manage to be right next to him when he does, and EVERYONE is taken along for a ride that they never would have agreed to otherwise.
It’s here where things get really intriguing. Billy the grown-up thinks he knows everything there is to know about the valley and its inhabitants.
He’s about to get a GINORMOUS wake-up call.
———
As mentioned above, I really liked this story, but be warned, it does meander a bit, and it definitely gets weirder and weirder. I was invested, though, so I was open-minded about the eventual revelations as they came. And the reveals are FASCINATING.
Also, I think it’s important to mention that when there are injuries and/or deaths, they are extremely gruesome, detailed and shocking. Some of them will be hard to get out of my head. YMMV.
4.25 stars, rounded down.
Thank you to NetGalley and Blackstone Publishing for an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion. All views are my own.
February 26, 2026
God's Junk Drawer
by Peter Clines
This book starts out grabbing me and doesn't let go til the last sentence! I so loved this book! So many twists and turns. Suspense, a mystery, sci-fi, lots of action, time travel, gore, first contact, and heartwarming moments. So much to absorb.
The clues dripped out to the reader so slowly and tantalizingly. It was brain-racking to try and figure things out before the neck clue. I was so far off! This is a must-read! One of my favorite books so far this year!
by Peter Clines
This book starts out grabbing me and doesn't let go til the last sentence! I so loved this book! So many twists and turns. Suspense, a mystery, sci-fi, lots of action, time travel, gore, first contact, and heartwarming moments. So much to absorb.
The clues dripped out to the reader so slowly and tantalizingly. It was brain-racking to try and figure things out before the neck clue. I was so far off! This is a must-read! One of my favorite books so far this year!
December 24, 2025
God's Junk Drawer is a lost world book. A young boy spent a couple years in the Lost Valley, ended up back in the real world, and spent decades trying to get back, inadvertently bringing some astronomy undergrads with him. It has a lot of the familiar Land of the Lost trappings like Neanderthals, dinosaurs, and things of that nature. There's also an underlying mystery and a fairly high body count.
I don't really want to give too much away. I guessed a couple of the twists ahead of time but one of them was very surprising. Some of the character deaths caught me off guard and I was pleased that the origin of the Lost Valley wasn't some Under the Dome hokum. Overall, I was very pleased with the reading experience. We just moved and I don't want to buy more bookshelves but I'm keeping this one to reread later. A pretty high compliment if you ask me.
I don't really want to give too much away. I guessed a couple of the twists ahead of time but one of them was very surprising. Some of the character deaths caught me off guard and I was pleased that the origin of the Lost Valley wasn't some Under the Dome hokum. Overall, I was very pleased with the reading experience. We just moved and I don't want to buy more bookshelves but I'm keeping this one to reread later. A pretty high compliment if you ask me.
November 12, 2025
Thanks to Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for the pre-release copy of God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines. Below is my honest review.
What a wild ride! Dinosaurs, time travel, aliens, Neanderthals, glass obelisks, all sorts of random things bring this story right into the zone of "weird."
I really can't say much, because this one would be easily spoiled with the wrong word, so I'll say this: interesting characters, complicated but understandable scenario (with actual explanations in the long-term), and a really cool setting.
Highly recommended for people who like a weird sci-fi tale with a lot of twists and turns and dinosaurs!
What a wild ride! Dinosaurs, time travel, aliens, Neanderthals, glass obelisks, all sorts of random things bring this story right into the zone of "weird."
I really can't say much, because this one would be easily spoiled with the wrong word, so I'll say this: interesting characters, complicated but understandable scenario (with actual explanations in the long-term), and a really cool setting.
Highly recommended for people who like a weird sci-fi tale with a lot of twists and turns and dinosaurs!
November 13, 2025
Note: This review was originally published at FanFiAddict.
Peter Clines clearly remembers the joy of emptying out the toy box as a child to play with a mashed-up variety of various, disparate action figures. Remember having G.I. Joes squaring off against Darth Vader, while Batman single-handedly fought off a horde of Xenomorphs Imperial forces had corralled into duty for the Dark Side? I can’t but help think such childhood wonders provided at least a smidgen of inspiration for God’s Junk Drawer, even if it falls a bit short of wild, youthful imaginings.
Still, the conceit is similar. In the book’s opening, Billy Gather and his family are sucked back in time to a wild period that couldn’t ever possibly match-up with the historic record. It’s a land where dinosaurs and caveman live side-by-side, a la the nonsensical, science-defying creationist goofiness on display at Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter. But wait, there’s more! In addition to dinosaurs and neanderthals, there’s also an ancient Egyptian, a robot butler, an alien from a higher dimensional plane of existence, some futuristic cyborg warriors, and medieval woodworkers. People, places, and things from all eras of Earth’s history and future collide in one ahistorical valley that really shouldn’t be.
Billy somehow found his way back home and became the subject of tabloids and mental health counseling, until he disappeared again, but this time in more terrestrial fashion. He’s changed his name and thirty years later has become an astrophysicist named Noah Barnes. All his work has secretly centered around a singular pursuit – to rediscover the wormhole that launched him into god’s junk drawer and save the sister he left behind. He knows when and where the wormhole will reopen and has organized a camping trip for his students to observe the stars while he sneaks away to disappear once more. Worried for him, his curious grad students track him down and ignore his warnings to leave, and soon they’re all headed back to the… whenever, I guess?
Clines does a terrific job piling on mysteries, surprise revelations, and some shocking demises. Right from the get-go, it’s clear these kids and Noah aren’t in Kansas anymore.
But then things slow nearly to a crawl, and the rough and tumble excitement of the book’s opening segments settle into a strange sort of placidness. We’ve gotten a good sense of the unexpected dangers that lurk in this land out of time, and Noah and his misfit crew are repeatedly warned by other survivors that death strikes without warning. Yet, despite the body count, nobody ever really seems to be in danger and the crew just kinda hangs out, marveling at unexpected sights and trying to unravel the various riddles they encounter. Clines layers in plenty of logic puzzles and scientific mystery, but for such a dangerous land it all feels oddly safe and our central characters spend too much time in shelter for this book’s too-many pages. There isn’t even a central antagonist to confound their efforts to get back home until close to the book’s end.
God’s Junk Drawer’s feels like a Michael Crichton book at times, a sort-of Jurassic Park by way of Timeline, crossed with Land of the Lost, but without the constant, edge of your seat thrills. It’s sort of like wandering through an amusement park without ever getting on the roller coasters, ignoring all the other attractions, and skipping the elephant ears. Clines loads the front- and back-ends with plenty of action, but the middle is bloated and saggy. People stand around talking, get warned about danger, talk some more, solve a mystery, get warned about danger again, and then talk some more.
The mysteries of the valley are certainly interesting, the scientific gobbledygook is digestible enough, and the rare action scenes are fun, but the narrative never finds a real balance between the two. For all the bemoaning about how savage and violent the valley is, it still seems like a far more peaceful alternative than present-day America and its rising fascism. No Trump, No MAGA cultists, no tariffs, no ICE, no more student debt, which I’m sure these kids have a boatload of, no skyrocketing grocery costs and healthcare premiums and rent jumping through the roof, no more social media, and all they have to deal with are the occasional caveman and a population of ancient dinosaurs that would love to kill them at the drop of a hat? OK, so the last two certainly make decent analogues for our current state of affairs in the good, ol’ US of A, but lacking the rest? Kinda seems like a fair trade to me, if not an outright improvement.
Peter Clines clearly remembers the joy of emptying out the toy box as a child to play with a mashed-up variety of various, disparate action figures. Remember having G.I. Joes squaring off against Darth Vader, while Batman single-handedly fought off a horde of Xenomorphs Imperial forces had corralled into duty for the Dark Side? I can’t but help think such childhood wonders provided at least a smidgen of inspiration for God’s Junk Drawer, even if it falls a bit short of wild, youthful imaginings.
Still, the conceit is similar. In the book’s opening, Billy Gather and his family are sucked back in time to a wild period that couldn’t ever possibly match-up with the historic record. It’s a land where dinosaurs and caveman live side-by-side, a la the nonsensical, science-defying creationist goofiness on display at Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter. But wait, there’s more! In addition to dinosaurs and neanderthals, there’s also an ancient Egyptian, a robot butler, an alien from a higher dimensional plane of existence, some futuristic cyborg warriors, and medieval woodworkers. People, places, and things from all eras of Earth’s history and future collide in one ahistorical valley that really shouldn’t be.
Billy somehow found his way back home and became the subject of tabloids and mental health counseling, until he disappeared again, but this time in more terrestrial fashion. He’s changed his name and thirty years later has become an astrophysicist named Noah Barnes. All his work has secretly centered around a singular pursuit – to rediscover the wormhole that launched him into god’s junk drawer and save the sister he left behind. He knows when and where the wormhole will reopen and has organized a camping trip for his students to observe the stars while he sneaks away to disappear once more. Worried for him, his curious grad students track him down and ignore his warnings to leave, and soon they’re all headed back to the… whenever, I guess?
Clines does a terrific job piling on mysteries, surprise revelations, and some shocking demises. Right from the get-go, it’s clear these kids and Noah aren’t in Kansas anymore.
But then things slow nearly to a crawl, and the rough and tumble excitement of the book’s opening segments settle into a strange sort of placidness. We’ve gotten a good sense of the unexpected dangers that lurk in this land out of time, and Noah and his misfit crew are repeatedly warned by other survivors that death strikes without warning. Yet, despite the body count, nobody ever really seems to be in danger and the crew just kinda hangs out, marveling at unexpected sights and trying to unravel the various riddles they encounter. Clines layers in plenty of logic puzzles and scientific mystery, but for such a dangerous land it all feels oddly safe and our central characters spend too much time in shelter for this book’s too-many pages. There isn’t even a central antagonist to confound their efforts to get back home until close to the book’s end.
God’s Junk Drawer’s feels like a Michael Crichton book at times, a sort-of Jurassic Park by way of Timeline, crossed with Land of the Lost, but without the constant, edge of your seat thrills. It’s sort of like wandering through an amusement park without ever getting on the roller coasters, ignoring all the other attractions, and skipping the elephant ears. Clines loads the front- and back-ends with plenty of action, but the middle is bloated and saggy. People stand around talking, get warned about danger, talk some more, solve a mystery, get warned about danger again, and then talk some more.
The mysteries of the valley are certainly interesting, the scientific gobbledygook is digestible enough, and the rare action scenes are fun, but the narrative never finds a real balance between the two. For all the bemoaning about how savage and violent the valley is, it still seems like a far more peaceful alternative than present-day America and its rising fascism. No Trump, No MAGA cultists, no tariffs, no ICE, no more student debt, which I’m sure these kids have a boatload of, no skyrocketing grocery costs and healthcare premiums and rent jumping through the roof, no more social media, and all they have to deal with are the occasional caveman and a population of ancient dinosaurs that would love to kill them at the drop of a hat? OK, so the last two certainly make decent analogues for our current state of affairs in the good, ol’ US of A, but lacking the rest? Kinda seems like a fair trade to me, if not an outright improvement.
February 14, 2026
4.5 rounded up to 5
This was wacky and fun. The author seems to be well-rounded- he’s great at dialogue, pacing, and making each character unique.
This is the kind of mystery that I love. Our characters are dropped into a world that resembles our own, but with enough incongruities to make it fascinating.
This is the first book I’ve really enjoyed in a while!
This was wacky and fun. The author seems to be well-rounded- he’s great at dialogue, pacing, and making each character unique.
This is the kind of mystery that I love. Our characters are dropped into a world that resembles our own, but with enough incongruities to make it fascinating.
This is the first book I’ve really enjoyed in a while!
November 3, 2025
This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart
Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
If you've read Peter Clines before you know it can get weird, like Lovecraft levels of weird. And while God's Junk Drawer is a puzzle type mystery set in a world seeming to be be Lost in Time it is at its heart the story of a group of people trying to figure out how to get out of the strange Land of the Lost type place they have ended up in.
The story is told through multiple PoVs with some snippets of Billy's time in the Valley when he was a young boy. Billy went on a rafting trip with his Dad and Sister and they ended up in the valley almost forty years ago. He got out, leaving his sister behind and has spent his entire life trying to figure out how to get back in and save her. He finally has it calculated and is ready to jump when it all goes wrong and he ends up dragging some random students and a guide back into the valley with him. One problem, everything he thought he remembered and knew to get them back out seems to be wrong and there is now no guarantee that Billy now known as Noah can get them back out unless they figure out what the Valley really is.
Billy's time in the Valley as a kid was a wonderous thing and while yes it was horrifying in some ways due to the dinosaurs and other things that can kill you it was colored by the protection his dad and sister provided. Looking back on it again after his return as an adult leads him to believe that it is possible it wasn't exactly how he remembers and Noah (formerly Billy) is struggling with how things are so different from the valley he left.
I enjoyed getting to see the Valley for the first time through the eyes of the terrified college students that accidentally ended up on this journey. Sam was well aware of the Valley and Billy's time there since he was obsessed with it the way only a twelve year old could obsess. That said it is one thing to read about a place filled with Dinosaurs and lost to time but it is another altogether to be there and see it first hand. With a few other students and the camping guide also stuck, they are in a fight with time to find safety and start to figure out what needs to happen to get back home.
I really enjoyed this story and the way details were doled out. It kept the mystery high and the danger around ever corner. In a land of dinosaurs and Neanderthals not everyone is going to survive. This was full of action, danger, huge emotional swings and I enjoyed it all. Once the story made it to the Valley I was in a rush to read through and figure out with the cast what the heck the Valley was and how to survive in it and eventually get out of it.
I loved the setting, the clues and the cast. It was just a fantastic ride for me. As someone in their 40s, I well remember the Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings and grew up imagining the land at the center of the earth so this was almost nostalgic for me in some many ways. That said there were great surprises and a satisfying conclusion that worked well for me and gave me some hope of seeing some other novels tied into this world later.
Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
If you've read Peter Clines before you know it can get weird, like Lovecraft levels of weird. And while God's Junk Drawer is a puzzle type mystery set in a world seeming to be be Lost in Time it is at its heart the story of a group of people trying to figure out how to get out of the strange Land of the Lost type place they have ended up in.
The story is told through multiple PoVs with some snippets of Billy's time in the Valley when he was a young boy. Billy went on a rafting trip with his Dad and Sister and they ended up in the valley almost forty years ago. He got out, leaving his sister behind and has spent his entire life trying to figure out how to get back in and save her. He finally has it calculated and is ready to jump when it all goes wrong and he ends up dragging some random students and a guide back into the valley with him. One problem, everything he thought he remembered and knew to get them back out seems to be wrong and there is now no guarantee that Billy now known as Noah can get them back out unless they figure out what the Valley really is.
“I spent seven years getting laughed at. My entire teen years, I was either on television or in a magazine being mocked for thinking I saw dinosaurs, or I was . . .”
She waited, then prodded. “Or you were what ?”
His stride got heavier. “Or I was back in some kind of hospital being treated for my delusions. That’s what telling people who I really was got me. Seven years of being a punchline or a patient..."
Billy's time in the Valley as a kid was a wonderous thing and while yes it was horrifying in some ways due to the dinosaurs and other things that can kill you it was colored by the protection his dad and sister provided. Looking back on it again after his return as an adult leads him to believe that it is possible it wasn't exactly how he remembers and Noah (formerly Billy) is struggling with how things are so different from the valley he left.
I enjoyed getting to see the Valley for the first time through the eyes of the terrified college students that accidentally ended up on this journey. Sam was well aware of the Valley and Billy's time there since he was obsessed with it the way only a twelve year old could obsess. That said it is one thing to read about a place filled with Dinosaurs and lost to time but it is another altogether to be there and see it first hand. With a few other students and the camping guide also stuck, they are in a fight with time to find safety and start to figure out what needs to happen to get back home.
I really enjoyed this story and the way details were doled out. It kept the mystery high and the danger around ever corner. In a land of dinosaurs and Neanderthals not everyone is going to survive. This was full of action, danger, huge emotional swings and I enjoyed it all. Once the story made it to the Valley I was in a rush to read through and figure out with the cast what the heck the Valley was and how to survive in it and eventually get out of it.
I loved the setting, the clues and the cast. It was just a fantastic ride for me. As someone in their 40s, I well remember the Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings and grew up imagining the land at the center of the earth so this was almost nostalgic for me in some many ways. That said there were great surprises and a satisfying conclusion that worked well for me and gave me some hope of seeing some other novels tied into this world later.
Noah still looked stunned. Josh looked worried. Parker looked . . . well, she looked like she was waiting for someone to pause in their lecture so she could ask a question.
January 23, 2026
4,5 star, I would gladly watch a movie or a series based on this story :)
March 10, 2026
Audiobook (16 hours, 42 minutes) narrated by Ray Porter
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ray Porter is one of my favorite narrators. He also narrates some of the best books in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and it's crazy just how often he comes up on my list. As always, a pleasure.
The audio is flawless.
Add this to books that made me cry. 🥹
This is a time travel novel that has bits and pieces that any of us who love the genre have seen before, but structured differently. There are some twists and turns. Uniqueness among the familiar.
The characters are decent. The main character being the best established and well built, with those around him being given at least a cursory structure, based on the relationship and knowledge held from the main character. As in many novels, the perspective is by the main character and what he doesn't know, we don't know.
The world is dynamic, unique, moving, exciting. This is a science fiction world. Wild and vivid in imagination. Beautifully excellent and enjoyable. Even the characters want to explore it! It's fantastic.
I've been sitting on this book for a minute and finally had a chance to get to it. I will be reading it again and probably do need to see what else Mr. Clines has in his library.
5 clocks. 🕰️🕰️🕰️🕰️🕰️
⊹ ࣪ ˖⏱ ୭˚. ᵎ
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ray Porter is one of my favorite narrators. He also narrates some of the best books in Fantasy and Science Fiction, and it's crazy just how often he comes up on my list. As always, a pleasure.
The audio is flawless.
Add this to books that made me cry. 🥹
This is a time travel novel that has bits and pieces that any of us who love the genre have seen before, but structured differently. There are some twists and turns. Uniqueness among the familiar.
The characters are decent. The main character being the best established and well built, with those around him being given at least a cursory structure, based on the relationship and knowledge held from the main character. As in many novels, the perspective is by the main character and what he doesn't know, we don't know.
The world is dynamic, unique, moving, exciting. This is a science fiction world. Wild and vivid in imagination. Beautifully excellent and enjoyable. Even the characters want to explore it! It's fantastic.
I've been sitting on this book for a minute and finally had a chance to get to it. I will be reading it again and probably do need to see what else Mr. Clines has in his library.
5 clocks. 🕰️🕰️🕰️🕰️🕰️
⊹ ࣪ ˖⏱ ୭˚. ᵎ
February 10, 2026
I read this at after seeing Paul di Filippo's positive review at Locus:
https://locusmag.com/review/gods-junk...
Excerpt:
"The past is a land of peril, and before long characters start falling by the wayside. Clines offers lots of exuberant action, rousing and enigmatic passages with dinosaurs, cave-people, a robot named Ross, fellow stranded humans, and weird alien beacons. At the center of the “valley” is the Timekeeper, an alien in a crashed spaceship. Maybe with his help, Billy can rescue his sister—if any of the party outlive the journey.
But three-fifths of the way through the adventures, the cracks in the presumed logic are revealed, and Billy has to unlearn everything he knew in order to survive and get himself and his students home."
A solid and THICK lost-world adventure: 548 pp in the hardcover edition I read. But the pages fly by, and the many plot-twists kept me off-balance, in a good way. Although the graphic violence gets to be a bit much. On balance, I had fun. A solid 4-star read for me, and I'll look for more from this newish-to-me author. Recommended reading. $10 Kindle available.
https://locusmag.com/review/gods-junk...
Excerpt:
"The past is a land of peril, and before long characters start falling by the wayside. Clines offers lots of exuberant action, rousing and enigmatic passages with dinosaurs, cave-people, a robot named Ross, fellow stranded humans, and weird alien beacons. At the center of the “valley” is the Timekeeper, an alien in a crashed spaceship. Maybe with his help, Billy can rescue his sister—if any of the party outlive the journey.
But three-fifths of the way through the adventures, the cracks in the presumed logic are revealed, and Billy has to unlearn everything he knew in order to survive and get himself and his students home."
A solid and THICK lost-world adventure: 548 pp in the hardcover edition I read. But the pages fly by, and the many plot-twists kept me off-balance, in a good way. Although the graphic violence gets to be a bit much. On balance, I had fun. A solid 4-star read for me, and I'll look for more from this newish-to-me author. Recommended reading. $10 Kindle available.
February 23, 2026
I discovered Peter Clines back after I’d first read his book The Fold. It wasn’t until a few months later that I listened to Ray Porter narrate 14 and found the books were connected and became even more of a fan. I’ve read all of his Threshold books several times now and they’re my favorites!
When I saw the synopsis for God’s Junk Drawer, I had to have it, and devoured it as soon as I had it downloaded.
In fact, I had to purchase a trophy copy for my shelves, and have already preordered the audiobook, also by Ray Porter, and am eagerly anticipating my reread by audiobook.
Yes, it’s that good!!
In God’s Junk Drawer, a group of students are whisked away to an odd fantastical land which doesn’t make any sense. It’s a land of dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and aliens.
As usual in Clines’s books, it’s weird, full of twists, and major surprises. And I was all in!
*Thank you so much to Blackstone Publishing and to NetGalley for the gifted eARC!*
When I saw the synopsis for God’s Junk Drawer, I had to have it, and devoured it as soon as I had it downloaded.
In fact, I had to purchase a trophy copy for my shelves, and have already preordered the audiobook, also by Ray Porter, and am eagerly anticipating my reread by audiobook.
Yes, it’s that good!!
In God’s Junk Drawer, a group of students are whisked away to an odd fantastical land which doesn’t make any sense. It’s a land of dinosaurs, Neanderthals, and aliens.
As usual in Clines’s books, it’s weird, full of twists, and major surprises. And I was all in!
*Thank you so much to Blackstone Publishing and to NetGalley for the gifted eARC!*
November 22, 2025
I was really excited to read this, it sounded just like my kind of weird book, however I really struggled to get into this book. There was a lot going on, almost too much to be honest, there were so many layers to the story that it felt difficult to keep up. I didn't like the multiple points of view, I really didn't like Noah, and that made this book more difficult to read. Overall it felt like this author was throwing darts at ideas to choose one, and then ended up choosing all of them anyway, it made the book feel like it had no direction or that it didn't know what it wanted to be so it had to be everything. The ending was disappointing and wrapped up too neatly for me.
March 1, 2026
*2.5
God's Junk Drawer is a sci-fantasy romp with a cool concept, but not enough substance to justify the lengthy page count.
The writing is more suited for a cinematic script than a novel. Descriptions are minimal, and there's very little actual prose, which is strange considering how unique the setting is supposed to be—a full, detailed picture needed to be painted for where the story was taking place, but instead it’s lightly sketched in broad strokes. Locations are introduced and then quickly abandoned, ideas are mentioned and then sidelined, and the environment never fully settles into something tangible. It reads like stage directions: functional, but thin.
The middle 80% is packed with repetitive, quippy dialogue and flashbacks. Conversations circle the same points, characters recap things the reader already knows, and the momentum stalls out in favor of pithy banter. With so many characters and POVs, there’s no room to sit with anyone long enough to care. They feel less like people and more like placeholders moving the narrative along from one action beat to the next.
The idea behind this book is genuinely strong. It could have been strange, immersive, and expansive, but it stays at the surface. By the end, it felt less like a fully realized story and more like the first pass at one.
God's Junk Drawer is a sci-fantasy romp with a cool concept, but not enough substance to justify the lengthy page count.
The writing is more suited for a cinematic script than a novel. Descriptions are minimal, and there's very little actual prose, which is strange considering how unique the setting is supposed to be—a full, detailed picture needed to be painted for where the story was taking place, but instead it’s lightly sketched in broad strokes. Locations are introduced and then quickly abandoned, ideas are mentioned and then sidelined, and the environment never fully settles into something tangible. It reads like stage directions: functional, but thin.
The middle 80% is packed with repetitive, quippy dialogue and flashbacks. Conversations circle the same points, characters recap things the reader already knows, and the momentum stalls out in favor of pithy banter. With so many characters and POVs, there’s no room to sit with anyone long enough to care. They feel less like people and more like placeholders moving the narrative along from one action beat to the next.
The idea behind this book is genuinely strong. It could have been strange, immersive, and expansive, but it stays at the surface. By the end, it felt less like a fully realized story and more like the first pass at one.
Read
April 19, 2026actually 4.5
fell in love with the synopsis so I picked it up.
the book was such a fun and easy read. would have devoured it in one go if it wasnt a buddyread with fixed stops🤣
cant say I really liked the characrers but I enjoyed the change of pov with each chapter!
it lost a bit of its mystery touch when the book started to get wrapped up and things got solved. I did like the ending tho and overall really really loved reading this one.
fell in love with the synopsis so I picked it up.
the book was such a fun and easy read. would have devoured it in one go if it wasnt a buddyread with fixed stops🤣
cant say I really liked the characrers but I enjoyed the change of pov with each chapter!
it lost a bit of its mystery touch when the book started to get wrapped up and things got solved. I did like the ending tho and overall really really loved reading this one.
September 15, 2025
This review is for an ARC copy received from the publisher through NetGalley.
Peter Clines has crafted a modern, updated homage to "Land of the Lost" and arguably his most sophisticated and immersive novel to date. Full of imaginative sci-fi and science of all sorts, if the story doesn't grab you from the beginning, you may be in the wrong universe. Though there's a lot here, from the massive world and characters from various eras, to the ever changing attempts at understanding the science and rationale behind the land the protagonists find themselves in; yet it never feels forced and keeps you engaged throughout it all. Full of surprises, from which characters end up being the main ones to what's really going on, this was an absolutely fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read throughout.
Peter Clines has crafted a modern, updated homage to "Land of the Lost" and arguably his most sophisticated and immersive novel to date. Full of imaginative sci-fi and science of all sorts, if the story doesn't grab you from the beginning, you may be in the wrong universe. Though there's a lot here, from the massive world and characters from various eras, to the ever changing attempts at understanding the science and rationale behind the land the protagonists find themselves in; yet it never feels forced and keeps you engaged throughout it all. Full of surprises, from which characters end up being the main ones to what's really going on, this was an absolutely fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read throughout.
March 8, 2026
Fun candy read!
November 12, 2025
God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines is Land of the Lost meets Star Trek. It is a science fiction fantasy adventure. The simple plot is that Billy and his family go on a rafting adventure and do not return; the family is missing. Then four years later, he is found in Thailand as he tells wondrous stories of living with dinosaurs, cavemen, and aliens. Billy has never diverted from his story and his need to go back and rescue his family. Billy, now an adult under a changed name, has found a way back. The plot of the story and the world building of the story are great. The first 50% feels more like a fantasy, and the back 50% is more Star Trek with adventure. The novel gets off to a rapid pace with Billy and his family's first adventure, told through newspaper articles. Billy, now Noah, as an adult, gets back to the land way faster than I thought, maybe 30 pages in. Then the novel slows down as the characters explore the land. The writing was good, there's a lot of setup, which took too much time in my opinion. Readers are rewarded in the back half with all the setup. The story is told in multiple perspectives, which don't always work. We got 9 perspectives in total, and I feel we only needed 5-6. With all the perspectives showing some importance, we do get some surprising deaths. The thing Peter Clines does very well is world building. All the questions I had going into the land were answered by the end of the book and made sense. The novel has so many great reveals, one made me gasp, and some great twists. The ending was very action packed it made me feel like I was reading a Michael Crichton novel for parts. I was able to read God's Junk Drawer early thanks to Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing. God's Junk Drawer was published on November 11, 2025.
Why did I read God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines? I was knocked out by the description of the book. It had me at a land with dinosaurs, cavemen, and aliens. Peter Clines has been recommended to me with his Ex-Heroes series, which I'm told is superheroes similar to The Boys versus zombies.
Plot Summary: Billy Gather, His sister Beau, and their dad go on a rafting adventure in Maine, but get lost along the way. They get lost in a land with dinosaurs, cavemen, and aliens. Billy is the only one of his family who escaped the land. Billy was found in Thailand years later. He is questioned relentlessly and tells of the strange world that he and his sister were in. No one believes him. 7 books have been written on the subject, and Billy is nicknamed Dino Boy in the press. Billy changes his name and identity. But he does not give up on returning to the land and bringing his family back home. Billy has changed his name to Noah, and he has become an astronomy professor. He has set up a field trip in the mountains of New York. But really, he has researched his star maps and has determined the spot at which a black hole will open up and send him back to the land. Noah tries to get rid of his research assistant and other graduate students. But they are too close and get sucked into the land. Noah tells them who he really is and where they are, but they don't believe until they see a dinosaur. Noah has a mission to bring his Sister back home, but Noah finds the land has changed in the 30 years since he has been back. He finds new people, new dinosaurs, and new landscapes. Something is not right. Noah and his students might be stuck here.
What I Liked: How the characters evolve and change in his new world. Josh ended up being one of my favorite characters, but I could not stand him at the beginning. The world building is top-notch, with everything making sense in the end. The ending was awesome. I was not expecting the action scenes. It was both intense and heartfelt. The alien, The Castaway, was so interesting and unique that the alien and the situation reminded me of a couple of Star Trek episodes. Scarnose was a terrifying villain. I loved some of the reveals and plot twists. I reacted with a gasp once and a loud shouted "yes" after the reveal of where the group really is. I loved the diverse background of people, LGBTQ, different races, and different time periods. I loved that most of the questions I had in the first half were answered in the second half. The dinosaur riding action scenes were a lot of fun and easy to picture.
What I Disliked: Too many perspectives. I feel there should have been 5 to 6 perspectives. Billy in the past, Noah in the present day, Parker, Sam, and Josh were all I felt it needed. I would have liked to have read excerpts from some of the books blending fact and fiction. I felt the book was also too long and could have dropped 60 pages. The first part reminded me of playing an RPG where you have to do side quests. I know this will entice some readers, but for me, it did not work. The back half does pay off on most of the scenes I considered extra and slowed down the narrative in the first half.
Recommendation: God's Junk Drawer is a unique science fiction fantasy with great world building. I enjoyed my time in the world. The book is for readers who like a blend of genres. The only book I can compare it to is The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart (that book also has dinosaurs). God's Junk Drawer is a book that I will recommend to my followers. I will say to readers out there, if you get to the midpoint and consider DNF, just read a little bit more. Peter Clines mentioned on Bluesky that the audiobook version was delayed and will come out on January 20th.
Rating: God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines. I rated 3.7 out of 5 stars. I think if the first half was tighter, and we did not get so many extra perspectives. This book could have been one of my favorites because the world building is so good.
Why did I read God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines? I was knocked out by the description of the book. It had me at a land with dinosaurs, cavemen, and aliens. Peter Clines has been recommended to me with his Ex-Heroes series, which I'm told is superheroes similar to The Boys versus zombies.
Plot Summary: Billy Gather, His sister Beau, and their dad go on a rafting adventure in Maine, but get lost along the way. They get lost in a land with dinosaurs, cavemen, and aliens. Billy is the only one of his family who escaped the land. Billy was found in Thailand years later. He is questioned relentlessly and tells of the strange world that he and his sister were in. No one believes him. 7 books have been written on the subject, and Billy is nicknamed Dino Boy in the press. Billy changes his name and identity. But he does not give up on returning to the land and bringing his family back home. Billy has changed his name to Noah, and he has become an astronomy professor. He has set up a field trip in the mountains of New York. But really, he has researched his star maps and has determined the spot at which a black hole will open up and send him back to the land. Noah tries to get rid of his research assistant and other graduate students. But they are too close and get sucked into the land. Noah tells them who he really is and where they are, but they don't believe until they see a dinosaur. Noah has a mission to bring his Sister back home, but Noah finds the land has changed in the 30 years since he has been back. He finds new people, new dinosaurs, and new landscapes. Something is not right. Noah and his students might be stuck here.
What I Liked: How the characters evolve and change in his new world. Josh ended up being one of my favorite characters, but I could not stand him at the beginning. The world building is top-notch, with everything making sense in the end. The ending was awesome. I was not expecting the action scenes. It was both intense and heartfelt. The alien, The Castaway, was so interesting and unique that the alien and the situation reminded me of a couple of Star Trek episodes. Scarnose was a terrifying villain. I loved some of the reveals and plot twists. I reacted with a gasp once and a loud shouted "yes" after the reveal of where the group really is. I loved the diverse background of people, LGBTQ, different races, and different time periods. I loved that most of the questions I had in the first half were answered in the second half. The dinosaur riding action scenes were a lot of fun and easy to picture.
What I Disliked: Too many perspectives. I feel there should have been 5 to 6 perspectives. Billy in the past, Noah in the present day, Parker, Sam, and Josh were all I felt it needed. I would have liked to have read excerpts from some of the books blending fact and fiction. I felt the book was also too long and could have dropped 60 pages. The first part reminded me of playing an RPG where you have to do side quests. I know this will entice some readers, but for me, it did not work. The back half does pay off on most of the scenes I considered extra and slowed down the narrative in the first half.
Recommendation: God's Junk Drawer is a unique science fiction fantasy with great world building. I enjoyed my time in the world. The book is for readers who like a blend of genres. The only book I can compare it to is The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart (that book also has dinosaurs). God's Junk Drawer is a book that I will recommend to my followers. I will say to readers out there, if you get to the midpoint and consider DNF, just read a little bit more. Peter Clines mentioned on Bluesky that the audiobook version was delayed and will come out on January 20th.
Rating: God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines. I rated 3.7 out of 5 stars. I think if the first half was tighter, and we did not get so many extra perspectives. This book could have been one of my favorites because the world building is so good.
April 20, 2026
Dimensional portals can be a whole lot of fun. We all know that cavemen and dinosaurs never crossed paths, but it is just so easy for us to imagine them together: Land of the Lost, The Lost World, The Land That Time Forgot, The Time Machine. People are always imagining what it would be like to walk with the dinosaurs. This fantastic trope is all about how the author makes it happen and what they do once they’ve got you there.
I can appreciate how Clines has added some science to his science fiction, that seems to be a thing now, admittedly, it does make the whole thing a bit more plausible. To be honest, I don’t know how science-y the science in it really is, but I’ll take it at face value – it sounds good enough for me, it isn’t like they are taking a balloon to the moon or anything like that.
Clines has put together a good cast for this journey, a great mix of characters and personalities. The cannon fodder is a bit light on development, they are cannon fodder, so how much personality do you really need on those red shirts. But the principal cast is good, each of them gets their POV chapters in the story. A nice touch to expand the perspective.
I went with the Audible on this one. Ray Porter did a great job of giving each character their own voice and he was excellent at expressing the drama and tension of the story.
I had a good time with Noah/Billy. It was a fun adventure that breathes some new life into an old trope.
I can appreciate how Clines has added some science to his science fiction, that seems to be a thing now, admittedly, it does make the whole thing a bit more plausible. To be honest, I don’t know how science-y the science in it really is, but I’ll take it at face value – it sounds good enough for me, it isn’t like they are taking a balloon to the moon or anything like that.
Clines has put together a good cast for this journey, a great mix of characters and personalities. The cannon fodder is a bit light on development, they are cannon fodder, so how much personality do you really need on those red shirts. But the principal cast is good, each of them gets their POV chapters in the story. A nice touch to expand the perspective.
I went with the Audible on this one. Ray Porter did a great job of giving each character their own voice and he was excellent at expressing the drama and tension of the story.
I had a good time with Noah/Billy. It was a fun adventure that breathes some new life into an old trope.
May 27, 2026
What a fun book! This was so fun to read, especially because I read it with a friend and it’s always extra special to share theories as we go along. I love weird scifi books, and this had such a unique plot, endearing characters, and nailed the pacing (hard to do with a book that’s almost 600 pages). I now want to read everything Clines has ever written
Read
April 3, 2026This book is like one of those old-school pulp fiction series, and I guess sometimes that's what readers are looking for. The premise is about a kid who once entered the doorway to a magical world accidentally, where there were jungles and dinosaurs and cavemen, and now 30 years afterward he wants to come back for his sister. What sorts of stuff are in this sequestered world? The author throws everything and the kitchen sink. He pitches in Neanderthals, dinosaurs from millions of years ago, dinosaurs from our future when Jurassicorp has manufactured them, Ancient Egyptians, obelisks, blue-skinned men, Nazis, Neanderthals, multidimensional alien beings of purple blobs, ice castles, mushroom forests, a Roanoke colony, everything is pitched in to the mix. I wouldn't claim it works well. Much of the book is just the lead and his crew walking around then encountering another fantastic, outrageously otherworldly thing. Why do they meet the dinosaurs before the electroshock obelisk-- what difference does this executive choice of plot make? There's no purpose or message to the book, no rhyme or reason. The lead character was not very likeable as he's quite self-absorbed with his mission, to the detriment of the companions who were pulled unwillingly in his orbit and destination. I found this sort of indulgent after 500 pages, surely this could have been achieved within 300 pages. But of course this book can be appreciated with the right mindset, that it's escapist pulp fiction of the yarns of yore. Then it can become quite the neverending trip.
May 17, 2026
One star, grudgingly given, for the plot and setting. One star, enthusiastically given, to me. For finishing it. Three stars off for shoddy character work.
Allow me to be more specific. I don't have to like a character, or relate to them, or find them sympathetic. I do have to find them intruiguing. However, the first chapter was entirely a description of uninteresting people getting off a bus. They are more concerned about who is sleeping with who than...literally anything else, including a) packing correctly for a multi-night camping trip, b) this opportunity to map the stars, or c) the possibility that their professor is up to something nefarious and the man they thought they were hiring to guide them to the mapping site is not the same man who actually showed up to guide them.
And you're asking me to spend 500 pages with these people???
But here's the thing. I did. (Mostly. There was a smidge of skimming, I'll admit). So I can tell you with confidence and with examples that it does not improve!! Every couple of chapters one of the characters would be like, "Am...am I the asshole?" Answer, every time: YES. At one point Sam says he's 31 and I literally yelled into the pages, "No! You are 14 at absolute most! You just used the word "fanboying" to describe how you're treating your professor!"
The final straw was really when they learned that if they wanted to live in the survivalist colony that they would, in fact, have to contribute to the survivalist colony and all they did was whine and complain about how they couldn't map the stars anymore. This isn't, like, some terrible cult where everyone worships the supreme leader and in return he starves them. No, it's a fairly flat hierarchy, and plenty of resources if you're willing to carve a living out of Super Dangerous Dinosaur Land. But they do have to farm, because no grocery stores in Jurassic Park, and farming takes work, so, yeah. You have to grow your own food before you get to map the stars if you want to live here and use our resources, sorry guys.
I gave up on everyone in the book after that, but I'm sorry to say only like one more of them actually died.
Allow me to be more specific. I don't have to like a character, or relate to them, or find them sympathetic. I do have to find them intruiguing. However, the first chapter was entirely a description of uninteresting people getting off a bus. They are more concerned about who is sleeping with who than...literally anything else, including a) packing correctly for a multi-night camping trip, b) this opportunity to map the stars, or c) the possibility that their professor is up to something nefarious and the man they thought they were hiring to guide them to the mapping site is not the same man who actually showed up to guide them.
And you're asking me to spend 500 pages with these people???
But here's the thing. I did. (Mostly. There was a smidge of skimming, I'll admit). So I can tell you with confidence and with examples that it does not improve!! Every couple of chapters one of the characters would be like, "Am...am I the asshole?" Answer, every time: YES. At one point Sam says he's 31 and I literally yelled into the pages, "No! You are 14 at absolute most! You just used the word "fanboying" to describe how you're treating your professor!"
The final straw was really when they learned that if they wanted to live in the survivalist colony that they would, in fact, have to contribute to the survivalist colony and all they did was whine and complain about how they couldn't map the stars anymore. This isn't, like, some terrible cult where everyone worships the supreme leader and in return he starves them. No, it's a fairly flat hierarchy, and plenty of resources if you're willing to carve a living out of Super Dangerous Dinosaur Land. But they do have to farm, because no grocery stores in Jurassic Park, and farming takes work, so, yeah. You have to grow your own food before you get to map the stars if you want to live here and use our resources, sorry guys.
I gave up on everyone in the book after that, but I'm sorry to say only like one more of them actually died.
May 12, 2026
pretty neat story, but didn’t hit as hard as I feel it could of with a bit more detail and action. I felt as if I was waiting for something exciting & odd to happen & tbh, nothing ever did. however, the ending was satisfying, just not a super memorable read.
May 23, 2026
Like the drawer in your kitchen, full of junk.
July 20, 2026
4.5*
I adored this book, at times the characters are so annoying but in the best way for the plot. I am only knocking a half star because I wanted more. Give me a second book with all the science and nerd shit of people going home. Tell me more about the ending. I wanted more dinosaurs info and encounters. I just never wanted this to end.
It did slow down for me a bit at times, but still held my interest enough for me to keep going.
If you love time fuckery, dinosaurs, robots, aliens, and human flaws you would love this too!
I adored this book, at times the characters are so annoying but in the best way for the plot. I am only knocking a half star because I wanted more. Give me a second book with all the science and nerd shit of people going home. Tell me more about the ending. I wanted more dinosaurs info and encounters. I just never wanted this to end.
It did slow down for me a bit at times, but still held my interest enough for me to keep going.
If you love time fuckery, dinosaurs, robots, aliens, and human flaws you would love this too!
May 27, 2026
As always, Clines delivers a fun filled, clever and satisfying story. A simple but fascinating idea with great characters and the usual humour. Loved it.
July 8, 2026
The great thing about the state of modern publishing is that anyone can write and publish a book. The horrible thing about the state of modern publishing is that anyone can write and publish a book. With just an idea and sufficient drive, you too can not only write a book but see that book published and out in the world, clogging up our shared virtual hard drive (ever after known as the ‘cloud’) … and the cloud is brimming with novels, independent films, blogs, social media posts, video essays, book reviews (like this one), screeds, sermons….
I’m out of breath.
It’s all truly important and it’s all truly a swamp of crap. Maybe that’s the human condition, life, that razor’s edge, tottering between obscurity and delusion on the one hand, and transcendence on the other, what is now no longer called genius, such concepts out of fashion.
In the internet age, a writer needs the permission of no one to self-publish. Also, self-publishing has never been more respectable than it is right now. I don’t know to what degree God’s Junk Drawer was self-published — the difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing is porous and nowhere near as clearly defined as you might think — but Clines’s novel has what I’ve come to think of as the modern voice, this the style and substance of low level self-publishing. I think it has to do with multiple generations having grown up on a steady diet of pop culture. Every character speaks in variations of that same voice — casual, pseudo-witty, slightly juvenile no matter the age of the character. The chapters are usually titled with a character’s name, purportedly the point-of-view character for that chapter, though it hardly matters as any passage with more than one character present will see the author jumping from head to head … and not that you can really tell, as of course, all the characters sound and think alike. In point of fact, you never actually leave the author’s head, who has chosen to create something which is really more of a puppet show than anything reasonably called the art of fiction.
I spent the first 20 pages or so of God’s Junk Drawer trying to picture the various characters, giving them weight and heft, fleshing them out in my own mind, preparing for the journey ahead. Fiction is a two-person job. Author and reader need to work in tandem to create the art. This, unfortunately, requires that the author do their job competently in the first place. After all, Clines was the initial contractor, drawing up the blueprints, laying the foundation, putting in the walls and sconces. I showed up a lot later. Certainly I can’t be held responsible for falling down on the job when so much of the work was done before me.
I quickly gave up the pretense to art, instead settling under the manipulative hand of the author, letting all the characters speak as one and trying instead to find the story. A plot at least if there are no characters worth focusing on. But this too was a fool’s errand.
Is it possible that we’ve produced entire generations of bad readers, bad creators, bad artists? Has pop culture rotted the human condition from the inside out? Do we have nothing left to say? I’m being overly harsh singling out Peter Clines as this criticism could have been leveled at any of the endless parade of badly constructed, badly written novels churning out of the Amazon/Kindle mill. But that might be the entire point. Just because you now have a big black button labeled ‘Publish’ doesn’t mean that you should push it.
I stopped at the 25% mark. It’s entirely possible that Clines went on to salvage the novel and in fact what I’m dismissing as trite, trivial, tripe is in fact the next War and Peace. You too have a ‘Publish’ button at the ready, so let me know. However, I would like to leave you with the best argument at my disposal, three passages illustrating what is possible when authors learn their craft, invest in deep reading themselves, take the time to care at the sentence level, and value the novel (and the writing thereof) as something more than an item on a checklist.
The first two passages below are fiction, from relatively modern novels. (The earlier of the two — The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie — was published in 1999.) The last is nonfiction: the shimmering prose of Andrew Solomon. Fiction/nonfiction is a distinction without a difference when it comes to understanding the power of great writing. It may well be that all of this hullabaloo is because 95% of readers read sub-par work 95% of the time and do so while reading 95% fiction. I don’t know for sure. I do, however, know great writing when I see it:
I’m out of breath.
It’s all truly important and it’s all truly a swamp of crap. Maybe that’s the human condition, life, that razor’s edge, tottering between obscurity and delusion on the one hand, and transcendence on the other, what is now no longer called genius, such concepts out of fashion.
In the internet age, a writer needs the permission of no one to self-publish. Also, self-publishing has never been more respectable than it is right now. I don’t know to what degree God’s Junk Drawer was self-published — the difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing is porous and nowhere near as clearly defined as you might think — but Clines’s novel has what I’ve come to think of as the modern voice, this the style and substance of low level self-publishing. I think it has to do with multiple generations having grown up on a steady diet of pop culture. Every character speaks in variations of that same voice — casual, pseudo-witty, slightly juvenile no matter the age of the character. The chapters are usually titled with a character’s name, purportedly the point-of-view character for that chapter, though it hardly matters as any passage with more than one character present will see the author jumping from head to head … and not that you can really tell, as of course, all the characters sound and think alike. In point of fact, you never actually leave the author’s head, who has chosen to create something which is really more of a puppet show than anything reasonably called the art of fiction.
I spent the first 20 pages or so of God’s Junk Drawer trying to picture the various characters, giving them weight and heft, fleshing them out in my own mind, preparing for the journey ahead. Fiction is a two-person job. Author and reader need to work in tandem to create the art. This, unfortunately, requires that the author do their job competently in the first place. After all, Clines was the initial contractor, drawing up the blueprints, laying the foundation, putting in the walls and sconces. I showed up a lot later. Certainly I can’t be held responsible for falling down on the job when so much of the work was done before me.
I quickly gave up the pretense to art, instead settling under the manipulative hand of the author, letting all the characters speak as one and trying instead to find the story. A plot at least if there are no characters worth focusing on. But this too was a fool’s errand.
Is it possible that we’ve produced entire generations of bad readers, bad creators, bad artists? Has pop culture rotted the human condition from the inside out? Do we have nothing left to say? I’m being overly harsh singling out Peter Clines as this criticism could have been leveled at any of the endless parade of badly constructed, badly written novels churning out of the Amazon/Kindle mill. But that might be the entire point. Just because you now have a big black button labeled ‘Publish’ doesn’t mean that you should push it.
I stopped at the 25% mark. It’s entirely possible that Clines went on to salvage the novel and in fact what I’m dismissing as trite, trivial, tripe is in fact the next War and Peace. You too have a ‘Publish’ button at the ready, so let me know. However, I would like to leave you with the best argument at my disposal, three passages illustrating what is possible when authors learn their craft, invest in deep reading themselves, take the time to care at the sentence level, and value the novel (and the writing thereof) as something more than an item on a checklist.
The first two passages below are fiction, from relatively modern novels. (The earlier of the two — The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie — was published in 1999.) The last is nonfiction: the shimmering prose of Andrew Solomon. Fiction/nonfiction is a distinction without a difference when it comes to understanding the power of great writing. It may well be that all of this hullabaloo is because 95% of readers read sub-par work 95% of the time and do so while reading 95% fiction. I don’t know for sure. I do, however, know great writing when I see it:
Only when she lurched into the eleventh-floor corridor of the hotel, half dressed and confused, stumbling over the unclaimed newspapers, whose headlines about French nuclear tests in the Pacific and political unrest in the southern province of Chiapas smudged the bare soles of her feet with their shrieking ink, only then did she understand that the suite of rooms she had abandoned was her own, she had slammed the door and didn’t have the key, and it was lucky for her in that moment of vulnerability that the person she bumped into was me, Mr. Umeed Merchant, photographer, a.k.a. “Rai,” her so to speak chum ever since the old days in Bombay and the only shutterbug within one thousand and one miles who would not dream of photographing her in such delicious and scandalous disarray, her whole self momentarily out of focus and worst of all looking her age, the only image-stealer who would never have stolen from her that frayed and hunted look, that bleary and unarguably bag-eyed helplessness, her tangled fountain of wiry dyed red hair quivering above her head in a woodpeckerish topknot, her lovely mouth trembling and uncertain, with the tiny fjords of the pitiless years deepening at the edges of her lips, the very archetype of the wild rock goddess halfway down the road to desolation and ruin. She had decided to become a redhead for this tour because at the age of forty-four she was making a new start, a solo career without Him, for the first time in years she was on the road without Ormus, so it wasn’t really surprising that she was disoriented and off balance most of the time. And lonely. It has to be admitted. Public life or private life, makes no difference, that’s the truth: when she wasn’t with him, it didn’t matter who she was with, she was always alone.
Disorientation: loss of the East. And of Ormus Cama, her sun.
And it wasn’t just dumb luck, her bumping into me. I was always there for her. Always looking out for her, always waiting for her call. If she’d wanted it, there could have been dozens of us, hundreds, thousands. But I believe there was only me. And the last time she called for help, I couldn’t give it, and she died. She ended in the middle of the story of her life, she was an unfinished song abandoned at the bridge, deprived of the right to follow her life’s verses to their final, fulfilling rhyme.
—from the opening chapter of The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
When he goes back inside, Zhang Xielin is kneeling, cradling Skippy’s head on his lap. Doughnuts scatter the ground like little candied wreaths. In the silence, people peek at Ruprecht with moist, pitying eyes. Ruprecht glares back at them murderously. He is fizzing, he is quaking, he Is incandescent with rage. He feels like stomping back to his room, and leaving Skippy where he is. He feels like screaming out, ‘What? What? What? What?’ He goes back outside to look into the traffic, he is crying, and in that moment he feels all the hundreds and thousands of facts in his head turn to sludge.
Through the laurel trees, in an upper corner of Seabrook Tower, you can just make out the window of their dorm, where not half an hour ago Skippy challenged Ruprecht to the race. Above the lot, the great pink hoop of the Ed’s Doughnut House sign broadcasts its frigid synthetic light into the night, a neon zero that outshines the moon and all the constellations of infinite space beyond it. Ruprecht is not looking in that direction. The universe at this moment appears to him as something horrific, thin and threadbare and empty; it seems to know this, and in shame to turn away.
—from the opening chapter of Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Being gifted and being disabled are surprisingly similar: isolating, mystifying, petrifying. One of the most startling patterns that emerged during my research was that many people come to value abnormalities that are ostensibly undesirable. Equally, ostensibly desirable variances are often daunting. Many prospective parents who dread the idea of a disabled child will long for an accomplished one. Such children may create beauty in the world; they may derive intense pleasure from their achievements; they may stretch their parents’ lives into wonderful new alignments. Clever people often have clever sons and daughters, but dazzling brilliance is an aberration, as horizontal an identity as any in this study. Despite the past century’s breakthroughs in psychology and neuroscience, prodigiousness and genius are as little understood as autism. Like parents of children who are severely challenged, parents of exceptionally talented children are custodians of children beyond their comprehension.
A prodigy is able to function at an advanced adult level in some domain before the age of twelve. I’ve used the word expansively to include anyone who develops a profound innate gift at an early age, even if he does so more gradually or less publicly than classic prodigies. Prodigy derives from the Latin prodigium, a monster that violates the natural order. These people have differences so evident as to resemble a birth defect. The anxiety of abnormality goes beyond etymology. Few people wish to be identified as prodigies, especially given the correlation between prodigiousness and burnout, prodigiousness and freakishness. Prodigies are, in the eyes of many prodigies, pathetic, uncanny weirdos with little chance of lifetime social or professional success, their performances more party tricks than art.
—from the chapter titled “Prodigies” in Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
November 23, 2025
God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines turned out to be far more complex than I initially expected. While I anticipated a light assortment of oddities, the sheer number of elements woven into the narrative made it a densely layered read.
The pacing felt slow for the first 60%, and at times it seemed to drag. However, the final portion of the book completely pulled me in. I found myself flying through the last chapters, surprised by several unexpected twists.
Although the story itself was intriguing, I didn’t feel a strong connection to the characters, who came across a bit flat to me. Even so, I’m not disappointed that I read it. It was a distinctive and memorable experience, and it’s left me interested in exploring more of Clines’ work in the future.
Trigger Warnings: Death, Murder, Suicide, Depression, Anxiety
Thank you Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for sending me an eArc.
The pacing felt slow for the first 60%, and at times it seemed to drag. However, the final portion of the book completely pulled me in. I found myself flying through the last chapters, surprised by several unexpected twists.
Although the story itself was intriguing, I didn’t feel a strong connection to the characters, who came across a bit flat to me. Even so, I’m not disappointed that I read it. It was a distinctive and memorable experience, and it’s left me interested in exploring more of Clines’ work in the future.
Trigger Warnings: Death, Murder, Suicide, Depression, Anxiety
Thank you Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing for sending me an eArc.
November 26, 2025
4.5
I was pretty unsure about this book in the first 100 pages, the setup and world had me interested, but the characters felt thin and, frankly, annoying.
But damn, the further the story went the more it got it's hooks in me and the more the characters grew on me.
The story itself has a ton of momentum and just picks up more steam as revelations come. Highly recommended if you're looking for a fun read. Also, dinosaurs.
I was pretty unsure about this book in the first 100 pages, the setup and world had me interested, but the characters felt thin and, frankly, annoying.
But damn, the further the story went the more it got it's hooks in me and the more the characters grew on me.
The story itself has a ton of momentum and just picks up more steam as revelations come. Highly recommended if you're looking for a fun read. Also, dinosaurs.
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