Synopsis
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.
Review
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.
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