I laughed a lot during this book. It's a wonderful addition to the Sci-Fi cannon. A motely crew goes on a quest where everything goes wrong, literally everything. It is full of references to books, tv shows, and games that many of us grew up with. I especially enjoyed the banter between the characters. Will definitely recommend to those who enjoy slightly apocolyptic scifi.

I received this as an ARC in return for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for allowing me to read this title.

“Skid lay on her stomach, her head turned toward the light. I broke it. I broke my ankle. How the hell am I supposed to save the universe with a broken ankle?”

So You Had To Build A Time Machine is the fifth novel by American author, Jason Offutt. It all starts one Friday night when Skid punches the guy who is trying to chat her up at Slap Happy’s Dance Club, and he disappears before her eyes. Dave says he is a theoretical physicist, and apparently works for a government lab. So maybe it actually started before then?

Brick is on a blind date with a woman who’s not returned from the bathroom (not again!) when he sees the scientist guy fall out of nowhere into the bathroom corridor: he’s dirty, smelly and injured, and shouts a warning before vanishing into thin air. Trouble is, that’s BEFORE he sees Skid punch the same guy, much cleaner, at the bar.

Cordrey Bellamy is leading a ghost tour at the Sanderson Murder House when Dave Collison materialises out of thin air into the hall, right on the spot where Delbert Sanderson murdered his son, Tommy back in 1984. So while his ghost tours are all tricks and con, this is a bonus he is delighted to accept, especially when one of the group identifies him as Tommy Sanderson.

These are not the only strange things they observe, and soon Skid, Brick and Cord are comparing notes until they catch up with Dave, who lays the blame at the door of his boss. Before long, they are heading for that lab: “I can’t believe that with a scientist, a baker and a—” he paused and looked at Skid in the rearview mirror “— a potentially dangerous felon, that I’m the voice of reason. And I cheat honest, hard -working suckers for a living. In no way should we be doing this.”

From there, a rollercoaster ride takes the reader through multiple worlds and times. If it becomes too convoluted to keep straight in the head, the best advice is to go with the flow and enjoy a fun ride that includes orcs, enormous sentient insects, nine-foot-tall non-human primates, fire-breathing radioactive dinosaurs, Klingons, ghosts (maybe), Nazi soldiers, a zombie circus master, alien people-eating mushrooms and a great, horned lizard or two.

Offutt’s characters include an ex-circus knife-thrower, a mad scientist and a former bricklayer who bakes muffins, is a Dungeons and Dragons fan and comes extremely well-prepared for a quest. Hugely entertaining.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and CamCat Publishing.

So You Had to Build a Time Machine is an humorous sci-fi adventure book by author Jason Offutt.

A girl is at a nightclub bar. A guy sits besides her, orders a Bud Light, and starts hitting on her. Girl punches guy. Guy disappears into thin air. Poof.

Turns out Bud Light Dave is a scientist working on quantum shenanigans in a secret government facility. His boss launched the experiment by himself, in spite of Dave having warned him about an error in his calculations. This results in small changes in the world as the waves from the collider washes upon it. Then, the changes become more and more threatening. It’s up to Bud Light Dave, the girl (a circus brat named Skid), a former bricklayer owning a muffin shop, and a conman owning an haunted house to save the multiverse in a time and dimension hopping epic adventure. Sometimes together, sometimes separated. Why them ? Because the aforementioned quantum shenanigans decided it.

This book is a gem. A perfect blend of sci-fi and light humor. This review will be short, as it would be hard to write a longer one without getting spoilery.

The writing flows painlessly, making this novel difficult to put down. The story starts at a slow pace, then accelerates in rhythm with the collider’s waves. The characters are fun and well defined. We follow their different point of views as required, depending on the events unfolding. In spite of the intricacies of time and dimension travelling and mashing up (at one point, three different versions of characters are in the same place and time, and don’t get me started on key items...), the author expertly makes it so the reader can follow the events at all times, without having to flip back pages. Jason Offutt doesn’t get lost either as, by the end of the book, everything that happened during the story makes sense. Some of them resolving at the very end.

The author is a fellow nerd, and cultural nods abound. However, they are always relevant, and he took great care in picking timeless works, ensuring his book would be as well.

The book is close ended and doesn’t seem to be part of a series, but I sure would like to see more of the characters. I will seek out Jason Offutt’s other works and, if that isn’t praise, I don’t know what is.

Thanks to Netgalley and CamCat Publishing for the ARC provided in exchange for this unbiased review.

I absolutely loved this book. Corona has been rough, and this took my mind completely off of it.
A small group of unlikely companions travel through dimensions and time.
I laughed a lot, there were a bunch of scary and thrilling moments. I enjoyed that the book was very near reality, but then also far from it at times. Because of the short chapters from different people their perspective, you will want to keep reading this.
Highly recommend it!

If I could give a half star I would because while the story fell flat for me I really enjoyed the characters and how they were written, however inconsistent.

This was a lot of fun! I love time travel and I thought that the characters were developed and the story flowed smoothly. I would definitely check out future novels from the author.

This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed all of the pop culture references and thought that the characters were fully developed. I hope to see more of this type of narrative in the future.

This was a fun read. The time travel made sense to me and kept the story moving. I liked the way things kept looping around to show the scene from a different perspective. I wouldn’t mind a sequel to revisit these characters.

Through time spent reading the book, the experience becomes the feelings and emotions you get at a fun fair: you enjoy the noises, the colours, the sounds, and you don't know what to expect next, after that roller coaster, what you'll do. The last part of the book integrates lots of allusions to universes of films and stories, and the pace towards the ending isn't like something you would expect. I totally missed the understanding of the logic of how the whole story is ending, but, in fact, it does not matter at all. To be fully honest, I needed to talk about the book to my dear friends while I was reading it, and the following days they also wanted to know more. Now they 'll need to buy the book to know the end !
All I can say it is a clever book, breaking taboos about the do and don't of time travel.
I received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

So You Had to Build a Time Machine is a fun sci-fi adventure following an unlikely crew who come together to try and save the world after different alternate dimensions start blurring together. The main character, Skid, is a circus runaway who meets Dave, a theoretical physicist, at a bar and the crazy turn of events begin when she punches him and he disappears. Cord, the owner of a haunted house, and Brick, a large lumberjack-type and muffin baker who's a big softie inside, round out their group.

The book is a fun, fast-paced read that is incredibly creative. Author, Jason Offutt, also drops in nerdy references (think along the lines of Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, Die Hard, and more) whenever he can. I also found the characters fun to read, though I didn't necessarily need the perspectives told from all of them (there's a lot). Despite my love of all things geek, I wish the references were a bit more subtle and could have done with less because they became a little distracting. The plotting and writing could also use a bit more polish, there were several points that seemed disjointed or unresolved.

I was surprised how much I Ienjoyed this book. It was the characters more than the plot that won me over.

The characters were interesting and comical. Their progress on the "quest" kept me riveted.

I didn't completely anticipate the ending but it worked well as a whole.

I received a free copy of this book. I am leaving my honest opinion.

“Meh” really does kind of sum up my reaction to this book. There wasn’t anything outright *bad* about it. I didn’t have any trouble reading it, and it never particularly annoyed me the way that some bad books do. There was nothing offensive about it. But it passed through me and left very little impression. I kind of expect in a few months I’ll have forgotten all about it.

It starts out ok, with people jumping through time and into alternate dimensions because of a science experiment gone wrong. I was hopeful for the first quarter or so of the book. It was startlingly non-linear, in that characters would run into other characters and no one (reader included) would know how off-sync they were, time-wise. “Am I talking to the you I was just talking to, or am I talking to you a week from now?” kind of thing.

(Most time travel stories, I realized in thinking about this, are very linear. Marty McFly might see his past self shredding *Johnny B Goode*, and he might run into Doc Brown in his 1955, 1985, and 1985+ versions, but we’re always seeing the story from the perspective of Prime Marty. The entire trilogy follows a very memorable few days in his life, but even though the temporal settings change, it’s a linear story with one day following the next, and that which has already happened remains having had happened, while that which is going to have happened can be prevented from being about to have happened. Ugh, I hate time travel story grammar.)

(To share one of my favorite quotes ever, from *Red Dwarf*: <Lister>: “We don’t exist here anymore!” <Kryten>: “Actually sir, we don't ever have existed here anymore, but this is hardly the time to be conjugating temporal verbs in the past impossible never tense!”)

Anyway, to get away from questions of grammar, the book starts out somewhat interesting, and then goes completely off the rails. It’s kind of supposed to, in that you have multiple realities crashing together in unpredictable ways, but it doesn’t work in a way that makes sense to me. At all. And then at the same time, characters who had been sensibly seem to suddenly completely lose their minds and start behaving like idiot man-children. Throw in some very cliche villains, and it’s all just … meh.

Bingo categories: nothing in particular, beyond being published in 2020.

Get ready for a pretty wild ride!

When I first started reading this book, I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not. As soon as I got far enough to really get the premise and where we were likely going (about chapter 3), I found myself in a page-turner I stayed up too late on multiple nights to read.

Sure, there's some fast-and-lose glossing over of things we're trained to be wary of by other Sci-Fi sources (Dr. Who, anyone?): don't change the time line, don't interact with the you of the future, past, or even the you of another parallel universe, but that's part of why this book is fun.

Somewhere about 3/4 of the way through I was just certain that the author had to have been on an LSD trip when he wrote it - it's that creative and out there. Again, making it more fun.

He does a good job of sneaking right up to too gory or too graphic, but at least for (squeamish) me, he managed to stay on the correct side of the line there.

Characters are developed for the entire book: we're learning about what makes them tick all the way up to the end, which is interesting and keeps your attention. I liked them all (appropriately, which means disliking the bad guy while feeling sorry for him).

It's a good read and makes me want to seek out more books by this author, which is about the highest recommendation one can give. I took one star off just because there were parts that I thought were a struggle to follow, but once I realized that I was supposed to give in and just hope it all became clear later (which it did) it was easier to just let things go.

Read it. :)

Skid, Brick, Cord, and Bud Light Dave make up a motley crew on a noble quest to save the very fabric of space time before it’s too late. A fast-paced romp through time and dimensions that will satisfy your inner D&D nerd. An excellent read.

I do love a good time travel story and I'm even willing to overlook the likely physics if the story is good enough - which it was here. The MC is well rounded and easy to root for and the story is a lot of fun. I found the structure a little shakey - at times the pov shift was a bit bewildering - overall though an easy read and a good time travel romp.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for and eARC in exchange for an honest review.

So You Had To Build A Time Machine is a fun and quirky adventure that follows our could-be heroes Skid, Brick, Cord, and Dave. Skid is a young lady with a mysterious past who gets swept up into a literal time warp after punching a bar hopper hitting on her who can't take a hint, just to watch him disappear. Dave is a theoretical physicist whom falls into a time paradox after being punched by a beautiful woman at a bar. Brick is a built muffin Baker and innocent bystander who was at a bar on a date when a strange and dirty man approaches him with a mysterious message only to disappear...until Brick sees the same guy(only much cleaner) get punched by a young lady at the bar and disappear. Cord runs a local haunted house tour where a family was murdered by the man of the house 30 years earlier, and in the middle of a tour a random guy falls into the hallway only to disappear again. While this is a boost to his business, Cord knows this was no ghost and begins to become intertwined with our other main characters. Why is everything changing and how can they stop it?

This story was super fun and was well on its way to being a 5 star rating. The characters are fun and it's really interesting to watch the story unfold and see how everything is connected. The dimensions and the beings located within are really well done, considering this author didn't just build one great world, he had to create close to 6(unless I've forgotten a few) as well as deal with what happens when something gets changed in the current timeline. Where this downgraded to a three star is from the 75% mark and on. By that time there are so many points of view it becomes jarring when you switch it up every page or two, even when those characters are together. This made it hard to follow and I found myself losing interest and just tried to finish as quickly as possible. It would have been much smoother of an ending for me to follow if the story had chosen one person's POV to follow when four characters were together. I didn't need to know each person's exact thoughts at all times and it just felt unnecessary. I really wish I could give it the five stars that it had from me at the 3/4th point, but I can't honestly say that I enjoyed the ending....and what do we read for if not to enjoy all the way through out the story, not just the majority.

I would rate this more of a 2.5⭐️. I was looking for something light to read while being cooped up in the house on a rainy day, during a pandemic. I came across this title in the Read Now section and thought it sounded interesting.

It lightened my mood and entertained me; so it did its job. However, I was taken out of it with the Orc-like creatures, the giant cockroaches, the praying mantis doctor and the guy that kept saying, "I don't have any bars." Well, of course you don't son - you're back in 1980 whatever. The first time it was humorous. The second time it was annoying.

It got repetitive early on. I understand that that's part of the time travel aspect. Repetition as a literary device to move the story forward or 'help' the reader make connections can be necessary; but, whew, I could have done with a little less of it. And it started early. Chapter 1 early. It did help pull things together and make connections easier and faster. For me,

I wasn't particularly vested in any of the characters, but having said that I did like them. Cord was definitely an obnoxious pain in the arse, Brick, the gentle giant was an interesting character as was Skid and Dave - well Dave was Dave. There were sarcastic quips that I had a laugh out loud moment like "it was hot enough for all the concert goers to sweet Geritol" or "He often wondered if children secreted slime."

The biggest complaint I have is I felt like I read it before. And, I did in a way when I read Recursion by Blake Crouch.

I am going to have to give this book a 4 star. Now, let's start off with the superficial stuff, the cover. If I saw this book on the bookshelves of a bookstore, I'm not sure I would have been attracted to it. I don't like the green and pink at all, I think it makes it look like a children's book. I think it would have been more suited to a darker themed colour with better graphics.

Now, the book itself. I really enjoyed it. it was a book filled with adventure and humour. I don't want to write too much as I feel I may give away spoilers! I like that it was such a fun read and bought the kid out in me. I would reccommend this to friends and family.

What an adventure filled with some fantastic characters. Even the ones that you're supposed to hate are fantastic - fantastic at being bad guys maybe, but still fantastic.

There isn't too much to say about this without inadvertently including spoilers but it was such fun. I know I'm a sucker for anything time travel but this was fab.

The only thing that I would say is that I would have liked to have known a bit (a lot) more about the background of the main characters, Skid, Brick, Dave(s) and Cord. I'd love to meet most of them again in another book. ..

This was an awesome adventure with elements and references to some the greatest stories, games and movies around. An adventure for the kid in any of us who has ever wanted to save the day, sword fight, or even face our biggest fears head on. Now I must go catch up on the sleep I missed trying to finish in one sitting this fast paced and twisty tale with a great ending.