What if you could fix everything broken in your life before it happened?
Nate Johnson spends most of his time ruminating about what might have been. The charitable categorize the Nate-experience as There, but for the grace of God, go I. And the rest throw him into the pile of people they see every day and never give a second thought.
One day, Nate begrudgingly accepts a legacy gift, a semi-coherent manuscript which describes a mechanism to construct and enter a secret pathway. It’s a portal to undo what seemingly can’t be undone. All he has to do is decipher the manuscript and build The Trauma Machine. Then he can go back, correct the past, and return to the present.
What could have been will become what is. Simple.
The Trauma Machine by Brent G Spaulding will be published on January 13, 2026. Story Grid Publishing provided an early galley for review.
I enjoy a good time travel story and am always open for one. In his debut novel, Spaulding works well within an often seen trope of the concept (changing the past is not always as easy it would seem). The way Nate learns that lesson (over and over) makes for a good narrative.
I really liked one technical touch Spaulding employed here: swapping the tense when Nate travels to the past. I found this worked very well to differentiate the text. Since I was so caught up in reading the story, the ending genuinely suprised me (which is always good in a story).
This is certainly a new author I plan to keep my eye on in the future.
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