I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Junkyard Cats
by
Faith Hunter
science fiction, apocalyptic in a Kindle edition on January 2, 2020 and has 141 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Raven Cursed, An Apple for the Creature, Death's Rival, Blood Trade, Kicking It, Blood in Her Veins, Mercy Blade, Shadow Rites, Bloodring, Seraphs, Dark Queen, Shattered Bonds, Black Arts, Broken Soul, Dark Heir, Cold Reign, Blood of the Earth, Curse on the Land, "Water Witch", "Explosion On King's Street", Skinwalker, Dirty Deeds, "Shiloh and the Brick", "Black Friday Shopping with Nell and Occam", Circle of the Moon, Blood Cross, Spells for the Dead, "Easy Pickings", True Dead, Dirty Deeds 2, Trials, Rift in the Soul
First in the Junkyard Cats, a.k.a. Shining Smith, apocalyptic science fiction series and revolving around an altered sort-of human hiding out in a junkyard in West Virginia.
My Take
Whew, what a world! It’s definitely apocalyptic with the lousy food, the expenses, the lack of water and atmosphere that heats the earth, and those nanobots! If you love weapons, this is the story for you, lol. Everything in Shining’s world is armed and ready with some truly amazing tech.
Of course, we’re only seeing the world from Shining’s perspective, “trapped” as she is in the junkyard. It’s been years for her, staying under the radar with only a warbot, an alien AI, and cats for company.
Shining is one clever girl. She has to be, as she’s hiding out from everyone. Anything she does with power could be tracked and her existence revealed. She survives by trading out advanced weaponry through a black market network, hoping, always, that she isn’t discovered.
Hunter is dang clever with the details she creates. That whole scene with Shining “fixing” Jagger’s memories was so inventive. We do learn quite a bit about this world and Shining’s perspective through Hunter’s use of first person protagonist point-of-view.
Shining does have some issues. For one, that programmed blood wanting to take over people, to create a nest. It’s a constant battle between it and avoiding notice from motorcycle gangs, the military, and the government. More issues are some of the gadgets that Hunter doesn’t explain — that Grabber sounds interesting and appears to have a lot of uses. Hmmm . . .
I had to laugh when Hunter used food and water to motivate those cats. It’s amazing how much information and use those cats can be. I should warn you that some aspects are rather gross. Hey, protein is protein for everything.
Hunter certainly keeps things moving with a great blend of introspection, worldbuilding, and those characters. The core of good guys is small with Hunter introducing the bad guys and back history characters as we go. Jolene thinks Gomez is sexy, lol.
You know, that junkyard is such a treasure! A weaponized one that opens us up to plenty of strategy and action as Hunter moves this story right along!
The Story
It was a war that started in 2043 over who owned Mars. Between the Bugs and re-purposed Bug technology, the earth is not the same. Nor is Shining Smith, infected as she was.
Now she’s lurking under the radar until an old friend shows up dead with a warning note in his hand.
Someone knows who she is. Someone knows some of her secrets. In the world Shining lives in, those secrets are valuable. Worth killing for.
The Characters
Not-strictly-human (and infectious) Shining “Little Girl” Smith, a.k.a. Heather Anne Jilson and a queen, is the owner of Smith’s Junk and Scrap, specializing in post-war surplus and waste. Pops had been her father, OMW to the core. Little Mama had been her mother.
Tuffs is the matriarch of the clowder, the Guardian Cat and a queen herself, who communicates with Shining. Tuff’s great-great-great-granddaughter has some mad skills. Spy, Wide Stripe, Narrow Stripe, Spot, and Notch (Tuffs’ primary mate) are some of the clowder, and they all have mad mental skills, especially with Tuffs to guide them.
Mateo with his permanently scrambled brain had been a war vet working as a slave in Boone County in West Virginia when Shining rescued him. Now he’s mostly a cy-bot loaded with amazing weapons. Devil Milk is a plant that helps with pain. Gomez is the junkyard office AI, although he’s a Bug AI.
Buck Harlan had been Shining’s and her father’s friend and a connection to the black-market web.
The USSS SunStar is a spaceship that had crash landed in the junkyard. Evelyn Raymond had been the captain of the ship, as its second-in-command. CAIT is the ship’s AI, a.k.a. Jolene. The USSS MorningStar likely did not survive.
Berger-chip silicone implants provide additional memory, knowledge, and speed up the brain’s ability to make connections. Bicolor ants, Cataglyphis bicolor fabricius ants, are nanobots created to clean up the dead and their germs. They, um, evolved. An ARVAC is an Auto Remove Viewing Air Craft, drones that are part of the junkyard’s defense system. AG Grabbers are pre-war tech. A WIMP is a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. EntNu is a communications system based on Entangled Dark Neutrinos. PAN-PAN is an international standard urgency signal. An SFM is a shoulder-fired missile launcher. A Mammoth Tactical Vehicle is newer tech. Really valuable tech.
Outlaw Militia Warriors (OMW) is . . .
. . . a militia organization of bikers in bed with the military and the government. Jagger, a big bugger, rides a militarized One Rider Harley motorcycle and is an enforcer, a.k.a. a sergeant-at-arms, for the OMW. Darson had been an enforcer. Faria. “McQuestion” is the vice-president and the real head of OMW. A kutte is a jacket or vest with patches. An Old Lady is a woman who married an Outlaw or became a longtime girlfriend.
MS13 was . . .
. . . a motorcycle gang which merged with Hell’s Angels in 2030, becoming the MS Angels, at war with OMW. One-Eyed Jack, a.k.a. Jack Seyer, was the shooter. Mara Salvatrucha. Catherine Warren, a.k.a. Clarisse Warhammer, presumed dead, is the number 2 in the Angels. She’s also a queen and had been heavily augmented by the military then kicked out for being too violent and uncontrolled. Rikerd Cotter had been number 3 in the Angels. Cupcake is Red’s Old Lady.
Bug aliens crashed into the North Sea in 2036. World War III had started when China’s Central Military Commission (PRC warriors) landed in Port Angeles, Washington, and the world as we knew it ended. A Perker is a PRC warbot created by a Mama-Bot. Perkers can make Crawlers, of various sizes. Puffers are weaponized mechanical nanobots. A B/B array uses dark energy.
The Battle of Mobile was one for the ages. Ervin E McElvey is a retired general from Combined Military Command. Naoma is a nearby town. Grant Zuckerman had been a guest years ago who had wanted too much. Coy-wolves are a half-breed species.
The Cover and Title
The cover is mostly browns with an armband of turquoise on the short-haired Shining in a dirty white tank, camo pants, wearing a tool belt, and beat-up boots sitting next to an orange cat next to a huge wrench on top of an orange-rusted car hood in a field of skeletonized junk. A gray cat rests, his head quirked, on the car’s bumper. The title is at the very top as a bronzed-looking debossed font with the same used for the author’s name at the very bottom. Just above the name is an info blurb in white.
The title refers to Shining’s allies, the Junkyard Cats.
