Shining Smith stands on the brink of achieving her goals, and yet now she could lose everything.
The presidents of four motorcycle clubs are coming to claim blood sacrifice and to ink her with motorcycle club tats. Her new roadhouse and its charter have to meet their approval or the roadhouse has no future, and neither does Shining.
An injured kid shows up at Smith’s Junk and Scrap, but collapses before he can speak.
A note arrives containing a warning and a plea for help, addressed by someone who knows Shining’s most intimate secrets—her history, her plans, and the names of her friends. The sender claims his daughter has been kidnapped by Shining’s enemies. To keep her secrets, he wants Shining to get his daughter back.
In order to rescue the hostage and keep her junkyard, her roadhouse, her people, and the cats alive, Shining Smith will have to suffer, fight, and bargain her way out of danger. All without accidently transitioning anyone—creating an accidental thrall—no matter how much her nanobots want her to.
Lock and load. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

That was fun. ‘Junkyard Roadhouse‘ was my fourth visit with Shining Smith. following ‘Junkyard Cats’, ‘Junkyard Bargain‘ and ‘Junkyard War‘. Her world gets richer with each visit that I make.

I love that Faith Hunter has turned her hand to Science Fiction and produced something complex and intriguing, with a strong woman at its heart, delivered at a pace that keeps the action pumping but allows time for plots and conspiracies to be considered and for me to love or hate the characters. I think only Faith Hunter could have come up with a scenario where the people most likely to save the world are in Motorcycle Clubs.

The two AIs in this are a hoot. They’re original, amusing but still credible. The mutated junkyard cats remain the scariest thing in the story. They see people as either servants or protein and what they did to that attack dog would make even the toughest biker give them a wide berth.

This episode moves the overall story arc forward by getting Shining Smith set up as the head of her own MC, running a Roadhouse that delivers services and provides neutral territory to the four main MCs. I wondered if that might make the story a little static, focusing on what happens in the Roadhouse and the Junkyard but Faith Hunter quickly gets Shining Smith involved in action in a neighbouring town. This action exposes the Dark Riders as more than opportunistic bandits, builds some new alliances and sets Shining Smith up for a larger scale conflict. I’m already keen to read the next book.

I like the novella format that Faith Hunter is using. It keeps the focus tight and the tension high. It’s like watching a TV episode with a Three Act structure. The people, the problem and the context are introduced, the big fight happens, the consequences are worked through and the seeds of the next episode are sewn.

Junkyard Cats was originally conceived as an aubiobook only series. Now it’s available in paperback and ebook but my strong preference is to settle down with the audiobook and let Khristine Hvam’s narration light up the story for me.