Off the Bookshelf: JUNKYARD CATS, by Faith Hunter

 

Audiobook, Audible exclusive

Narrated by Khristine Hvam

Shining Smith series, Book 1

Gritty futuristic tale of survival, with a slow drip of one chilling revelation after another, coalescing in a picture of a gut-churning near-future. And doubts about whether our heroine is still human.

Shining is living in hiding, presumed dead, running a junkyard and protecting a man she rescued from slavery. The United States is a shattered mess, just like the environment, where West Virginia has been turned into a desert, and motorcycle gangs are mobile armed forces, or terrorists, feeding off the mangled carcass of the country. No indication which side won in the war, which hovers on the verge of re-igniting.

An enforcer for her father's former motorcycle warrior group shows up, following a signal triggered by an invasion of the junkyard. Shining plays a dangerous game trying to convince him she isn't herself, she's just a clueless receptionist, tending the junkyard while her boss is away. Little by little, looking through Shining's eyes, listeners learn about the danger she has faced, the threats to her life she has overcome, the alien technology that has merged with and taken over both machines and people's bodies, and just how un-helpless and un-defenseless she really is. When agents of an enemy gang approach the junkyard, she is forced to work with the enforcer to stay alive. And the junkyard cats of the title are revealed as far more than cats, and far more capable of fighting to defend their territory than they should be.

Scary, but I couldn't stop listening.

Off the Bookshelf: TRAIL OF LIGHTNING, by Rebecca Roanhorse

 

Audiobook, Audible exclusive, The Sixth World series

Narrated by Tanis Parenteau

If you're looking for a suspenseful adventure that immerses you in Navajo mythology, while giving you monster hunters and epic battles ... this is the place.

Maggie is our heroine, living in a post-apocalyptic world where much of the United States has been wiped out by flood, and the former Navajo reservation has survived. And changed. Supernatural creatures and monsters walk among them. Maggie is both blessed and cursed with clan powers, magical abilities that she uses in her quest to fight monsters.

She's been badly hurt, emotionally, her clan powers awakening through tragedy, harassed and teased and given cryptic, questionable help by the trickster, Coyote. Betrayed and abandoned by the one she dared to love, she doesn't trust, doesn't open herself to offers of friendship. But she must learn to trust and take chances to come out of this dangerous adventure alive. 

Fascinating, fun, grim -- and forcing me to find every chance to get away and keep listening to the book. I hope there are more adventures, because yeah, too many threads and threats left hanging!