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From: Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: "Junkyard Roadhouse" by Faith Hunter
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2024 19:15:07 -0500
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"Junkyard Roadhouse" by Faith Hunter
    https://www.amazon.com/Junkyard-Roadhouse-Faith-Hunter/dp/1622681800/

Book number four of a four book novella science fiction series.  I read 
the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback 
published by Lore Seekers Press in 2024 that I bought on Amazon.  I am 
hoping for more books in the series but I kinda doubt it.

The book is set in the not so distant future, probably 2060 or so.  In 
2043, thousands of Chinese Mamabots advanced into Seattle from the 
ocean, creating and deploying Warbots to kill the population.  The Mama 
bots self replicated and spread across the USA and then the world, 
killing off most of the population with their warbots, starting "The 
Final War".  The Mamabots and the warbots have been mostly taken out, 
mostly, using antitank weapons and blasters, but there are many still in 
hiding.

2060 is highly different from our time.  There has been a severe 
population crash due to the bots and the lack of water.  There were dark 
matter WIMP engines for the space ships that the Bug aliens shot down. 
There are the Bug aliens that forced The Final War to stop.  And Shining 
has a crashed Bug space ship that the Bugs are looking for.

Shining Smith is turning her junkyard into a motorcycle club roadhouse, 
welcome to any and all.  And then a kid shows up on an electric scooter, 
stabbed and dying so they stuff him in a med unit.  The motorcycle clubs 
then show up to brand her existing membership tattoo and then to let her 
create a new motorcycle club for the roadhouse.  The scooter kid wakes 
up and tells them that his father has one of the spaceship communicators 
and that the unknown motorcycle gang has attacked their town.

Shining is one of the few known survivors of a bicolor ant swarm, who 
infected her with their nanobots.  And she is a survivor of The Final 
War that started when she was 12.  There is video of her killing a 
Mamabot in Seattle by dragging a bomb into it when she was 12.

BTW, the nanobots are freaking me out.  The fact that Shining Smith is 
infected and shedding nanobots all over the place is a horrifying 
concept.  And she has infected her junkyard cats who use the nanobots to 
communicate to each other and her.  And she has infected the people who 
work with her but none of them shed nanobots like her since she is a 
"nanobot queen".

BTW, the junkyard cats are motivated by protein.  In 2060, protein is 
short as much of the world has turned into deserts due to dark matter 
WIMP bombs ripping away the stratosphere.  Dead humans are protein 
according to cat rules.  Don't get jumped by five cats, you will end up 
as protein.

The author has a website at:
    https://www.faithhunter.net

My rating:  5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating:  4.7 out of 5 stars (991 reviews)

Lynn