It's all about the cats!

I auto buy Faith Hunter and I am never disappointed. It gets even better when Khristine Hvam picks up the narration. I digress, Faith drops us into a dystopian junkyard belonging to Shining Smith. The apocalypse has already happened and the alien bugs settled the score, it left people to eke out an existence where they can. Shining is happy-ish and is way more than she seems, she lives alone apart from the junkyard cats and a war-bot she rescued.

But the world is now run by bikers, the biggest group the Hell's Angels have heard rumours that she is hiding something. Her only warning of the coming attack the note clutched in the dead fingers of her father's last friend. Then Jager arrives ........

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4 people found this helpful

It got going near the end

A slow starter and slow narration, I had to increase the speed by 25% to stay with it.

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Narrator almost too good

Kristine Hvam can really do accents. But sometimes I found the Spanish almost impossible to understand with a mid European ear. She was a real pleasure to listen to.

The story and narrative. Meh. A bit spaghetti western, a bit military sci-fi, a bit hand waving tech. I got bored and gave up after a whike

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I’m hooked!

I got sucked into this story more as it went on, and was sad when it was over. I can only hope this is the start of a new series as I love Faith Hunter’s books, and Khristine Hvam’s narration.

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Excellent Dystopian Sci-Fi

I love Faith Hunter and I particularly enjoy listening to Khristine Hvam’s narration of her books. Buying this book was a no-brainer despite being a different genre from Ms Hunter’s usual works.

This work is set decades in the future, after several world wars and invasion of ‘bugs” from space. Shining Smith is a survivor of the wars, she lives in a junkyard left to her by her deceased father and is kept company by an office AI, called Gomez, a war-bot inhabited by a very damaged Matteo and dozens of cats.

This story starts with Shining discovering a dead body in the trunk of a car she bought on the black market, covered in bi-coloured ants, a dangerously genetically modified creation that seeks human flesh to consume. Shining survived a bi-coloured swarm attack as a child and still remembers the pain. Not many people survive swarm attacks.

In the footsteps of the dead body an OMW enforcer arrives. Shining and her father were part of the OMW and fought alongside the Government against the People’s Republic of China, but Shining was supposed to be dead and things were beginning to mount up, with no time to think.

This story is gripping, filled with drips of information about Shining, her life and the world in which she inhabits. It’s drip feed nature keeps you riveted throughout, and Shining is a complex and compelling character, that you root for from the start.

As this is an audible original, you can only get the book in audio format, so if you are a Faith Hunter fan, you have probably heard several of the accents and ‘voices’ used before in other books by Ms Hunter. However, this did little to detract from the great story.

I hope a future book in this series comes out soon, because I really enjoyed this one.

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Superb!

Strong heroine, interesting side characters, innovative ideas, lots of sarcasm from the AI. Cats! Really looking forward to more of this story please!

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Short, but hopefully more will come along

I mostly feel as if I read a short story of an existing series in an anthology. Yes you can read it on it's own, but you miss all the connections.

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Not my normal type...but I liked it!

As I've read and enjoyed all Faith's other books I thought I'd give it a go even though it was a different genre than I normally read. I've got to be honest I didn't understand some of the technical bits but I didn't need to, to enjoy the story. The narrator is fab and I love the cats and Jolene. Can't wait until the next book.

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very enjoyable

I enjoyed this far more than I expected I would. the Narrator was good and the quality of the Audio solid. The world is interesting and considering the book tells the story of the events of 1 day I was impressed. I really enjoyed it. and can't wait to listen to the next book. My only criticism is that it is only 5 in a bit hours long. considering its part of the "free to subscribers" catalogue, I was happy, but it would be way to short to spend a credit on.

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Faith Hunter writes a good story...

... and the narrator tells it convincingly. If you like SF there's a good chance you will enjoy this. If you like the author's other work, don't be discouraged by the slightly different genre. But, no spoilers.

Faith Hunter, please write a sequel?

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