Junkyard Bargain (Audiobook) by Faith Hunter, Khristine Hvam: Shining Takes to the Road for the Next Step

Junkyard Bargain by Faith Hunter, Khristine Hvam (Narrator) Series: Shining Smith, #2 Unabridged Audiobook, 5 hrs., 40 min. Audible Originals, 2021 Read: March 2-3, 2021

The Law was uncertain. Vengeance wasn’t.

What’s Junkyard Bargain About?

Shining Smith needs to gear up and improve her weapons and armor if they’re going to take on the task they have ahead of them. This means traveling to Charleston, and selling some of the junk from her scrapyard, and making the right deals.

Standing in their way are rival bike gangs, corrupt police, sex slavers, and random other criminals. Whatever else happens—Shining isn’t going to allow those slavers to hang on to their captives (and likely won’t let them hang on to their lives, either). She needs to avoid the police, strike careful deals with the gangs, and survive the rest—all the while she’s noticing changes in her cats and expands the control Shining’s won enhancements have on those closest to her.

It’s really hard to explain without pretty much recapping everything in the first book.

How’s the Narration?

In short, Khristine Hvam is the perfect reader for Hunter’s work. She gets how Hunter’s mind works, she knows how to bring the characters to life and how to infuse them with the right kind of humanity. You read enough of an author’s books and it’s just impossible to think of anyone else doing it. Just not sure what else to say about her work.

So, what did I think about Junkyard Bargain?

After Junkyard Cats took several unexpected turns in the latter half, I didn’t know what to expect from this beyond more of the same. This novella may have ended up where it seemed to be heading from the beginning, but the route it took bore so little difference to what was expected that it’s hard to recognize that. Hunter is filling this post-apocalyptic world with more dangers and strangeness than we’d been exposed to last time, and you know the next installment will increase the danger.

When talking about the last book, I said that it was too brief and not deep enough. This isn’t the case this time—and not just because it was 40 minutes longer. This time it felt like there was a solid match between depth and time—to the point I wondered how she fit it all in the novella-length book.

There were some great action scenes, some solid surprises, and good character development. And…cats with telepathy. I can’t wait to see what #3 has in store.