The newest book by Jason Thomas Smith was released on Sept. 24, 2023. That’s just four days before my most recent birthday, and even reading it now, months later, it feels like a present, gift-wrapped and handed to me on a silver platter.
It starts with a desolate town and one lone priest out of a band of scattered apocalypse survivors. The opening scene is straight out of the post-apocalyptic playbook. The sound of motorcycles. A desperate man praying. A town utterly ravaged by nuclear fallout, time and other implements of destruction.
Enter the Renegade Nuns, a band of badass, scantily clad women, each in some semblance of holy attire: a wimple here, a rosary there. They enter the town of Lost Nation, Iowa, on a mission, and they will ride over anyone who gets in their way.
If you haven’t set this review down already and raced to order this book from your LBS, then I don’t know what to tell you. The premise says it all, and you’ll either love it, or you’ll be one of the people who gets in their way.
Smith has a cinematic eye, and The Renegade Nuns on Wheels MC is both an amalgamation of every ridiculously violent end-of-the-world movie ever made, and (as far as I can tell) a wholly original idea. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny. This is a novel for those of us who adored Gunpowder Milkshake. It’s a story for Sam Raimi aficionados. And once it gets going it simply does. not. let. up. Until the final page.
Despite the filmic storytelling, I wouldn’t trade this novel for a film any day. Smith’s way of turning a phrase is delightful, evoking laughter and horror simultaneously and pulling back when necessary in a way that visual media is unable. One fantastic early moment drives this home, turning “show don’t tell” on its head with a description that far exceeds its ocular promise.
“Fisty led them back to Marv’s Antique Shop,” he writes, detailing the layout of the town of Lost Nation. “A crude, spray-painted sign hung over a crooked entrance. The word “antique” had been spelled wrong.” This hits differently than if he had chosen a specific misspelling for “antique” and used it every time he referenced the shop. The choice to explain, instead, allows the absurdity to hit, and then fade, instead of becoming a running gag that wears itself out.
The entire story takes place over the course of three days, perhaps four (time and its dilation and contraction are recurring themes that Smith both discusses and utilizes). It’s a fast-paced ride that manages to engage multiple shades of morality.
Shortly before the “final” battle for humanity, which begins at the book’s halfway point and charges unrelentingly through the last page, the priest from the opening scene contemplates his situation.
“High noon. The business suit demons were fighting the Halloween nuns at high noon, two of whom had engaged in disgusting biker sex acts right outside his church window the night before. The priest would never look at a jumbo dill pickle the same way.”
If that kind of tongue-in-cheek prose speaks to you, strap some machine guns to your vehicle and blast a path to the nearest bookstore to grab this, before the (uncredited) adorable cover art is replaced by some Hollywood studio’s promotional shot.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s February 2024 issue.
