Synopsis
In the year 2057, the world has become a corporate-run utopia for the super-rich, and a hellhole for all the rest.
Catherine “Cat” Leblanc is an orphan that is about as far from super-rich as one can be. When the Incursion alarms start blaring and the sky starts raining hungry xenos, it’s just another blemish on an already piss-poor afternoon.
Stray Cat Strut is a cyberpunk magical-girl alien-invasion LitRPG that’s exactly as wild as it sounds.
Review
Happy Pride Month everyone. It’s during this time that I am going to recommend a number of books that have LGBTAQ characters that also have great plots and storytelling. In this case, my first example will be STRAY CAT STRUT by Ravensdagger, which is a former Royal Road web serial that has since been transferred to ebook form. It is a LitRPG cyberpunk novel set in a dystopian future Earth where corporations have taken over society but this is less important than the alien bugs invading our world.
The premise is Catherine “Cat” Leblanc is living with her sweetheart Lucy as the two supervisors of a badly underfunded orphanage for children that need cybernetics to survive but can’t really afford good ones. They are on a field trip to a museum when their section of New Montreal is invaded by the Antithesis (a combination of plant as well as insects FROM SPACE).
The Antithesis have humanity on the back foot and have been invading our world for some time, trying to consume us in order to make more. Thankfully, for humanity, another alien race called the Protectors have provided us with a defense: the Samurai. They are humans empowered with an AI that gives them increasingly good equipment the more Antithesis they slay. Why did they not give us the good stuff at the start? Well, they know humanity would just blow itself up.
As a LitRPG premise, this is one of the cleverer ones and I happen to enjoy it is taking place in a near-future dystopia than an isekai anime fantasy world. Cat is also lacking a bunch of your typical grimdark qualities and just wants to help people by being the best person she can be. That includes looking after her waifs as well as spending some of her “points” (achieved in battle) not to become rich and famous but help the downtrodden. Mind you, she gets enough to do both but it’s a heartwarming beat.
The reason I choose this for Pride month isn’t just because Cat is a lesbian in a committed relationship but the depiction of said relationship. It is mercifully free of drama and the two are shown to be affectionate, friendly, and fun. It’s the kind of thing that Mary Jane and Peter Parker used to be shown as having before One More Day but the writers forgot. Its definitely something that makes a reader feel good if they’re not inherently biased against them.
In conclusion, this is a great action-packed series with a lot of heart. There’s humor but the same way there’s humor in the better Marvel movies. The snark compliments the action rather than detracting from it. It has a hilarious AI that wants to turn Cat into a catgirl, a flame-throwing nun, and lots of great world-building about how society has become terminally dependent on its cybernetic superheroes.
Available here
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