Cyberpunk + system apocalypse fusion where we follow Catherine, who is chosen to be one of humanity's Samurai and lead the fight against the alien incursion.
Stray Cat Strut
Blurb
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.
A cyberpunk magical-girl alien-invasion LitRPG.
It’s exactly as wild as it sounds.
Thoughts
As of writing this review, I’ve read the first five books.
Running out of Ghost in the City chapter left me needing more cyberpunk action, and Stray Cat Strut certainly helped scratch it. It’s a fun fusion of system-apocalypse, alien invasion, cyberpunk, in the patent-pending Ravensdagger MagicalGirl style.
So, the premise. At some point in the 2020s, nasty plant-like aliens called the Antithesis decided it would be good to consume humanity and the world for biomass. A different alien civilisation, the Protectors, aren’t too hot keen on that, but instead of stepping and doing everything themselves, they pick members of humanity (the Vanguard, aka Samurai) to have a hyper-advanced AI stuffed into their brain, and said AI can spend points (which you get by saving people and killing aliens) on various things. Like buying a snack. Or guns. Or a giant war mech.
Its a very fun premise, even if the hand-waving for why the Protectors don’t help out more, or why each Samurai’s AI companion doesn’t do more isn’t super convincing. A story needs a protagonist though, so let’s roll with it. And that protagonist is Cat, a one-armed orphan with a mind eight stories deep in the gutter and enough snark to power a megacity. Cat, her adorable girlfriend Lucy, and a hodgebodge collection of younger orphans, obviously do not have a great time during one of the alien incursions. On the plus side, Cat comes out of it with an AI companion, a bunch of guns, and a concerning number of grenades and explosive devices.
Combat revolves around these, mostly, for the AI’s ability to summon consumable weapons and teleport them to Cat’s side makes resource constraints a thing of the past. Unfortunately, not all problems can be solved with explosives, and sometimes Cat has to deal with people and politics. Well, at least until she figures out how to apply explosives to solve those issues too.
Each book is a well-contained arc that takes Cat into a different location with a different problem, though always with her friend Gomorrah (a pyromaniac nun) by her side. Combat is fun, and takes up a lot of these books. The pacing is fast, to the point where I wish there were more slice of life scenes like the Chef Cat interlude. I should also point out there are NSFW interlewds as well, free on patreon, normally revolving around Cat and Lucy. This is not a harem story, and Cat and Lucy’s supportive relationship is a highlight, whether you read the NSFW chapters (of which there’s like one a book) or not. Characters are very well done.
As to things which I know will irk some people… Well, if you’re the sort that doesn’t like it when the MC sits on an attribute or skill point instead of spending it… oh dear. Cat sits on thousands of them. Tens of thousands. Suggestions from her AI to augment herself properly are swept aside (frustrating), and often when Cat does spend big points in the earlier book, its in ways which are not gratifying. Trading them effectively for money to buy a house? Nooooooo, use them to upgrade your cyberware or something, Cat! She does start spending better in book five, but I think it definitely decreased the tension of many fights knowing how many points (which are get-out-of-jail-free cards) are lurking there. Like… if you’re fighting to exterminate an alien hive with ten thousand points gathering dust, and I know a 5 megaton nuclear fusion bunker buster only costs three hundred points, I sort of wondering (a) why don’t you do that, (b) if you can’t, because of collateral damage, why don’t you use your points to buy a better bomb catalogue with better weapons, or (c) if you can’t afford the catalogue, why don’t you jump in a rocket/spaceship/teleporter out to hives away from megacities, bomb them to hell to rack up another 50k points… and then go with option (b).
The min-maxer in me was grumpy. The popcorn-action-addict in me was happy that fights weren’t being trivialised.
I’ll pick up book six when it’s finished and out on Kindle, but the final thing I should note is that Ravensdagger is not stubbing his works, so all of this is available on Royal Road for free. There’s hundreds of chapters, commissioned art, fan art, fanfics, competitions, and side stories. Honestly, how the hell does Ravensdagger produce so much content while writing a hundred other stories at the same time?
Anyway, cyberpunk lovers, get in on this.