Stray Cat Strut: A Young Lady's Journey to Becoming a Pop-Up Samurai

Stray Cat Strut, Book 1

By: RavensDagger

Narrated by: Hollie Jackson, Pavi Proczko

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.

©2021 RavensDagger (P)2021 Podium Audio

Non-stop fun!

Give yourself some free-time for this one! You won't want to stop listening. Worth the listen.

Loved the way the story was narrated!

Did not think I would enjoy the story as much as I did. Really fun story! The way the the narrative was done was awesome! Really enjoyed it, could not stop listening, Thank you Hollie Jackson a and Pavi Proczko for putting so much into it and making it so enjoyable!

so much fun!

I had so much fun with this book. The imagery is wonderfully written. The humor makes me laugh out loud. and as a bonus it doesn't have the teen angst that so many books featuring teenagers/young adults has. I look forward to more!

The voice actors did a great job of bringing the book to life!

really dug this story, waiting for the next one.

the MC is hard nosed without being cringy and motives are very realistic in an unreal world. looking forward for the next book.

action packed with a great sci-fi system for navigating progress

lots of blue collar idioms and good enough character development. Maybe a tad easy, but much fun nonetheless.

Well...

I love the setting, the story, and the writing. However, I found it very hard to suspend my disbelief when the protagonist who is missing an arm and an eye is told she can get prosthetics if she wants them...and it is four hours of listening before she even asks detailing about possibly taking advantage of that opportunity. and another two hours before she does so.

The entire time, she's is fumbling around with one arm and almost dying because of the handicap (and her crap aim with no depth perception). I find it ridiculous that she wouldn't immediately inquire about that, just for survival's sake, if not the very obvious "holy crap, I can have two arms again!" reason.

THEN, she basically ignores the new hyper-advaced robotic prothetics and acts like they're normal and not with thinking about, and acting as if it were no big deal. That SHOULD have been a massive plot point.

Other than that one glaring issue, and the fact that I don't care to hear about the sexuality of minors (the main character and her also-minor girlfriend), I really enjoyed this and will be buying the next one.

Anyone can become a hero

This was a fun story. Basically the main character is a disabled orphan, and tried to protect her fellow orphans during an alien attack. Because of this, a third party alien group gives her special powers and upgrades her to being a "samurai." This gives her powers, utilities, items and so on based on points. The more aliens she kills, the more points. Kat is a fun character because she both cares about other people, and also likes killing aliens in interesting ways. There was some hinting that she liked women throughout, but it wasn't entirely clear to me until the end. It felt natural and did not detract from the story. Overall I enjoyed it.

Action packed

This was from start to finish a rollercoaster packed full with action. I couldn't put it down.

Lots of Action, Lots of Fun

This delightful novel is a combination of superheroes and cyberpunk with a light dose of LitRPG. Cat LeBlanc is an orphan charged with taking care of other orphans on a field trip when a xeno incursion begins. She very bravely tries to draw the creatures away from her girlfriend and their charges and gets herself mortally injured while killing one of the monsters. This experience causes an alien AI (different aliens) to embed itself in her skull and offer her cybernetic upgrades as a reward for killing xenos and protecting humans. It turns out that these xenos are wrecking a lot of the galaxy and the AI’s parent species wants to protect other species without getting overly involved themselves. Their answer—help worthy humans help themselves by making advanced technology instantly available to them according to a point system. Points are earned by killing monsters and protecting people and they can be spent on guns, biological upgrades, and a host of other things. That’s the light LitRPG element. There are no character sheets, but the reader is constantly barraged with new point totals as monsters are killed, people are saved, and high-tech stuff is purchased.

The result is a pretty fast-moving novel in which Cat learns quickly how to survive the invasion. People like her are called “samurai” and she finds that her new status gives her a great deal of influence in trying to stem the tide of the invasion and make sure that all people—not just the rich—get helped. That helps to introduce the most cyberpunky elements of the story. By the middle of the twenty-first century, corporations have almost completely taken over the country and basically run things. The effect of this is that the rich live pretty well and the poor get stepped on. Cat obviously intends to do something about that now that she has the power to make a difference.

There’s a lot of action in this novel, but also a lot of story. As Cat moves from encounter to encounter, she meets other samurai and together they destroy a lot of xenos. There’s nothing deep here, but if you’re looking for a light tale of super-heroic mayhem, this is a mighty fine book.

Office safe mostly

Love it you can hear the narrator's sarcasm roll out with every quip. It fits the story and main character perfectly