Stray Cat Strut

and the author knows it understood, strutter.  Sung to the tune of Strutter, by Kiss.

Really can't emphasize enough how much I enjoyed the premise itself.  Shades of the Scourged Earth, but unique enough to still stand out as fairly original.  It's the kind of stuff I wish that I could come up with.

Grammar was good enough I ddn't notice any errors.

As of chapter 27 you've got maybe 2 and half characters with depth, and several cardboard characters to bounce them off of.  Still hands down better than most genre fiction, paid or not.

My biggest complaint is pacing.  Without spoilering, by analogy, in most stories going to the grocery store to get stuff to make tacos would be a chapter.  Here  I have a super short chapter about deciding I want tacos. A chaptlet about travel to the store.  A chaptlet about picking the stuff from the shelves, a chaptlet about buyng the stuff.  IF you wait till the author drops 4 or 5 chapters and read them together as 1 chunk it's not bad, but if you take the chapters one at a time there is a lack of flow and context to the story that really breaks immersion.

Technically speaking, this story is pretty solid; good grammar, comprehensible action, non-wooden dialog, the rpg elements aren't obtrusive. Beyond that, it's shallow.

The characters lack more than basic characterization, and the cyberpunk setting is utterly superficial, only existing as passive scenery against which fights happen. Injustices, political forces, subcultures, communities and more are regularly pointed out, and then nothing further is said about them or done with them, they're just set-dressing.

Tl;dr this is a perfectly readable litrpg, but an abject failure of a cyberpunk story that aggressively says nothing about anything

Well, this isn't what I expected to stumble over, but I have to admit I'm more than a little enthused about it. The setting is a distinctly cyberpunk future, with malware packed into even official programs and large corporations slapping their name on anything and everything for advertisements. Seven chapters in, and it's already a pretty significant departure from stories like Cinnamon Bun or Love Crafted, but it hits the ground running. The protagonist being a crippled orphan who picked up responsibility for the rest of the poor forgotten kids at the orphanage, and who's best friend cheerfully navigates around on crutches, builds an instant sense of misfit status and a (true to authorial form) oddly endearing little community. There's also a very immediate sense that even in a world with incredibly advanced technology, they've been swept under the rug and forgotten. Oh, and terrifying aliens are regularly falling out of the sky. That's an important factor too.

Honestly, there isn't too much material to directly review at this point, but if you take the time to read the first few chapters I doubt that you'll be disappointed. The protagonist falls right into the 'Jaded but good-hearted' box, without the slightest bit of manufactured tone, and it meshes with the cyberpunk setting perfectly. Not to mention, there's a single chapter with action, and it charges headfirst into desperate brutality. It's a bit of a leap from the innocent monstrosity of Love Crafted, or earnest effort of Cinnamon Bun, but like I've already said, perfect for the current setting.

So, this may rather early in the story's life cycle to write much of a review, but considering the quality of writing that RavensDagger has already put up on this website, I feel pretty confident in recommending the story off of nothing more than the currently posted chapters.

Cool story but chapters are way to short, by the time you start getting used to it the chapter ends. The frequency helps mitigate that a bit but it's still stops you from immersing yourself. Highly recommend if you're going to read this to Wait till multiple chapters are out before reading. Not good for chapter to chapter reading

Pretty good twist on the normal System plot, both in the setting of a futuristic distopia and in the main character by an author whose already proven he has great writing skills. The dialogue is believeable, the fights thrilling, the cliffhangers wrenching, and the characters sympathetic. Can't recommend more, and I promise that you'll be entertained if you give this story a try.

As pure action gun-porn, this story isn't bad, but it falls flat when it comes to anything other than "Cat finds alien(s), cat blows up alien(s), repeat".

At the start of the story, Cat is introduced with a whole cast of other characters -- her family and friends. Since getting her powers and going off to fight aliens, there have been zero interactions with any of them. It's been ~50 chapters. She also has had pretty much zero angst about ditching her friends and family to go blow up aliens so she can get stronger. Zero lasting angst (or celebration) about getting a super-prosthetic for her missing arm. Character-wise, Cat is basically a sentient gun turret. 

This is particularly bad for a story that bills itself as a magical girl story. A magical girl story needs action, sure. But that should be interspersed with slice of life. The point of magical girl stories is the contrast between mundane life and fighting the forces of evil. Without the mundane life sections, this is just a litrpg action romp with a female MC. 

Which is fine, I guess. The litrpg system is extremely loose, and is almost entirely used as an excuse for Cat to have infinite guns. Which is fine, I guess. But 'Just shoot things until they die and sometimes use bombs instead' isn't a very interesting litrpg progression. 

And as far as the action goes. It's perfectly well-written. However, Cat has maaaybe once been in any actual danger. People who aren't Cat have been in danger, but as Cat is the only character who has any real screen time or characterization (as anemic as it might be), the peril of random side characters doesn't really register as important.

It's not that Cat is overpowered, even. Rather, the enemies she's been fighting are pathetic. The aliens we've seen so far seem to exist almost entirely to be mowed down by Samurai. There are hints that there will be nastier aliens later, but we're 62 chapters in, and we've seen nothing of them. 

So the action isn't even "OP protagonist mows down somewhat less OP enemies". It's "Medium-weak protagonist (by the standards of the world) mows down even weaker enemies". Which simply isn't interesting, regardless of how well-written it is.

As far as the actual writing, I have no complaints. Grammar and style are good. 

But grammar and style can't carry a story. And given that neither the magical girl aspects, nor the litrpg aspects nor the action aspects do either, Stray Cat Strut falls flat with nothing to carry it. 

So the first volume is a fun, engaging, interesting read. I enjoyed reading it and the world building is well done. The AI is fun and you can see it adjusting to the personality of the main character. The grammer and spelling is good with no issues that caused me to have to reread anything to understand. I enjoyed the tech and tech trees that came up along with how crap the world is with corps running everything. Good cyberpunk all around.

Now the reason I dropped the series. The MC is horny 100% of the time. This was acceptable in the first volume since I took it as a defense mechanism for the MCs crappy life and crappy situation. It was there, but wasn't the plot. The plot was survival and then adjusting to her new Samurai responsibilities. This was fun. Now in volume 2, it seems like the plot became the MC just trying to get in certain people's pants, but events keep getting in the way. There was a whole chapter of just her and her girlfriend going at it. I was hoping this would get her to tone it down a bit since she is now safe, with her lover and loved ones, and she is rich now. I was wrong. Instead it made her more annoying and more horny.

That is her character now. A horny girl that an AI keeps dressing up with cat related stuff any chance it gets. Turns out the MC is a flat character that has conflicting characteristics. She is both thrifty and loose with points. She will horde points in one chapter then take the whole next chapter spending those points on stuff that is wasteful. She is a lesbian, but not tolerant of straights(ex. she teases any new female character about doing them or them wanting to do her, then seems offended when some look at her wierd. If a straight guy did this to every female character, it's just as annoying.). Wants to be sneaky, but not really. Very frustrating that she wastes points on sneaky equipment and seems to want to corner that niche in the Samurai market, but a chapter later decides nah its boom boom time. She is suppose to be caring because orphans, but she never seems happy when near the orphans. She acts more like an estranged dad who only comes around for the mother with money for the kids to keep the family happy. This wouldn't be so bad if it was actually on purpose and meant to be her character, but there are paragraphs saying otherwise.

In conclusion, I hate the MC.

Repeats a bit.

You'll go through chapter after chapter reading the same kind of snarky dialogue. You open up a chapter and it's just buying a pistol and snarky dialogue. The snark is not witty, loveable, or even fun, it's just a bore.

First book was good, when it was just action. But then for some bizzare reason the action stopped so we were left with only dialogue. Mehhhhh

Also, sex jokes. Which are all the same. There may exists sex jokes different than 'tease, disgusting comment, affront', but I haven't found any, not here.

I admit that I am not necessarily a fan of these tags but I had heard many good things of the author and their works, and had been recommended this story before so I had to try it. I will also have to be honest and say that I do not understand the hype for it. However, their feelings for the story are clearly from seeing something they enjoyed from the story.

While many on Royal Road would see a 2-3 star as a death flag, I tend to see them as perfectly average or goo with moderate(or more) issues. If the problems were cleared up it would be rated higher but as is it can be enjoyed.

The story is overall easy to read, and the world does have parts of it I found interesting. However, the one-dimensional characters bothered me immensely.

The MC is so overpowered for this story to the point there is never tensions since she is never really in danger. She doesn't have much of a goal or a personality and doesn';t seem to have anything deeper than the surface. What you see is what you get and she is just along for the ride to get her next shot of adrenaline. 

I really hoped it would get better, that the MC and others would develop and grow and have actual character arcs. Unfortunately, the MC is more a side character to the buddy AI that might as well be the true protagonist for all it does to carry the team and story.

Everyone, but especially the adversaries, tend to fondle and toss around the Idiot Ball. Things happen because it seemed cool other than balance or making sure things would be fine in the long run.

In short, I can see why some people would enjoy this power fantasy story and I wish them the best. Unfortunately, I would have to put this to average for me.

Ok, I'm loving the story thus far, but I have one issue.  Cat is an orphan missing an arm and an eye, yet thus far no stranger she has encountered (other than a bot) has reacted at all to her disability.  Disabilities tend to draw some sort of reactions from strangers, and it often makes others uncomfortable or draws their attention.  Yet thus far entire story has had every other human encountered treating her like any other child.  It would likely be something she was self conscious about, or sensitive to the stares of others.  Also, things like opening doors with a pistol in hand would be very awkard, and having to put the pistol away every time she does so would make her much more susceptible to an ambush.

 Please go back and tweak at least a few of the encounters with strangers.  It's not very realistic to have everyone sanguine in the face of a disability.  Either strangers will think she's less capable and question her ability to handle the weapon she has, or they will be prone to sympathizing and try to coddle her.  Writing a few encounters in like that will give Cat's character more of a justification for the wariness she shows.  As it is, nobody has batted an eye that she is a young girl carrying a pistol and missing an arm and an eye.  It's like the missing arm and eye are a vanity set applied to a video game character that has zero impact on actual gameplay.

Heck, maybe this is a sixth sense type twist and we discover later that the missing arm and missing eye are just in her head, not actually real.  That would actually make more sense than not a single human (other than friends) reacting in any way shape or form to her disability as of chapter 18.

Edit: Someone acknowledged her lack of arm/eye on chapter 25.