Space Kitties Review

At the beginning of last month, Sierra Blasko asked me if I'd like to review her story in the Space Kitties Anthology. And despite the fact that I'm not a huge cat person or a space person, I said yes. And since then I've been intending to put my review up. So finally here it is.

I quite liked Sierra story, Prankster. It felt realistic. Scamp is smart, but still very much a cat. The story has just the right amount of mystery to it and leaves a sense of things continuing, while still wrapping up. I don't remember noticing anything that annoyed me, no spelling mistakes or clunking wording. I'm certainly looking forward to reading a longer work by her some day.

I'm going to give a quick review of each of the other stories.

• Catastrophic, Valerie Howard - Mystery, suspense, interesting but weird science, great take on animal intelligence.
• Breakfast, Jesse Rice - Rather interesting take on the story concept, pulls off having a completely crazy, and unexplained story amazingly.
• Serabi, Serena Bakke - Completely realistic cat, great character ideas, a little bit lacking in gradual change.
• Oogie’s New Foolproof Plan, Steve Mathisen - Very amusing, intriguing to start because the main characters are dogs, and it didn't seem to be in space. And is a great example of telling a story through dialogue. And there is a cat.
• The Glowing Sphere, E. Kaiser Writes - This one was a little weird and the cats were too anthropomorphic for my taste. The story could almost have been told with humans instead of cats, but not quite.
• Cats in the Hatch, Cheyanne Marie - Bravery, sadness, humour, and an interesting look at cognitively-developed animals.
• The Star of Nine Lives, A. J. Bakke - Good story, not quite my thing, evil robot dog overlord.
• Raising Qain, Brittany L. Jennings - Would have been a good story if the characters weren't called cats. Except for the occasional mention of tails they were exactly like humans. I'm sure one of them is called a man at some point.
• Operation Space Cats, Lesa Bayless McKee - Fun, great character interactions, great teamwork. Felt realistic, with one exception, cats don't have a relationship with God they same way as people. But that was only a little side element.
• #CatZap, Cynthia Port - Started really fascinating and funny with the science and stayed interesting with great characters, but it had this weird, astral, kind of new-agey thing going on. Not too bad, but I didn't really like that bit of it.

Overall I enjoyed the book and I think a sci-fi, cat person would enjoy it even more.

I was provided a free copy of this book for review purposes by Sierra Blasko and was not required to give a positive review. All opinions are my own.

And before anyone gets upset with me for not being a cat person, I really like reading true stories about cats. I find them highly amusing.