For this reviewer's money, Alan Dean Foster is the most criminally underappreciated science fiction / fantasy writer out there today. Foster remembers a time when rocket ships and ray guns were fun, gosh-darn it, and the genre neither clanked along laboriously under its burden of technical virtuosity nor dealt with grim dystopian futures.
His characters tend to start out likeable and maintain that likability even as the world/galaxy/universe/dimensional reality around them spins wildly out of control, and that tried-and-true notion comes back for another romp in Cat-A-Lyst.
Don't try to dissect the plot too carefully. It has to do with conflict between a Monitor set on Earth to oversee the appropriate development of its two intelligent species and a Renegade agent of chaos with exactly the opposite goal. Along the way there's a search for hidden treasure, revenge plots for a centuries-old outrage, and a trek into the Peruvian jungle that includes a bored B-movie actor between engagements, a feisty 50-year-old wardrobe mistress with a hidden past, an amateur archaeologist with a Freudian axe to grind, a tabloid journalist with more ambition than good sense, and a cast of characters that gets larger and more unwieldy (not to mention unlikely) as the tale rolls on.
Part of The Big Reveal is obvious pretty early on, but that's okay. Foster keeps pulling more rabbits out of the hat to keep the reader occupied as the adventure gallops from the Peruvian jungle to the Nazca Lines to the slimy depths of Televisionland with stopovers in a couple of the aforementioned dimensional realities before he wraps the whole thing up with an ending where almost everyone gets their just rewards. Especially the reader.
A delightful romp through space and time. Who would think a combination of ancient Incas, soda-pop entrepreneurs, an anthropologist much in need of therapy, Guardian Cats, intelligent vegetables and wanna-be movie stars could be so much fun?
From back cover: A game of cat...and cat? Movie star Jason Carter is on vacation in Peru. All he wants is a break, but what he finds is a lost civilization of extra-dimensional Incas bent on conquest of the entire world! Nor is Carter alone. His allies include a bloodthirsty Amazon, an archaeologist, a bank robber, three alien vegetables, a scoop-crazed gossip reporter - and not one of them knows what to do next. Only Carter's cat seems unruffled by the growing danger. In true feline fashion, she acts like she's in charge of the planet. Maybe she is.
How fun. If you are looking for some light reading for short trips or days at the beach, here is your ticket. Something for everyone! Cats, sci-fi, bad acting, saviors of the world, people from lost civilizations, you name it. Cute,surprising and written in 1990 so there is a bit of the taste of the last decade. Enjoy just to enjoy.
