Review: CAT-A-LYST

CAT-A-LYST is a most delightful blend of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Historical reference, Humor, and Contemporary Culture, including many gentle pokes at the film industry and its emphasis on appearance and stereotypes. From its beginning on a Georgia film set, the adventure is rip-roaring at bullet train speed as a handsome "leading man" (whose greatest desire is serious acting, but is stereotyped into roles because he is blessed with good looks) and an aging Hollywood Wardrobe Mistress from Texas with a special background all her own (Bonnie and Clyde, anyone?) set out on a treasure hunt of potentiality, into the Amazon rainforest of Peru. From Cusco to deep jungle, to Nazca, and beyond [WAY beyond], with excursions to another planet, Nazca, New York City, rural Scotland, then Brazil, there's not a spare moment to breathe. Add in three different Felines, each of whom play a major essential role throughout the story (in delightful ways), a trio of sentient superintelligent alien veggies with advanced (but obsolescing) technology, and you have an adventure only very prolific author and screenwriter Alan Dean Foster could conceive.

Addendum: Although the author is American, by far the majority of the novel is set in South America [Peru, Brazil] and the focus of the story stems from Pizarro's 16th century invasion of the Inca Empire (in modern-day Peru) and on the far-flung Incan descendants determined to achieve revenge for their murdered ancestors.