Time of the Cat is another entry in this year's Self Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC4), in which I am a Judge for the second time. The novel is a more humorous/comedic take on SciFi, featuring a version of time travel that is reliant upon talking cats in the 24th century and a bunch of time travelers who range from serious to utterly selfish...and nearly all of whom are obsessed with their favorite tv show. Add in an opposing group of time travelers who are obsessed with partying and messing up the timeline with anachronisms and endnotes/footnotes that try to pile on additional absurdities, and well you can see how this could be a fun lighthearted jaunt.
And Time of the Cat is exactly that, which makes it a very easy book to read and enjoy - whether that be in print or in audio. The story didn't make me laugh exactly, but it kept me entertained with its light humorous tone and most of the characters were pretty enjoyable, even if the character development of some of them was rather shallow. And the ending involves a resolution of a major plot twist basically occurring completely off page, which was kind of annoying, but really it didn't matter too much with the tone of it all. I wouldn't mind this book making it to the next round of the SPSFCs, even if I'm not sure it's much better than that.
NOTE: I read this half in print and half in audiobook. The audio reader is excellent and the book weaves its endnotes into the audiobook pretty excellently so you don't miss much: some end-notes are inserted directly into the narrative, others are put at the end of each chapter and given a few extra words to explain what the notes were referring to in the text. This works impressively well to keep the humorous asides of the notes intact.
