Kumori and the Lucky Cat

In a futuristic society where a predatory superstate has devoured the globe and repartitioned it after the fallout of World War Three, Kumori Ando was one of the lucky citizens to get permission to move to the capital city of New Caldeonia and work at a plum if dreary office job, leaving her parents and brother in the countryside. Living alone in her standard-issue apartment on the less luxurious side of town, she has only a small statue of a cat from the old country her family fled to keep her company, a gift given to her by her elderly Aunt Suna when she was a child. The statue has inexplicable supernatural power, advising her when she is in tough situations, though she doesn’t know much about her family’s history to understand it. One day Kumori’s life is disrupted when her best friend disappears from work and the cat statue sends her to rescue a man sleeping in a dumpster just outside of her apartment building. His secret throws her life into a tailspin and hurls her headlong into superstate politics and the resistance group known only as the Movement. Part dystopian noir mystery, part magical girl fantasy, Kumori and the Lucky Cat is inspired by old Russian works like Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog and Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat, with a bit of Japanese kaiju meets George Orwell’s 1984.Much dystopian fiction can be heavy-handed, but Gray…employs a spare, delicate style that’s effective, whether describing an interrogation, quiet scenes, or a huge cat’s rage – Kirkus Review