Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on September 16, 2025 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Audition for the Fox is the first piece of long fiction by Martin Cahill, known in the SF/F space for short fiction and for being an editor at Erewhonian (and probably other places too before that). The story follows a young woman Nesi who desperately seeks a position as an acolyte of one of the 99 Pillars (deities) and reluctantly seeks the position from T'sidaan, the Fox of Tricks...only for the Fox to send her back 300 years in time to the time her people were conquered and oppressed and challenged to find a way to start a revolution. The result is an excellent setting and world, with a really strong lead character, excellent storytelling, and some solid themes of family, oppression, emotions and hurt, and justice.
Plot Summary:
As a godblooded woman, Nesi only has two choices really: either find a Pillar to accept her as a divine acolyte or live the rest of her life without freedom in the Temple. Unfortunately, 96 of the 99 Pillars have already rejected her, leaving her with only 3 shots left. And since the Pillars of Assassination and War are unlikely to favor her, her only choice is to audition for a role with T'sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
In auditioning, Nesi expected to be challenged to a game, or a trick, or some other element of the mind. She did not expect to be sent 300 years into the past, during the time her people were occupied by the militant followers of the exiled pillar, the Wolf, and into a camp where her people were directly oppressed. But T'sidaan's audition is in fact a life or death game, where Nesi's only hope of survival (let alone passing) is to help her people in the past find a way to not just survive with their culture intact, but to rise up and break the yokes the Wolf has put upon them.....
Quick Thoughts: Audition for the Fox is told in a bit of excellent storytelling, as the story alternates between chapters told from Nesi's third person POV and between written tellings of stories featuring the Fox and the other Pillars. It works really well, especially due to its main characters. Nesi is a person who is smart (even if a little foolhardy at times) and desires freedom, so the situation that the Fox sends her into is extremely horrifying...even before the physical pain is inflicted upon her by the oppressors. And the Fox may be a classic trickster god, but (as is often the case in myth) also is one who cares about justice and keeping people humble and good (even if those are not the Fox's domains). The Fox may seem like someone who just wants to mess with people for their own fun, but they really do care and want to make things better, as the story reveals over time.
And these characters, along with two prominent side characters, and the excellent setting (which feels East Asian myth inspired even if it's not actually following a specific cultural set of myths) allow Cahill to tell a story that is very captivating even as it shows the struggle of a people faced with oppression that attempts to stamp out everything about themselves as a people - their identities and their cultures - for the sake of nothing but cruelty. As Cahill shows, the way to fight such oppression must also involve the reassertment of the people's identities, and it all plays out rather wonderfully. There are some minor gripes I may have (why Nesi isn't killed by the oppressors is given an answer that is hardly satisfying), but this one works pretty well and is well worth your time.
No comments:
Post a Comment