Audition For The Fox
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
2025 USA TODAY BESTSELLER LIST
In this stellar debut fantasy, a trickster Fox god challenges an underachieving acolyte to save herself by saving her own ancestors. But are Nesi and her new friends from the past prepared to defeat the ferocious Wolfhounds of Zemin?
“Stunning imagination, daring premises, and deep character dives. A new author to watch.”
—N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth series
[STARRED REVIEW] “A marvelous and heartbreaking tale.”
—Library Journal
Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.
Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cahill's ambitious but overwritten debut secondary world fantasy opens, somewhat confusingly, with 21-year-old Nesi reflecting on her immediate past while making sense of being sent 300 years back in time at the whim of the Fox, a trickster god, for whom she is auditioning to be an acolyte. Though information is doled out in an often convoluted way, eventually this setup becomes more clear: Nesi has failed 96 auditions out of a possible 99, and without a god to watch over her she'll be trapped within one temple or another until she dies. Now the Fox has set a test for her: she has four months to lead a historical uprising. The book is beautifully designed, full of fox-themed intertitles and chapter headers, and Cahill clearly put a lot of thought into his inventive worldbuilding. Unfortunately, however, the flow of the story is frequently interrupted by excerpted fables that go on too long. Meanwhile, Cahill's penchant for overloading every sentence with description, combined with his slightly off-kilter word choices, often obscures meaning. It's a fascinating premise that falters in execution.
