Audition For The Fox
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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?
"If you love my worlds, you're going to love Cahill's: 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.
About this Author
Martin Cahill has published short fiction in venues including Fireside, Reactor, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Nightmare. Cahill's stories "The Fifth Horseman" and "Godmeat" were respectively nominated for the Ignyte Award and included in The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019. He was also one of the writers on Batman: The Blind Cut and a contributor to Critical Role: Vox Machina - Stories Untold. Cahill, who works at Erewhon Books, lives just outside New York City.
Reviews
Advance Praise for The Audition for the Fox
"If you love my worlds, you're going to love Cahill's: stunning imagination, daring premises, and deep character dives. A new author to watch."
--N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth series
"A wondrous, time-traveling, shape-shifting fable that was just what I needed to read. I loved traveling with Nesi and growing wiser alongside her. Cahill has a trickster's gift for storytelling and a poet's sorcerous attunement to language."
--Karen Russell, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of The Antidote
"A triumph, a candle-bright and timely pleasure lit up by gorgeous prose and an exuberant love for the world and for hope."
--Cassandra Khaw, author of The All-Consuming World
[STARRED REVIEW] "DEBUT There are 99 Pillars of Heaven in the temple, and Nesi has petitioned 96 of these gods in hopes of finding a patron. When the avatar of the Fox of Tricks winks at her, she chooses not just a patron but a cause she thought was settled history. Her audition throws her back to her people's worst epoch, an era of subjugation and enslavement, whose overthrow gave them the backbone to rise. But history has to be fought for, and someone has to be the spark that incites that rebellion. It's up to Nesi, beaten, starved, broken, and out of her depth and her own time, to be that spark. If she doesn't succeed, she'll never be born, and history will be altered forever. This story considers the nature of courage, the course of history, and what it means to stand up and fight for a better future. It's also a marvelous and heartbreaking tale of a lone warrior for good who learns that she can't succeed alone but that making friends carries its own devastation. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers who enjoy a good time-travel story that explores all the paradoxes and anyone who loves Nghi Vo's "Singing Hills Cycle."
--Library Journal
"Nimble, sly, and strange as the title character, Cahill has wrought a fine filigree of a tale--with a bold, uncompromising heart."
--Catherynne Valente, New York Times bestselling author of The Fairyland Series
"Fox-fleet and brazen, merry and mischievous, haunted by mercies: Martin Cahill's Audition for the Fox has the trick of doling delight. The language leaps and laughs, teeming with a trickster's teasing. This book made me happy: both while I was reading it, and long after I'd finished."
--C. S. E. Cooney, author of St. Death's Daughter
"Tricksy, generous, timely--Audition for the Fox reminds us that we are the sum of the stories we tell ourselves...and stories can change."
--Premee Mohamed, author of The Butcher of the Forest
"Come for the trickster god shenanigans, stay for the powerful themes of resistance. A time-bending adventure in a richly imagined world. This book keeps its full heart on display at all times."
--John Wiswell, Nebula Award-winning author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In and Wearing the Lion
"Timely and timeless, heartbreaking and inspiring. Hug the pages when you've reached the end. Then light a candle for the fox."
--Lyndsie Manusos, author of From These Dark Abodes
"Filled with elegant yet thrilling prose, Audition for the Fox drops you headlong into a fascinating setting where the stakes ramp up until you're turning the pages with bated breath and mourning the moment you will reach the last page and have to leave this world behind."
--Jordan Shiveley, author of Hot Singles In Your Area
"Cahill writes with great warmth and heart, and--as in any good book with a fox in--sharply sly trickery set to the best of ends."
--Kat Howard, Alex Award-winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians
"Humor and heart...I would absolutely love to read more adventures set in this world."
--The Grimm Librarian
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