In recent months, I've had a real run of variety in terms of my Netgalley requests. Books that looked so promising, that I'd been waiting for a while, turned out to be duds (imho) while others that I didn't know much about (like this one) were unexpected delights. You pay your money, you take your choice, I guess? Anyway, this writer is definitely someone whose future books I'll keep an eye out for, as I enjoyed Audition for the Fox very much.

The basic premise of the book is that it's set in a universe ruled by the 99 Pillars, which are gods of varying levels of power and our protagonist (Nesi) is desperate to get the patronage of one of them. The only problem is she's already failed 96 times and is running out of options. Taking a chance, Nesi appeals to T'sidaan, the Fox God of Tricks, and ends up sent back in time to her country's past where she needs to change history in order to get T'sidaan's patronage. The main issue, how can you defeat an overwhelming force if you have very little power of your own?

Anyway, no spoilers but I enjoyed this and it also has a great cover, which is an added bonus. I hadn't actually realised it was a novella, not a proper novel, until it was clear 180 or so pages in that it was all wrapping up, so that's my one major negative about it.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley. This is my honest review of the book in question.

A desperate acolyte auditioning for the patronage of T'sidaan, a fox trickster god, is sent three hundred years into the past with instructions to start a revolution.

As I was reading <i>Audition for the Fox</i> I kept thinking that it should be a short story instead of a novella. The world is interesting and I'm always happy to read about vulpine tricksters, but what could have been a taut story just drags on until it reaches its predictable outcome. I was unsurprised when reading the afterword that this actually started as a short story and was expanded because Cahill's editor asked if he had a novella on hand.

Despite my dissatisfaction with the length, I would like to read more about these characters and their world.

Thank you NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for providing this digital review copy. All opinions are my own.
4.5★ rounded up!
In Oranoya, children that are descended from the gods who have a spark of magic within them are required to be chaperoned by a god. In order to win a divine chaperone, these young men and women must audition to become acolytes for one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars. Nesi has auditioned for ninety-six pillars and has failed each time.

Left with few options, Nesi impulsively auditions for the role of acolyte to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks. When T’sidaan answers her prayer, it is to send Nesi three hundred years into the past with the mission of ensuring the successful revolution of a labor camp. Nesi must find a way to inspire hope in her imprisoned ancestors and ignite an uprising against their oppressors.

Audition for the Fox is an enthralling tale of tricks, hope, mythology, and the human struggle to find one’s path in life. Nesi’s struggle with her self-doubt and anxiety echo the insecurities which are human nature: what will I become, what will I do, will I be okay? The Fox introduces a softer, more nuanced side to the traditional trickster character, with depth of character and an iron morality. This novella is a love letter to stories, for those tales which inspire hope and strength, for those fables which teach children and adults alike. Simultaneously heartfelt and mischievous, this book drew me in and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through.

I loved this story, and there is very little that I might change about it. The beginning pages were confusing; they start the reader in the thick of the action, but I would have preferred to start with Nesi’s prayer to the Fox. The book reads like a collection of myths, so I felt that the emphasis on action or a hook in the beginning was unnecessary and ill-fitting. There are references to Nesi’s magic, handed down from her great-grandfather, but it is unclear what that magic is. Similarly, her history with her family isn’t explained. I felt that this could have helped the reader better understand her personality and anxieties. Surely, being left at a temple by her parents at a young age would affect a person, but it’s unclear if this was done out of neglect or malice, or if it is simply a requirement for the parents of godsblooded children. Frankly, the story might have benefitted from being just slightly longer, to allow for that extra bit of exposition and world-building.

Nevertheless, I loved Cahill’s writing style and the sense of mysticism and mythology in this book. The interspersement of tales of the Fox and other Pillars helped explain the trickster’s character, describe the world of Oranoya, and gave the novel the feeling of a bedtime story. As a cherry on top, the artwork throughout the book is wonderful!

I’d recommend this book to readers who enjoy fantasy and mythology, especially those in search of a read-in-an-afternoon book that still packs a punch with its themes.

I initially wanted to read this because foxes are my favorite animal, and it ended up being such an amazing novella!
Nesi’s story is full of emotion and courage. Her determination was so inspiring. How can you truly conquer great evil without becoming evil yourself?
I enjoyed the fables between chapters that help tell different stories of the gods.
This was original, thought-provoking, and I adored the fox 🦊🧡

Thank you NetGalley and Tachyon for my eARC

One of the critiques often found in novella reviews (and of which I have more than once been guilty) is “this was a novel that was trimmed down to length”. This sentiment often results from the feeling that nothing in the story has a chance to breathe. Martin Cahill’s Audition for the Fox sometimes feels like the reverse: a short story that’s been fleshed out to novella length. But that’s no bad thing. To call what lives around the core of the story “padding”, as the reader might be tempted to, misses the point; it is in that padding that the best bits of this story live.

The core narrative of Audition for the Fox follows Nesi, a young acolyte hoping to serve one of the 99 pillars—the gods of her world. All 96 of the gods she has petitioned thus far have rejected her. Faced with a choice between those whose domains are war, assassination and mischief, she decides that the last is the least fearsome, and prays to the fox god, T’sidaan, to let her take their trial. As a result, she is thrown back into her people’s own history, to live through a turning point in their occupation under an oppressive imperial aggressor, and to help ensure that turning point comes to pass. This core narrative is great, but if you were to take those chapters out, you might end up with the wordcount of a novelette. So what’s the rest?

Throughout the novella, there are interludes in the shape of folk tales about various gods—the pillars—giving a sense of the cosmology in which this story lives. Very little of it touches on the human world, but it nonetheless informs us of the culture and humanity of the people of the story by giving us … well, their stories. It’s a book about culture, shown through the telling of the fundamental myths (predominantly those that involve the fox god).

Alone, this would already be a welcome addition, but Cahill has managed something unusual: in setting out these myths, he doesn’t overburden the novella with events that expand it past the weight the novella can bear, and chooses instead to ground it more firmly into one specific aspect of its setting: the gods. Specifically, the god who is visibly and incontrovertibly crucial to the novella’s world, T’sidaan.

I find that religion in fantasy rather comes to bits when it decides to take the often-travelled route of “the gods are literally real”. Religion is hard. It is such a huge part of the human experience that it naturally makes its way into speculative fiction—it must. But one of its most frequent reflexes within fantasy is not as a cultural system or a sociopolitical force, but as a too-literal being or set of beings. Wherever you look, it is easy to find off-brand Greek gods, strutting about the mortal realm, empowering, cursing and causing problems for human characters. When this happens, not only are the systematic and belief-focussed parts of religion neglected (which on its own is an enormous problem for my belief in a fantastical world), but the corollaries of that literal existence of the gods are never explored. If the gods manifest in the world, are known to manifest in the world, how does belief operate? What does faith look like in that sort of system? It’s an enormous question, and one I think more fantasy books could do with considering.


And one way of exploring the role of religion in fantasy worlds is by creating cultural artefacts that embed those gods within their world. This is what happens in the stories that encircle the main narrative in Audition for the Fox. Cahill does not directly tackle the core problem with literally immanent gods, but by giving us a sense of how they fit into how the cultures in his world speak to and of themselves, he sets the scene in which the existence of immanent gods starts to feel a little more intuitively plausible. Humans would plausibly create these artefacts in response to this belief-environment. That is crucial to making the world develop that feeling of humanity I crave in my fiction.

Between their words and deeds within the core narrative, and their portrayal in the surrounding stories, Cahill presents T’sidaan as a trickster god with depth. Yes, they cause mischief, deceive others, use words and agreements shoddily formed to benefit themself—all the usual repertoire of a trickster god. But they are also shown to be a believable god that humans might invoke and worship; there is a substance beneath their tricks. They have things they care about, and in whose service their cunning is directed.

I would like to hold T’sidaan in contrast to a fox deity in another 2025 release, Antonia Hodgson’s The Raven Scholar. The two stories use their deities in very different ways. Hodgson gives her Eight a sinister edge, imbued as they are with the power and a prophetic promise to end the world. Yet there is something about her Fox—another trickster—that just never seems to line up. This fox has acolytes—a whole abbey of people in their service—but the trickery on display throughout that story often feels like it enacts chaos for its own sake. That fox serves no master but its whims. And I increasingly struggled, reading through that story, to see why any would serve a master such as this.

I had no such qualms with T’sidaan, and indeed, as the story goes on, their reality and depth become all the clearer.

And I think the stories about them make up a good part of the difference here. Whereas in The Raven Scholar, how exactly these deities fit into the lives of ordinary people seems opaque at best, Cahill gives us an insight into how the people in his world see their gods by giving folk tales, and by showcasing the gods with the trappings of their telling.

It helps that a great deal of care has gone into how those stories are told in the narrative. They are not simply dropped in, but framed by a clear speaker, with an audience—often a storyteller speaking directly to children, or a grandmother to the protagonist. But there’s more even within the phrasing of the narratives themselves, which often start like this:

"Let years be the rainfall, the cascade of autumn leaves, the curtain of snow, the bloom of blossoms. Let the years be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds more, felt, seen, tasted but a moment before the next arrives and gone just as fast."

This is not “once upon a time”. But it is functionally once upon a time. This says “there is, culturally, a way to tell a certain type of story, with which the listener would be familiar, and situate it in a certain cultural and narrative mode.” And, without having to drop an exposition bomb, that says a whole lot about the culture and the speaker, their relationship with the listener, and where stories about the gods—and so, the gods themselves—fit into this world. It is in the unshowy details like this that the best of Cahill’s work lies.

This is a novella that cares about telling its story well, cares about dwelling, that languishes in the very act of storytelling, rather than rushing from plot beat to plot beat. By making this choice to limit the main linear narrative, the novella makes itself feel more substantial than any number of crammed extra scenes could have done. Instead, what we have is given weight, and depth, and the space to breathe, filling the space, and is thus all the better at being a novella.

4.25 stars.

Nesi is an acolyte, trying to achieve patronage to one of the 99 Pillars of Heaven. Each pillar requires an audition and she has failed 96 when she decides to try to audition for the trickster Fox god.
This is an incredibly unique fantasy world, with beautifully written prose and characters that you root for, even within this relatively short novella.
It's one I need to re-read for sure, as I imagine I missed things! It was lovely to read something different.

A young acolyte auditioning for the trickster Fox god finds herself thrown back in time to save her own ancestors. A delightful novella as tricksy as the Fox himself. It reminded me of Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills cycle, with expert worldbuilding, carefully crafted characters and a clever plot. Highly recommended.

Audition for the Fox is a lively and lovely novella with fresh worldbuilding and a likeable protagonist. Nesi has godsblood in her veins, which means a childhood away from family and working to earn the patronage of one of the 99 Pillars of Heaven (who serve as gods in this world). If she cannot, she will never be allowed to leave the temple where she lives. She has been trying, and only has a few options left when she makes the choice to audition for the fox. But T’sidaan is a trickster god, so this is definitely not going to be a normal audition, and Nesi is going to need all of her courage and wits about her.

This book is not marketed as YA but it did read a little younger to me due to the themes. I don’t mean that the book was overly simplistic or immature, but the themes of finding your place in the world, and finding your way in an unfamiliar situation, are ones that I think will resonate with younger readers. Middle school me would have loved this book. None of this is to say that this book can only be enjoyed by young readers. Like one of the golden age Pixar films, this book has something for all ages, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Recommended for fans of The Singing Hills Cycle, and The Monk and Robot novellas.

I received an advance copy in exchange for this honest review.

I was not expecting to love this as much as I did but it was so much fun whilst also having a really nice message! Please forgive this slightly rambly review, but there was just so much I loved about this book!
Audition for the Fox follows Nesi: an acolyte with a divine gift. However, due to the danger of such abilites, all gods-blooded must earn patronage from one of the gods of the 99 pillars of heaven or be trapped in a temple forever. After having failed 96 auditions, Nesi is beginning to lose hope but takes a gamble and decides to audition for T'sidaan: the Fox of Tricks. Instead of a standard audition, Nesi is sent back in time to when her ancestors were ruled by the ruthless Wolfhounds. If she's to succeed and earn a place with the Fox, she must ignite a revolution and save her ancestors to secure her own future. Interspersed throughout the story are also some really wonderful fable-like tales which really fleshed out the world and the character of T'sidaan and the other gods.

I originally picked this up on NetGalley because I noticed it on an 'upcoming books' article on GoodReads and thought the premise sounded interesting but I was not expecting to have this much fun with it! From the first chapter, the writing style was instantly engaging and Nesi felt really relatable in her struggles and insecurities. T'sidaan was an absolutely brilliant character. The 'trickster fox' of course is nothing new in fiction, but I really loved this take on it. I don't want to say too much because I don't want to spoil the delight for future readers, but I really liked the fact that T'sidaan's trickster-ing had a point to it. They weren't malicious (usually), and instead played the role of the trickster that's needed in society to point out the injustices and defeat tyrants. Every time they interacted with Nesi and the other characters, I knew I was in for a treat with the wonderfully snappy dialogue. I particularly liked their dynamic with Nesi, it felt really natural and just so fun!

The plot was relatively simple but all the more effective for that I think. I would have liked a little more information about the Wolfhounds because we really didn't see much of them, but the setting felt very atmospheric. I did appreciate the fact that Nesi's task didn't feel too easy: the book made it clear that it took a consistent effort, a lot of pain and connecting with people. The exploration of song, humour and trickery as a vessel for rebellion was really nice to see and gave the book a lot more depth than I thought there would be when I first went in. I also did like how the gods all felt very human and flawed, it gave them a lot of depth (though it would've made me quite annoyed had I been in Nesi's place I think!). The extra little fables were a really lovely touch, I really enjoyed the style of them and it's always great seeing T'sidaan humble those who deserve it!

For a debut, this felt really well structured, well paced and polished! I'm always a little hesitant to read novellas because I often feel like there's something missing from them, but this book really felt like it had a clear goal and structure in mind that was executed really well so I didn't get that sense from it. I absolutely want more time travelling Nesi and T'sidaan adventures (Martin Cahill, if you're reading this I NEED their regency period adventure) and cannot reccommend this book enough to fantasy fans!

Such a charming, fun, absolutely delightful read! I was immediately drawn to the amazing cover and the description sounded just too good. "Audition for the Fox" tells the story of Nesi, a young woman with godly blood that is desperately looking for a divine patron - otherwise she'd be forced to live her life in the temple when all she wants is her freedom to roam the world. Unfortunately, of all the 99 Pillars (the deighties in this world), 96 have already rejected her during the audition process. Pretty discouraging if you ask me. So she turns to the trickster fox god T'sidaan, who hasn't given anyone their patronage in ages, and their audition consists of time travel, pain and revolution.

Freedom is a big theme in this novella. Nesi yearns for personal freedom, T'sidaan tasks her with starting a revolution to end a brutal occupation and free Nesi's people 300 years in the past. While there are some issues with how this plays out (Nesi becomes capable rather quickly due do the novella length of the story, and there are undertones of 'violent resistance is bad even if your oppressors revel in their own violence towards you' which, especially nowadays, felt a bit tone-deaf), the writing style is so engaging, the characters are so charming, and the overall themes are so emotionally captivating that the story was just a joy to read. Nesi is a great and relatable protagonist and T'sidaan, the nonbinary trickster god, is just amazing.
And well, do I have to say that a book about resistance and revolution in the face of oppression is just perfectly timely right now?

Really enjoyed my time with this little gem so yes, the story is actually just as good as the beautiful cover. Give this one a try!

4.25/5
Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for an arc. All opinions are my own.

I desperately need a stage production of this. It’s weird and fun, and has the vibe of a story told orally. While the writing style kind of felt like it was doing more telling than showing, I think it actually really worked since fables and stories are such a core part of this book.

I also loved the message of resistance, and how resistance can come in many different forms.

While this didn’t quite end up as a five star read for me, I will definitely look for an audiobook after release. I could see my rating going up to five if the audiobook is good, because I think this book would be amazing in audio format.

A trickster fox god? Yes please!!

This novella was full of heart!
It’s a story about freedom, about hope and friendship.

I loved the fmc, Nesi, and the Fox was such a special character!

The worldbuilding was imaginative and fun and I loved the whole cast cast of animal gods!

I also loved the little illustrations of the Fox and the Aesop-style stories and folklore sprinkled throughout the book, they added so much charm and depth!

I appreciated this story so much!!!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a digital review copy in exchange for my honest thoughts!!

This was a perfectly-portioned story. Just long enough to weave a compelling story, but not so long that it didn't leave a lot of they world pleasingly mysterious. Apt, for the subject matter.

You never know what you’re going to get with a trickster. They can be cruel. They are always disruptive. Sometimes, they’re hilarious. If she hadn’t been so desperate to find a way out of the temple where all godsblooded are kept (for their own safety), Nesi would never have approached Fox. She’s auditioned for ninety-six other deities and been rejected by all of them. Very few people have ever auditioned for Fox, however, so Nesi has no idea what to expect. Martin Cahill’s novella, Audition for the Fox, is packed with chaos and pranks and occasional brutality. Most of all, however, it is about hope in the darkest of times.

Nesi has prepared for so many auditions before she approaches Fox. She’s learned to meditate for Turtle. She did her best to eat Leviathan amounts of raw seafood for Whale. Not even her great-grandfather, Bison, accepted her. There was no way Nesi could prepare for Fox’s test: being launched three hundred years into the past, to one of the worst times in her country’s history. Without so much as a hint of explanation, Nesi finds herself in chains, being marched into the mountains to work for her country’s greatest enemy, the followers of Wolf, a deity so monstrous it was kicked out of the pantheon millennia ago. As if this wasn’t bad enough, Fox didn’t even bother to tell Nesi what she was supposed to accomplish in order to pass the audition.

Most of the novella focuses on Nesi as she tries to survive the invaders and works out—with the barest of hints from Fox—what on earth she’s supposed to do three hundred years before she’s even born. What on earth can she do to impress Fox? Is this all a dream? Or might this be real history that she’s caught up in? How on earth can she change anything when she’s weak, hungry, in pain, and the baddies are all heavily armed?

Though Nesi’s situation is absolutely dire, I hoped for her that Fox would turn out to be the kind of trickster that brings good changes, that punches up instead of down, and who has a plan however chaotic it might be. I won’t ruin the story for you. You’ll need to read Nesi’s tale and the interstitial sections about Fox and the other Pillars of Heaven to find out if Audition for the Fox has a happy or a tragic ending. This book will definitely reward readers who are here for both kinds of tales.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley and Edelweiss, for review consideration.

You could really tell this was written by someone well versed in DnD: the world-building is so intricate, and page by page the lore becomes richer and the characters deeper. I thoroughly enjoyed spending time in this world and I would gladly return to it, given the opportunity. Although at the beginning I was a little confused because I couldn't quite figure out whether the people are actually people or some kind of animal-human hybrids due to the references to pups and kits, but I decided to imagine them as fully humans, with that just being their language of choice.

My favourite character was easily the fox god, T'sidaan. They're everything you could want from a trickster god: always something unexpected. Just casually chucking Nesi centuries into the past and essentially her auditioning task was to overthrow an oppressive force and inspire rebellion for decades to come. Fail, and your own people might be enslaved in the present (possibly? The consequences were a little unclear). No biggie. But they also had a beautiful way of showing Nesi her own power, and how she was not alone in the task.

My ultimate favourite parts were the dialogue, especially when Nesi befriended a few people in the camp. The dialogue was so delicious and there just was not enough of it!

My main issues were few: especially at the beginning the language tended towards overly-flowery, which occasionally made the sentences a bit hard to understand and sometimes got in the way of the flow of the story itself. Then again, sometimes Cahill hit the mark and found gorgeous new ways to describe things, so I guess that is the price you pay for flowery prose. However, it improved as the story went on and the plot started rolling.

I personally did not enjoy the fables in between most chapters because it made the pacing feel a little off, especially when things were getting more dramatic in Nesi's world, I did not want to be thrown off into a completely different story. I feel like there could have been one or two less fables and perhaps placing them at the end would have worked better.

All in all, I really enjoyed this delightful new acquaintance; the story left me feeling all lit-up from the inside. I would be happy to read more from Cahill in the future.

An acolyte who has unsuccessfully auditioned for multiple "pillars" tries again with the trickster fox and finds herself thrown back in time. There's no indication of time period, but I found myself put off by the cursing and cigarette smoking.

Some much needed hopecore! Cahill spins a sweet, funny, and affecting story about coming into one's own, the many modes of resistance, and owning resilience. A fable for our age and all ages.

Nesi needs to become an acolyte. There are 99 gods, and with 96 failed auditions, she is running out of options. When she thinks the trickster god, a fox, is her best option, she will soon realize this fox may be the hardest choice.

This was one of those reads that really surprise you after reading so much of the same thing that it reminds you that original ideas do exist. It was fun and quirky. Sure it was slow at times but the banter and bond between the fox and Nesi was fun and how Nesi manages her obstacles was relatable and different at the same time.

This book has a really cool premise - I love the concept of the 99 gods or "pillars" and that people with godly blood have to audition to be an acolyte of one these pillars. Add in the hopeless MC and a fox trickster god and I was SOLD immediately. However, I felt like the execution fell flat for me.

What I liked:
- The narrative story is broken up with short chapters of in-world folktales. And I have to say, I liked the folktale chapters MUCH better than the actual story. I thought the author's writing style and voice were much more suited to these sections.
- I did enjoy our MC, Nesi. She's kind of a hot mess but she knows what she wants and she's trying her best to get there. I can relate! I did like The Fox better, but I tend to be drawn to characters who are competent and sassy, so that makes sense.
- The book is clearly trying to say something. In particular, I took from the main narrative the message that being connected to your community - the people, the practices, and the land you come from - is crucial if you want to survive hard times.
- The cover is a banger.

What didn't work for me:
- while I could relate to or enjoy certain characters, I never actually felt that connected to any of them.
- This book is clearly trying to say something. In fact, with the main narrative and all the fables interspersed, it felt like it was maybe trying to say too much
- It didn't feel like Nesi's friendships with the people she met in the past were developed very well. So when she was ready to give up her life to stay in the past, it really didn't click for me, and honestly felt unrealistic. Why would she want to stay in a war-torn part of history with people we barely saw her connect with? It just didn't feel believable to me, personally.
- there were lots of glimmers of really cool world building and lore, but because of the length of the book, we didn't get to explore a lot of it.

I think this book may have suffered from having some really big, really cool ideas, and trying to fit them into a novella. All in all, I would call this book very average.

This book would be good for readers who:
- enjoy trickster gods
- enjoy a folklore/fable- style of storytelling

Thank you to Netgalley and Tachyon Publications for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I requested this book because the cover is gorgeous and I really wanted to read about a fantasy book with a fox god. A very new concept for me, so it is safe to say I was very excited. unfortunately, when I started I felt very lost and confused. The prose is very compliacted with hard to pronounce words. The author throws you into the story instead of easing you into it but I still persevered. Until the plot and the references became too real. The plot felt inspired by real historic events like WW2. Our main character is thrown back in time and asked by the fox god to motivate the rebels. There was a statement that said Oranoya (the oppressed) is a global power in the present day and everyone knows what it does to tyrants. At this point, I just couldn't keep reading anymore. It felt too real and too tone deaf honestly given what has been happening in the Middle East.
The author took inspiration from WW2 and not just a bit of inspiration, the setting the camps everything was too realistic, this in itself is weird. In my opinion, to use such a horrifying event in history and turn it into a mythical fantasy book and then to speak of the present tyant in the Middle East and what its doing to literally every other country, justifying its actions by calling the other countries tyrants felt too much of a slogan I have been hearing for the last 2 years. I CANNOT READ A BOOK LIKE THAT AND I CANNOT RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE.
Unless you want to read a tone deaf book then by all means - go ahead.