The Navigating Fox

160 pages

English language

Published March 18, 2023 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-80450-1

Quintus Shu'al is the world's only navigating fox. He's also in disgrace after leading an expedition to its doom a year earlier, with dozens of lives lost. Now Quintus has a chance to redeem himself by leading a brand-new expedition to the gates of hell. In return, he is promised the eventual truth of his origins and his solitary existence.

Those who will accompany Quintus are the Holy Priest Scipio Aemilanus; scholar Octavia Delphina, whose sister was lost in the first expedition; the twin raccoon cartographers Loci and Foci; and the powerful bison ambassador Walks Along Woman.

As the journey grows more perilous and the agendas of its members more sinister, Quintus must make an impossible choice between obtaining the secret of his creation, or sacrificing that possibility forever in order to seize his destiny.

Quintus Shu'al is the world's only navigating fox. He's also in disgrace after leading an expedition to its doom a year earlier, with dozens of lives lost. Now Quintus has a chance to redeem himself by leading a brand-new expedition to the gates of hell. In return, he is promised the eventual truth of his origins and his solitary existence.

Those who will accompany Quintus are the Holy Priest Scipio Aemilanus; scholar Octavia Delphina, whose sister was lost in the first expedition; the twin raccoon cartographers Loci and Foci; and the powerful bison ambassador Walks Along Woman.

As the journey grows more perilous and the agendas of its members more sinister, Quintus must make an impossible choice between obtaining the secret of his creation, or sacrificing that possibility forever in order to seize his destiny.

1 edition

enne📚 reviewed The Navigating Fox by Christopher Rowe

4 stars

The Navigating Fox is a novella that feels like a piece of a larger novel that's been extracted, loose threads and all. Or, maybe it's just uninterested in filling in all the details and giving explicit answers. I wish this story had been a novel to give it space to stretch its wings.

The best part of this book is all of the worldbuilding details. I love the idea of animals that have been given voices and are now knowledgeable (and self-conscious). I love the various societies and their interactions with an overseas empire that has started extending into the land of this novella. I loved the ideas of how a society that treats animals as people would need to operate. There's just so much going on here in the margins of this book over a core parallel telling of two journeys.

One thing my partner always says …

The Navigating Fox is a novella that feels like a piece of a larger novel that's been extracted, loose threads and all. Or, maybe it's just uninterested in filling in all the details and giving explicit answers. I wish this story had been a novel to give it space to stretch its wings.

The best part of this book is all of the worldbuilding details. I love the idea of animals that have been given voices and are now knowledgeable (and self-conscious). I love the various societies and their interactions with an overseas empire that has started extending into the land of this novella. I loved the ideas of how a society that treats animals as people would need to operate. There's just so much going on here in the margins of this book over a core parallel telling of two journeys.

One thing my partner always says about writing is that he doesn't need every detail spelled out, but he has to believe that the author knows these things. This is all to say that this not a book to read for a strong sense of closure, even if you can read between some lines. It feels coherent overall to me, but with a lot more loose threads than I had expected going in.

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