Review: 'Audition for the Fox' by Martin Cahill

In a world filled by ninety-nine gods willing to accept apprentices, it's quite embarrassing if you've failed the auditions of ninety-six of them. Unfortunately, this is the position Nesi finds herself in and so she makes an insane choice, to audition for the Fox. From there, a story of danger and trickery unspools which carries a surprising amount of heart. Thanks to Tachyon Publications and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Apologies for the slightly delayed review, I somehow thought I'd already written it.

Pub. Date: 16/09/2025
Publisher: Tachyon Publications

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.

I am half-Dutch, which means I have a deep fondness for Reynaerd the Fox, a figure from medieval allegorical texts in Dutch, German and French sources. If you're a fan of fox-Robin in Disney's Robin Hood, you owe his sauciness to the film's original aim to adapt Reynard stories. Reynard is the ultimate anthropomorphised trickster and the stories usually show him tricking other animals, especially the wolf Isengrim, who happens to also be his uncle. Staying true to the grimness of most fables and fairy tales, their conflict is frequently a bloody and violent one. I am most familiar with the Middle Dutch Van den vos Reynaerde, probably written between 1257 and 1271 CE, which is both an entertaining tale of high-jinks and also a sharp critique of the class system. Now, while Audition for the Fox is in no way an adaptation of this Middle Dutch story, it still participates in the same tradition. The figure of T'sidaan is very reminiscent of Reynaert, but Audition itself also reminds me of the story in that it does provide some commentary on our society.

Nesi has the blood of gods in her and yet, somehow, she has managed to fail auditions for ninety-six of the Gods, also known as the Pillars of Heaven. If she fails the final three, she's out of luck. So Nesi makes a desperate gamble and decides to audition for T'sidaan, the Fox of Tricks. He accepts her gamble and sends her back in time, not just to any period, but to a time when her land was under the oppression of a neighbouring people, the Wolfhounds of Zemin. Although "present-day" Nesi, 300 years in the future, knows how this occupation ends, now she is in the midst of it and the outcome is no longer certain. Stuck in a labour camp, she only has a few weeks to learn the tricks of her chosen Pillar and save the future. I did really like Nesi as a main character and Cahill managed to make her development over less than 200 pages pretty believable. Nesi starts out feeling like a failure and, without being fully aware of it, she nonetheless grows into a capable and strong person. I also felt like the world was pretty well-developed for a novella; it is easy to believe there is more to the world just beyond the pages of this particular story. What I also really liked was how Nesi's story was interwoven with the stories of T'sidaan and the other Gods. In that way, Audition is both her story, but it is also a novella about the power of storytelling, of song, and of community in and of itself.

This is my first time reading anything by Martin Cahill, but it hopefully won't be the last. I really liked the whole world he created here, as well as his kindness towards his characters. While all of them, Nesi and T'sidaan go through difficult and horrifying things, Cahill never gets lost in that horror. There is beauty in the small things and Audition knows that and advocates for it. Like I mentioned above, it is a story about stories, about how powerful a story can be, and how kindness is, regardless of how cliche it sounds, powerful in its own right. I also think Cahill manages to find a good balance between showing the horror of being in a labour camp or being occupied, without letting it take over the tone of the novella. This might also be due to the fact that this feels more like a YA than an Adult fantasy, so certain elements get scaled down a little, but even for adult Fantasy readers Audition can be a great time! I did occasionally stumble over certain turns of phrases but this might just be part of Cahill's style and it never really interferred with my suspension of disbelief or enjoyment of the novella. I am keeping my fingers crossed Cahill will indeed, as promised in the Afterword, grace us with more of Nesi and T'sidaan in the future!

I give this novella...

4 Universes!

I had a lovely time with Audition for the Fox! Although I stumbled over the writing (very) occasionally, I thought Cahill created a beautiful world here and set up a beautiful story.