Martin Cahill's Audition for the Fox is a brief, lyrical story about the power that exists where the powerful never think to look and fighting for justice even when it seems hopeless.
After 96 auditions where she failed to gain the patronage of one of the 99 Pillars of Heaven, Nesi is desperate enough to turn to the trickster god, T'sidaan the Fox. The Fox sends their would-be acolyte 300 years into the past, during an era of the brutal Zeminis occupation of Nesi's homeland, Oranoya, and tasks her with igniting the spark of revolution. Nesi realizes this will not be an easy feat when she awakes to a life of harsh labor in a fortress guarded by the Wolfhounds of Zemin, worshippers of the banished Pillar, the Wolf of the Hunt. As she learns about the horrors of her homeland's past, the kindness her fellow Oranoyans hold onto in spite of everything, and the role of trickery in the face of brute force, Nesi gains the courage to set her country on its path to freedom and prove herself worthy of T'sidaan's patronage.
Written in the style of a folktale and interspersed with legends told by characters within the story, Audition for the Fox is an exquisite tribute to ordinary people who act because "someone has to do something, and if [they're] not that someone, nothing will happen and nothing will get better." Nesi's and T'sidaan's narratives both include heart-wrenchingly sad moments, but joy also abounds in this short novel. --Dainy Bernstein, freelance reviewer