So Hope-Full It’s Overflowing: Audition For the Fox by Martin Cahill
Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Brown MC, major nonbinary character, sapphic secondary character, disabled secondary character
Published on: 16th September 2025
ISBN: 978-1-61696-445-0
Goodreads
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“Nimble, sly, and strange as the title character, Cahill has wrought a fine filigree of a tale—with a bold, uncompromising heart.” —Catherynne Valente, NYT Bestselling Author of The Fairyland Series
“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 Library at Hellebore
“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 Saint Death’s Daughter
To survive the challenge of a trickster god, a quick-witted acolyte rallies her ancestors with cunning subterfuge and outright rebellion.
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 loveable 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 ally with her besieged people and learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.
I received this book for free from the author, who is a friend, in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review – friend or not, I’d have shredded this if it were bad. But it turned out to be one of my faves of the year instead, so I didn’t have to!
Highlights~nonbinary trickster god
~gorgeous worldbuilding
~laugh in the face of fascists
~(survive)
~hopepunk af
It takes millions of years and impossible heats and pressures and so many different materials to create a jewel. And after that, there are endless hours of cutting, polishing, and designing and creating a setting for it. In the end, it’s a treasure that looks elegantly simple in your hand – but only because you can’t imagine everything that went into its creation.
Audition For The Fox is a jewel: a thousand complexities epitomized into a sharp, glittering radiance, each of its many facets flawlessly cut. It looks so (perfectly) simple – but only until you take a closer look, and what you see then will dazzle you.
Nesi is deeply sympathetic and immensely relatable; she’s a good kid who despite all her best intentions cannot stop messing up. Of the 100 Pillars – deities – in her people’s pantheon, she has been interviewed and tested by 96…all of whom have declined to claim her. It’s crushing, and none of the 3 remaining Pillars look like a good fit for her either. (We’ll come back to this, because the symbolism of those last 3 is important.)(And no, I didn’t mess up the math; there’s only 99 Pillars available, not the full 100, for good reason.) If none of the Pillars choose her, her life is basically over.
So she does something ill-advised and dramatic.
Nesi stood in the Temple of the Divine Embrace and not for the first time, had a panic attack about her future.
Who among us hasn’t been there? Nesi isn’t a blank slate we can all project ourselves onto – she’s a distinct character – but she is enough of an everywoman that we can all see ourselves in her. She’s young, she’s anxious, she’s desperate to find a place for herself, a path for herself. She wants to head out into the world, and can’t yet. She’s scared. Yes, she’s the granddaughter of a god, but that comes with a lot more downsides than upsides; in terms of superpowers, we’re not talking Hercules or Wonder Woman, here.
Nesi is not obviously special, and that is entirely the point. Because in getting thrown back into the past, Nesi has to face off against fascists, and Cahill’s entire thesis statement is that we do not, actually, need heroes to do that.
Or, alternatively: the kind of heroes we need, ANY of us can be.
Just remember. Life is a story. Stories are answers to questions you learn by living.
Nesi is sent backwards in time to the Occupation, when the Zeminis invaded the continent of Oranoya and set about subjugating everyone. It’s reminiscent of the Holocaust; the Zeminis rounded up Oranoyans into work camps, and Nesi has ended up at one that’s pretty famous in her time. The Zeminis are brutal and sadistic, and, with the signature arrogance of fascists everywhere, are very loud in informing the Oranoyans that this is all for their own good.
It’s Nesi’s job to inspire the captives to overthrow their prison-guards.
Not, critically, overthrow the entire Occupation. Nesi isn’t a chosen one; she’s not going to save the world – or in this case, the continent. But she does need to make sure this one rebellion happens, and is successful. Because it’s already happened, in her time.
If it doesn’t happen, the whole timeline could go very differently. For the much, much worse. (And what would that do to Nesi? Would she pop out of existence as the timeline auto-corrects her away? Quite possibly!)
The future is not a given. You must seize it or someone else will write it for you.”
Time-travel isn’t something I’m used to seeing within fantasy – it’s very much one of sci fi’s toys – but what I found most unique about Audition wasn’t the time-travel; it was the approach to rebellion, the philosophy of resistance. Nesi isn’t built for violence – doesn’t have the kind of magic that would let her take on the Zeminis directly – so instead of killing soldiers, she…works on killing the idea of them.
By making people laugh.
Fascism is stupid. It’s a lot of other things too – including deadly dangerous, too often – but it’s fundamentally an incredibly stupid philosophy. And it’s 100% correct to be horrified by it, and outraged by it. You should be both those things.
But we should also laugh in its fucking face. Because it is so fucking stupid. How stupid, to be obsessed with the genitalia of strangers, or believe blond Aryans are somehow better than everybody else, or think there’s a global Jewish conspiracy, or whatever nonsense the latest brand of fuckwit is spouting now. How pathetic, how absurd, yes we should despise them but we should also point and laugh at how fundamentally dumb they are.
Especially because being laughed at is, more than anything else, the thing fascists absolutely cannot stand. They all think they’re the heroes of a video game, or an Epic Fantasy, or something – they’re all LARPing being The Biggest And Baddest And Best – and when we laugh, we shred that delusion. Reveal the cloak billowing regally in the wind to be a ragged curtain, actually. The mighty sword is just a stick. The crown is made of tinfoil.
And they look completely ridiculous.
When we laugh at them, we’re not afraid. Laughter banishes fear. And so it’s an incredibly powerful, incredibly necessary weapon against fascism – it declaws the fascists (and makes them angry enough to make tactically unsound decisions) and makes it much, much easier for others to fight back. It’s always easier to fight when you’re not afraid, or at least less afraid. Laughter makes you realise your enemies are far from invincible, or all-powerful – which means they can be defeated.
Do you see?
The work I do is useless as the hammer, the knife, the roar. But it shines as the smirk, the whisper, the scissor, the mirror. Those in power often only ever see their opponents as worthy when those opponents wield a power similar to the kind they hold themselves; they don’t ever think to look for power in the forms they do not know. It is how I often humble and best both brethren and mortals. From gods to men, trickery levels us all.”
This is not quite the first time I’ve come across the idea of laughing at fascists being both powerful and important, but Audition made me get it, viscerally. The difference between understanding something intellectually and understanding it in your gut, your marrow, your teeth. And that would be more than enough of a foundation for any book – it’s a world-changing shift in perspective – but it’s actually far from the only thing Cahill is doing with this novella. Audition For The Fox is an exploration of the role of tricksters in mythology and culture and daily living; it’s something of an instruction manual for resisting fascism; it’s a thesis on how anybody can be a hero (without ever once setting off my inner cynic or sense of cringe); it’s a case study in the importance of non-traditional, non-glorious forms of resistance; it’s a beautiful paean to community, and especially to diverse community.
And – like the best short stories and novellas – every line of it, every image, every word is deliberate and full of layers and layers of meaning. Pause at any paragraph on any page, and think about it just a little, and there are implications for the worldbuilding, or a philisophical point being made, or another premise in one of the several manifestos Cahill is writing simultaneously – all without every sacrificing the quality of the story.
any slip-up before them could certainly result in eyeteeth meeting eye.
Let’s go back to the moment Nesi chooses to audition for the Fox god, T’sidaan. She has already auditioned for 96 of the 100 Pillars; there are only three left. (The 100th Pillar, remember, is not an option; you’ll have to read Audition to find out why.) These three are: Ghu’Eujo, the Lion of War; Qwi’linis, the Serpent of Assassination; and T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.
Think about this for a sec. Fantasy as a genre? Is really fond of the sort of heroes (or anti-heroes) who’d make great acolytes of War or Assassination. Those are the traditional kind of heroes; the expected kind. The big, flashy kinds. (Real-life assassins may not be flashy, but I think we can agree fantasy ones tend to be.) Hells, readers are fans of those kinds of heroes! For good reason: they tend to get exciting, interesting stories.
If Nesi were a hero – the kind of hero who comes to mind when we think the word – then she would go to the Lion or the Serpent. She certainly wouldn’t go to a trickster: since when can tricks save the day? Assassins may be ethically dodgy, but if you’re looking for heroes, tricksters are the ones we heap scorn on.
This is a tableau: Nesi, standing between Lion, Serpent, and Fox. Three choices. Three ways of being a hero; three ways of being, full-stop.
She chooses the Fox.
(Even though she doesn’t at all seem like someone who could belong to a trickster god. She’s flaily and anxious, not cool and quippy. She can’t possibly be suited to T’sidaan. This is not going to end well.)
There’s so much symbolism packed into this moment: Nesi turning away from the obvious, traditional, glorified paths. Choosing, specifically, a path she doesn’t seem suited for; she’s flaily and anxious, nothing like your typical suave, sneaky trickster. Deciding, thus, right then and there, that she can become somebody different; that she can embrace something wildly different from her current self – something many people can’t manage at all. It looks like – ‘weakness’ is the wrong word, and so is ‘cowardice’, but it looks like something negative, to turn away from the traditional heroics; I’m sure many acolytes of War and Assassination would be Unimpressed by those who can’t or won’t walk their paths. But it seems much braver to me to choose the path of the Trickster, which is perhaps much more dangerous when you stop and think about it – tricksters piss off everyone, challenge everything, and they do it without a warrior’s or assassin’s ability to defend themselves from those who want to stop or punish them. So what looks like some kind of weakness – flinching from War and Assassination rather than making an active choice – is anything but.
This moment is Cahill saying: this story is not going to take the obvious, traditional, glorified route. We are turning away from the conventional. (We are turning away from violence – more on this in a bit.) It turns the entire book into proof that anyone, even those who seem completely unsuited, can contribute – can turn the tide – can be a hero. (Which in turn is a reminder to everyone else to never dismiss anyone who wants to help, because the most unlikely-looking person in the world can surprise you, and become someone very different indeed.) It makes of Audition a kind of instruction manual in how to resist evil when you yourself are not capable (for whatever reason) of fighting back violently; when you don’t have the skill-sets of the Obviously and Extremely Badass, here’s what to do. Here’s what any of us can do.
I love it.
Listen well: you can’t trick someone from beyond the grave. I mean, you can, but I don’t advise it. I tell you this as I wish I had told another: survive, above all.
The question of violence in Audition is a little complicated. Tricksters are not, generally, violent, and T’sidaan and Nesi are no exception. Nesi isn’t built for violent resistance in any way, shape, or form, and it’s pretty clear that that’s all that Cahill meant – that this character, in this scenario, isn’t going to use violence for reasons that are specific to her. But I did think the novella came off as a little ‘violence is never the answer’, which is something I dislike these days. (It is so often the purview of the Global North, the white, the rich, the able-bodied; it is so often shoved down the throats of those who are suffering, are oppressed, are inconvenient.) I do think that was unintentional, though, because [View post to see spoiler] Which makes it easier to read as ‘violence is not the choice/option of these characters in this context’, rather than ‘violence is never the answer, ever’. The latter is a serious problem; the former is a relief. (Especially because I didn’t want to read a violent story; especially because I love Audition for what it is, and it would be something very different, if Nesi had gone and become an assassin instead!)
With violence not an option, Nesi’s rebellions are ones that are easy to dismiss from a Big Picture view: small kindnesses, small joys, small reliefs for the other prisoners. But these are the things that keep us human. Kindness, joy, relief are not small things, and they are even more important and powerful when things are dire. Nesi’s acts help bolster her people, help remind them that there are reasons to stay alive, that there is still goodness in the world, that – this one is perhaps especially important – the Zeminis are wrong.
Often before beating someone senseless, officers would say things like, “This is for your own damn good”, or, “Where would you be without us? Soft and useless, sitting in theaters and bookstores and coffee shops wasting your days!” insulted by a culture who cut their teeth on stanzas, not steel.
While the Zeminis are doing their utmost to convince their captives that their suffering is their own fault, that the Oranoyan way of life is both bad and to blame for current events, Nesi is right there being living proof that it’s just not so. She goes to war with despair, and that is critical, because those trapped in despair can’t resist, can’t make change. (This is why fascists work so hard to incite despair.)
I’ll admit, the strangest things happen around you, Nesi. The worst being that I don’t feel so sick to my stomach when I have even the littlest bit of hope some mornings. Stupid, I know.”
Nesi shook her head, the suddenness of the fire in her belly almost startling her as she said, “No! No, it’s not stupid, Una. It’s never stupid to hope. This is not forever. You’re going to get out of here. I promise.”
(I did read this as a critique of, or maybe counter to, the very loud opinion of some liberals that only big dramatic acts ‘count’ as resistance, that only they matter, and everyone who can’t take part in those acts should be despised. No, look: small, quiet resistance matters too. It maybe matters more in some ways, because without the kindnesses and joys and reliefs no one at all would have the strength to resist in the big dramatic ways. The resistance that is human connection is the foundation of everything; without that, there’s no hope, and no chance, for things to get better at all.)
Candle Sainted, those dedicants who were so beloved by fellow mortals, they had earned flames lit in their names.
And hi, I know I’ve been going on about Audition for ages already, but THE WORLDBUILDING! I can’t believe how much worldbuilding Cahill managed to work in to a novella, and I’m equally stunned at how incredibly beautiful this world he’s created is! The lines of longitude in this world are named after different Pillars; instead of fairytales, we have ‘clay and cloud’ fables; demons are so last century, here we have Dragons of Chaos; the god of speed is also the god of doctors because of course he is that makes so much sense! Just wait until you read the creation myth, which is so wonderfully unique and subversive, or the three stories we get of T’sidaan’s exploits with the Spider, the Stallion, and the Turtle! Every tiny detail had me flapping my arms and kicking my feet; even if I didn’t love Nesi and T’sidaan as characters – and excuse you, I very much DO – I would be begging for more books in this setting just to see more of this world!
her anxiety and panic kept floating to the surface, eating her thoughts like sharks in the deep.
I also need to take a second to mention how much I swooned for Cahill’s prose. I highlighted so many lines in my review copy; the ones I’ve quoted in this review are only a handful of my favourites. Even fairly plain prose wouldn’t have stopped me from enjoying this ridiculously beautiful little book – but the masterful way Cahill wields words elevated Audition to starry heights. More, I think the writing acted as another layer of storytelling, reinforcing the central tenets on a meta level – because Audition is very much about beauty; not in the traditional Fantasy way of crowns and silks and treasure, but the beauty of humanity, of love, of community. It’s not only that fascism is stupid, and evil; it’s also ugly, and that which resists it is beautiful, and I think that messaging wouldn’t have hit so hard with less lovely prose to emphasise it.
Beings who will know time and beauty, who will live and tell their own stories of themselves and each other, who will live and love and grow and in their ending return to us and tell us. Tell us their stories! And in their ending, we will tell them ours. Is that not the greatest gift we can give? The chance for others to tell their stories, too?
Audition For the Fox is so densely layered with delights and thought that it still amazes me that it all fits into a novella; Cahill distils what another author would need 300-odd pages to do down to its purest form, to the point that every word is bright, shimmering magic. This is a gloriously hopepunk, breathtakingly beautiful book that is exactly what so many of us need right now; a light in the dark, a rejection of despair, so hope-full it’s overflowing. I have reread so many passages so many times, and I suspect I will be doing so for years and years; it’s a book to hug to your heart, something genuinely special, inspiring in the truest sense of the word. The way it’s lingered with me since I read it, the solace and hope it’s given me over and over, the way in which I find another layer of meaning every time I go back to it… I can’t give it anything less than five stars.
I am, honestly, in awe, and so fucking happy it was written and published.
I love it. I think you will too.
Go preorder it AT ONCE, and then join me in campaigning Tachyon for sequels!
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