The tale of Maxan: is he a just spy, or is he now a rebel? This is a fascinating concept and I enjoyed the fantasy aspects of this world where human/animal hybrids choose their way: The Mind or The Monitors.

In general I do not favour the present-tense narrative and I did find it hard to follow the world-building; so many species and names were introduced so early and I found myself getting quite lost. I also found the chapters a bit too long. This would be a fabulous graphic novel. I hope the series continues.

Thank you to Inkshares and NetGalley for this audiobook ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

An interesting half human half animal species take on Characters are diverse and the story is fast enough paced to keep interest. I look forward to the next installment in the trilogy.

The premise of this novel sounded great, but I feel the overall execution was not done well. I felt no connections to the characters involved. DNF’ed at 40%.

An interesting fantasy premise that I haven't seen for a while -- reminds me of a more adult version of the Warriors series I read as a child. Unfortunately the animal characters just didn't do it for me. But the writing and plot is grand.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty interesting kicking off point for this Animal in Man series. The storyline is intriguing and the characters are very unique and worth getting attached to. I will say at times I was a little confused and while the storyline was action packed, it seemed very convoluted. A lot of information was thrown out at the reader in a short amount of time. I think as the book went on, the storyline cleaned up and made more sense, and did a good job leading into the second book. Worth a read.

Thank you to Joseph Asphahani and Inkshares for providing me with an Advanced Reading Copy.

Although I liked the concept and plot of this book, the writing didn't quite work for me personally. The world is immersive and the characters are well written. I didn't become fully invested in the story and so I felt quite detached. Overall a good book, but it didn't fully work for me.

A really solid book for what is the first book in the series. The writing was great for what I would call literary fantasy. The characters were compelling and although the differences between them (writing that makes them different animal species) was not apparent early in the book, it becomes clearer by the end. Often when reading books with non-human characters, authors have difficulty distinguishing the characters from typical human characters. I think Joseph Asphahani does a good, but not great job of doing this. I think it will get better the further along in the series.

The plot is compelling and leaves a lot of questions to be answered in the 2nd book.

Thank you netgalley, inkshares and the author for the ARC.