An entertaining short read with a variety of interesting characters, both humans and knowledgeable animals. Their dynamic during the expedition to hell(!) was tense the entire time as everyone held their cards close to their chest, unexpectedly wrapping the story with a bit of mystery. The bison were definitely a favorite of mine; Walks With Woman is simply amazing and I could read a story focused solely on her.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Tor Publishing Group for an advance copy of this fantasy novella dealing with the only known navigating fox, the roads he can travel, the sights he has seen, and the many bargains a crafty fox has to make to find out out he is.

The only known navigating fox has found himself in quite a pickle. As a "knowledgeable animal" the fox is able to do many extraordinary things and one of his his gifts is being able to travel roads that allow a cutting of travel times, a gift few others have. At least the fox thought. However this cleaver fox is learning much about the world he didn't know, even as he tries to recover from mistakes made on his last expedition. To redeem himself, and learn more about his past, our fox has agreed to bring motley crew to the last place a fox wants to go, though for knowledge and redemption, this fox has no choice. Christopher Rowe, author and dare I say fableist has in the story The Navigating Fox created a rich world that is open to discovery, from a fox who can find path, to readers who are looking for something new and fascinating.

Quintus Shu'al is the only navigating fox that is known, something that works as both a gift and curse. The land is full of "knowledgeable animals", those who have been given the gift of speech, and in many ways power and leadership rules, however Quintus is the only fox that he knows of with such a gift. Quintus can also find the magic roads that make travel for people shorter, tunnels through the land, that can take a person anywhere, if they are properly guided. Quintus has suffered a blow both physically and socially in that his last expedition was completely lost, an expedition that is turns out was to help the Empresses and her mysterious malady. Quintus is about to lose his ability to lead expeditions when he is saved by the person who sent him on his last expedition, High Priest Scipio Aemilanus, who promises to share the secrets of Quintus' past with him, if he where to lead an expedition to the Gates of Hell. Having no choice, Quintus agrees to it, and joined by a pair of racoon cartographers, a a bison ambassador Walks Along Woman, and the sister of one of the expedition leaders that Quintus lost, who will not let Quintus forget. The paths are far danger than he knows, and Hell might even be safer for a cleaver fox like Quintus.

For a novella there is a lot going on in this book, which is great as it lacks the bloat and the sheer weight of some of these other fantasy series that fill the shelves. Rowe creates a rich world, based on Roman principles, set in a different kind of land, what seems like North America, with animals who can talk, and out think many of the humans. Rowe lets the story tell itself, not dumping info, or telling readers to look at this appendix to get this meaning, or that meaning. This is pure storytelling by a very gifted fabulist who tells a compelling story, that is complete, and yet opens a whole world for examination. The writing is very good, almost poetic in some ways, with rich descriptions and inner thoughts for Quintus. There are some lines that are just devastating in what they say and convey, giving this book a lot of moral heft. Yet it moves along well, though there is a little time jumping, but readers won't have a problem following along. A really good fantasy story, with much to tell, and a very big world left to explore.

Recommended for fantasy fans, comic book readers and role playing game fans. The way that Rowe sets up the world, the story and the characters could teach a lot of aspiring game developers how to develop their story, and keep players interested with key information, not dumping on characters a lot of words. I look forward to more in this series.

[4.25 of 5] THE NAVIGATING FOX by Christopher Rowe is unlike anything I've read before. It certainly fits the broad bill of speculative fiction by incorporating talking animals ("knowledgeable creatures") and an expedition to the gates of Hell. It's also a rather sharp and quick-witted read as told from the point of view of Quintus Shu'al, the navigating fox. And it reminds me slightly of some of the 1990s fantasy classics like His Dark Materials and SABRIEL, perhaps because of the talking animals.

However, THE NAVIGATING FOX definitely holds its own as a tightly-packed novella of 160 pages. Aside from Quintus, several other characters receive notable page time: Octavia Delphina, Citizen and Visiting Scholar; Holy Scipio Aemilanus; Walks Along Woman, a knowledeable bison and credentialed ambassador; and Loci and Foci, twin knowledgeable raccoons who appreciate mischief. I love how Rowe smartly builds the world for the reader, introduction by introduction. It's through this type of exposition the reader learns that the setting echoes ancient Roman colonization. Instead of western Europe, though, it's in North America.

There is quite a bit of commentary the deeper the reader gets into the story, though its incorporation is, for the most part, relatively subtle. There is, of course, a running colonialism theme throughout given the setting. The characters also discuss what amounts to ethnocentrism. Or, an evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions stemming from one's own culture. Thus, it is wise not to generalize a culture that differs from one's own. I found these conversations to be quite interesting, particularly with respect to the use of different words for a similar meaning.

Naturally, there is also a quip or two about religion. Additionally, without spoiling the reading experience, THE NAVIGATING FOX highlights the gatekeeping of knowledge to animals. After all, knowledge is power. It's possible that the animals might be metaphors for different races and classes, which determines the receipt of knowledge. However, it's possible I may (or may not) be inferring too deeply into the story.

In short, THE NAVIGATING FOX is a smartly told tale that incorporates colonialism, ethnocentrism, and a dash of existentialism. This book is perfect for someone looking for speculative fiction with a more academic, though not dry, vibe.

[This review will be posted on July 31 on my blog at https://aliteraryescape.com/2023/07/31/arc-review-the-navigating-fox-by-christopher-rowe/]

This short and sweet novella gives readers a glimpse into a new world of magical realism, full of enlightened animals and their 'voiceless' kin living alongside humans. Quintus is the only such fox, and has a unique role as a guide to those who travel the magical silver roads.

The only survivor of an expedition to the gates of hell, he is unwillingly roped into leading a second expedition by a spiritual leader whose aim is to close the gates forever, and in exchange he will reveal Quintus' origin, which is unknown to him and the one thing he desires.

I loved every second of this! It reminded me of some of my favorite sci-fi fantasy tales. The writing is somewhat awkwardly styled on very rare occasions, but otherwise enchanting. I sincerely hope to see more out of this world.

I thought this was really unique, and I did like the world building of the story a lot. The characters were okay, but I think my biggest issue was that the prose was a bit dense? Like it wasn't quite purple prose, but it was a bit hard to stay engaged in a bit hard to really get immersed into. Overall, this was a quick speculative fictional novella, and I like this enough that I would definitely check out more from this author!

While I love the cover I just couldn’t get into this. I’m a total mood reader so it could be that this just wasn’t what I was looking for at the time.

Interesting, unusual, enjoyable and well executed.

In an alternate version of our world, a form of the Roman Empire has colonized part of North America (it did take me a while to figure out that the action was taking place on that continent and not in Europe), but the rest of the continent is still in the hands of its indigenous people. That's not the original bit. The original bit is that someone (possibly not the person credited by legend) has figured out an alchemical process which makes non-human animals "knowledgeable" - sentient, in other words.

The Navigating Fox is such a person. The adjective used for a knowledgeable creature differs depending on the species; for a fox, apparently it's "navigating," though since he is the only knowledgeable fox perhaps it isn't. He can guide people on a system of mysterious paths that take them between places more quickly than would otherwise be the case - nobody knows how.

A lot of things are not clear-cut, in a good way, and most of the major characters believe at least one thing that turns out to be significantly untrue about the way the world works and the intentions, motivations, knowledge and actions of other characters. The story opens with the fox, in a Tom and Huck's funeral moment, secretly attending a procedure to throw him out of the Explorers' Sodality on the basis that he is lying about the existence of the paths (but really because his accuser's sister was on his last expedition, the one from which only he returned). From there, we get two narrative threads. The main thread is a second expedition, commissioned by a senior priest, ostensibly to close the gates of hell and end death; the secondary thread consists of several chapters detailing how the first expedition unfolded.

While short, it packs in plenty of worldbuilding without any infodumping, plenty of character development without long passages of introspection, and a surprising amount of twisty plot. It takes a very capable author to pull off that kind of concise writing; the pre-release version I got via Netgalley is also very clean from a copy editing point of view, barring a few minor typing errors. It's a solid piece of writing, and gets an unhesitating recommendation from me.

3.5.

Really unique and interesting worldbuilding, but a little dense for my tastes. I had a fun time with this novella and it went by quickly! I really appreciate speculative fiction that pushes boundaries and tries new things, but in this case I couldn't really fall into the story or writing style.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The only Navigating Fox has to try to repair his reputation after letting the previous group he navigate for, die.

This was a very interesting read and at some points it was quite hard to keep track of everything with the new terms and names, but overall it was enjoyable and a quick read. I enjoyed learning about the other various Talking Animals and how others perceive non-talking animals was intriguing.

In the end I would call it an entertaining story, but not one that I would necessarily reread.

This book was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. The first chapter or two I wasn’t even sure if I’d finish it, then I got very invested. The ending though rubbed me the wrong way. I just felt like it was extremely rushed and made me feel like there wasn’t really a point to the whole book. Maybe I just didn’t “get” this but there was so much unanswered and unresolved that I just ended up feeling very meh about the whole thing. I loved the premise and the world and would’ve loved to know more about all of it.

I’ve got such a complicated relationship with this book!

The Navigating Fox is wonderful. It’s a whimsical story set in a fascinating world full of humans and animals, some of whom have been given sentience, separating them into the Voiceless and the Knowledgeable. Our protagonist is the only Knowledgeable Fox, and is working with a priest to try and find the answers to his creation while leading an expedition to the gates of hell.

And that’s just the barest bones of the story, which brings us to why I ended up scoring it so low; this novella is just too short for the world it’s trying to establish. The author seemed excited to create a whole new vocabulary for the world, which made the first chapter terribly overwhelming. I think this is something that will fall to the wayside if this ends up a series (it seems set up to be) but I really had to keep my score fair despite how much I ended up enjoying it.

Still, a wonderful story, and I’ll definitely be suggesting it to customers!

(Thank you to the publisher for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.)

4.5 of 5 stars

The Navigating Fox was a joy to read. Each page is packed with well-developed world-building, compelling characters, humor, and mystery. I found it remarkable that so much excitement was packed into a one-session novella, and I hope to see many more stories set in this world.

The setting leans on Roman history for its naming conventions and overall aesthetic. In this world, the animals are divided into two categories. The gifted animals are “knowledgeable,” self-aware and able to communicate with spoken language. They have been bestowed the gift of high intelligence. The rest of the non-knowledgeable animals are referred to as “voiceless,” and they consist of traditional animal intelligence. What makes some animals knowledgeable? This is but one of many interesting questions raised during this story.

Quintus, our narrator, is a fox – and he’s the only knowledgeable fox in the world. He is a navigator, and helps expeditions travel and explore using hidden paths. We join Quintus after he returns from a first, tragic journey. But he is soon pressed into duty for a second expedition, with a terrifying goal. The story alternates chapters between past (first expedition) and present (second expedition), while Quintus aims to discover important secrets about his past along the way.

There is a wonderful set of characters in the story, and I quickly grew attached to several of them. Rowe injects lifelike personality into both his human and animal characters, while addressing issues of morality and purpose.

There’s so much going on in this highly entertaining world that I would be shocked if there aren’t more novellas planned in this setting. The Navigating Fox is a rich and colorful story, with fun characters and intriguing plot lines, and I am already hungry for the follow-up.

This ended up not being the book for me. There's a lot good in this book: the worldbuilding is fantastic and extensive (so much so that not all of it cant fit in such a short story), the setting is unique, and the characters are fairly interesting. Where I got lost was in the say the plot jumps around and switches povs between the current and past expeditions. I get why the story was told that way, but it made it hard to me to really follow what was going on. The narration is also a little dry, though i'd attribute that more to the character's personality than anything. Despite being short, I felt like the story dragged on, and found myself more interested in other worldbuilding elements not relevant to the plot. While I did not personally enjoy it, there's a lot to love in this book, and those that love this type of story will love this one as well.

'The Navigating Fox' is an intriguing novella about a fox on a journey to close the gates of hell. Part fable, part quest, I enjoyed the coexistence of the animals and humans and ancient magic all melding together to create a fascinating story with unique worldbuilding.

Thank you Netgalley and TOR for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Witty and imaginative with a surprising melancholy streak. I could have read a much longer book in this vein!

I had a difficult time getting into the story due to the narrative distance. That said, it was lovely and well written. I felt like it could have been longer. I felt like some things within the world and the characters were underdeveloped. The animals’ names were unusual (Scipio, Quintus, etc.) and kind of made me forget at points that it was a story about animals, and I think it would have been interesting to see unnamed animals instead that kept us more firmly in the animal world.

I don’t think I’ve read an animal protagonist since elementary school, so that was sort of fun.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for the ARC.

A delightful novella about the only navigating fox, Quintus, and two of his journeys. I would have liked to see this story longer and more fleshed out for the characters and the world, but we can’t have everything. This was blurbed as Redwall for adults and I would agree with that, except that we don’t get the lush descriptions of food lol. We do get a story that has talking animals and has that cozy adjacent feeling that the Redwall series has. Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC!

Delightful worldbuilding in this book! You just can't go wrong with talking animals, and there are so many juicy political and social details that crop up almost immediately to draw me in--about "knowledgable" and "voiceless" animals, about humans, about the places they live and the powers that govern those places. And the characters! I adored the narrator, Quintus, immediately. Equally delightful were the twin raccoons cartographers, and the stately bison ambassador Walks Along Woman, and the human sisters we meet split between the present and a flashback, and the extremely sus holy man. What a great and strange assortment for an adventure.

I wanted answers for Quintus as badly as he wanted them; I thrilled with the other travelers as they moved along the mysterious Silver Roads; I was intrigued by the stated mission of finding and closing the gates of Hell in order to save the ailing Empress. The travel through the territory of the Great Northern Membership was also fascinating, a vast-feeling and varied collection of indigenous nations that I honestly wish the story had spent more time in.

That was really the only downside of all the exciting worldbuilding and compelling characters--this felt like it should have been a longer book. Maybe it's going to be a series--I would love to read more--but as a story in and of itself, it started off so strong, and then began to feel rushed, introducing questions and concepts that it didn't have time to address again, and dropping characters very quickly in order to move the plot along. I reread the penultimate chapter several times trying to follow what was happening at the climax, and kept coming away with a few too many questions to be satisfied. I don't mind some things being left unanswered, nor do I mind an ambiguous ending, but there were just so many things that didn't get as much attention as I wanted them to!

That said, the style and the setting and the characters are all so charming, it was still a really good read. If there are future adventures to come, I will happily read those too!

This was... *not*... what I expected it to be. The idea behind it is great!
But I found the writing style very grating. I loved the image of humans and animals coexisting in the story, but that's all I can say I really liked. Just not the book for me, I suppose.
But that cover??? Gorgeous!👏🏻

The Navigating Fox by Christopher Rowe is a wonderfully weird fable that whisks you away to a world reminiscent of the Roman Empire but studded with alchemy, talking animals, extinct beasts, and an ancient magic that would make Studio Ghibli proud. 

The world Rowe creates is achingly rich and subtly bizarre, a still pond that runs deep.  Quintus, the sole navigating fox and our narrator, is assigned a redemptive mission after the disastrous failure of his last expedition.  He is a quick mind, a gracious soul, and a skilled navigator as he guides his latest crew and the reader through his tale. 
I loved that the plot moved at a quick pace but didn’t lose any quality.  People who find themselves too busy to keep up with a multi-book series or daunted by the size of a large novel will find the Navigating Fox fully satisfying despite its petite size.  A sort of tapas of storytelling with succulent bites of characters, world building, language, and plot twists.

Rowe deftly touches on themes of identity, purpose, and colonisation with a delicate yet powerful brush. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor publishing for a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.  I feel as if I’ve been welcomed to a warm camp fire tale that has left me full of wonder.