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.

Wow! Why a wild ride this book is! Being the only one of your kind brings so many added pressures. The worlds only navigating fox has made a few mistakes and has one last chance to redeem himself. The next expedition is to the gates of hell. The cast of characters in this book are amazing and so creative!

I started The Navigating Fox unsure about where the book could and would go. I enjoyed it so much that now I can only think it didn't go far enough! It was very good, with a main character that I adored. I wish the book was the length of a full-fledged saga. Quintus' questions are now my questions and I need answers!

Thank you to Tor and Netgalley for yhe opportunity to read The Navigating Fox in exchange for a non-biased review.

A navigating fox who is on a journey to close the gates of hell. This was such a unique read, its part fable, part quest, and just a very beautiful world that the author creates for such a short novella. Quintus Shu’al is the world’s only navigating fox, he can talk and travel throughout the world. He is however, in disgrace after guiding an expedition that lead to no survivors except for him. Now, a year later, he has the opportunity to redeem himself and that is by going on another expedition to the gates of Hell..... should be fun right?

*Thanks Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group, Tordotcom for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

I really enjoyed The Navigating Fox by Christopher Rowe!
It was beautifully written and i really liked the world building.
I'm now really hoping there will be a sequel!
I definitely highly recommend this book!
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed The Navigating Fox, but I find myself not sure what to write about it. Let’s try to start at the beginning: this is a world where “voiceless” animals like the ones we know can be given human-like intelligence and voices. Quintus Shu’al is a navigating fox, the only one of his kind (at least, as far as we know or he knows). As the book opens, he’s being investigated for his part in the loss of a whole expedition he promised to guide to find a remedy for the Empress’ sickness.

It quickly becomes apparent that things aren’t what they seem, and that there’s a lot of scheming going on by various different parties, leading to Quintus guiding a whole cavalcade to the end of the world to close the gates of Hell (apparently).

The story runs two threads in parallel: the earlier journey, with the lost expedition, and the later journey to the gates of Hell. As those threads converge, we get to see more of the world — though there’d still be plenty more to learn if there were to be a follow-up, because it’s a pretty fascinating setting.

Despite the quirkiness of the idea of a book with talking animals, it’s not quirky in execution (for the most part, at least). It’s treated seriously, without taking itself too seriously, if you see what I mean.

I bloody well hope this story has a sequel, because it hit all the right notes for me, and I loved it.

My favourite books are those that have beautiful literary prose, but more interesting worlds and plots. This certainly did all of that, with really lovely writing throughout. The world it built was vaguely recognisable as an echo of our own geographically, with a Rome-like empire at its centre and a colony city (somewhat like our world's Carthage, maybe) as the starting setting. The key difference, of course, is that some proportion of animals are granted thought and speech by alchemy, though apparently not generally foxes. I really notice if a world imagines a fundamental difference from ours but then doesn't think of the ramifications, and I was pleased to find that this was not the case here, with logistics of a many-species society thought through. I loved that different species and people of different human cultures thought about the world differently, and that our narrator's mind felt properly different.

On top of that fantastic worldbuilding is a plot designed to get at the mysteries of the world and of our narrator. Quintus, alone among anyone he has met, can walk the Silver Roads, a set of paths that exist outside normal space and time, and he has been hired to walk those paths to the gates of hell. We get to explore the mysteries inherent to all of that in a somewhat non-linear narrative, and enough questions remain that I'm hoping Rowe is intending to write more of these. I know I will certainly read them.