Maybe it’s because you’re the only talking fox in the world.
Title:
The Navigating Fox by Christopher Rowe
Plot: A talking fox tries to make good after a disastrous expedition to Hell.
Good For: Oddball Syndrome, Loneliness, Hopelessness, Whoops, my bad.
Quintus Sha’al has a problem. He lost some people in Hell and is being tried for treason. He’s also the only talking fox in the world. If that wasn’t suspect enough, he’s also the only creature who can navigate the silver roads, the magic paths outside of time and space.
It’s been lonely for Quintus. As the only ‘knowledgeable’ fox, he can’t relate to others of his own kind, and the talking beasts and humans who rule Aquacolonia find his existence suspicious and probably illegal. So he made a deal with a shady priest to find out how and why he came to be. What could go wrong?
Along the way he meets Walks Along Woman, a talking buffalo, and a group of animals and humans who live outside of ‘civilized society’ in a traveling herd. Here Rowe explores a delightful possibility: What if the center of power in a group was always changing, had to change by design? What if who had the power to speak was something all of us shared?
I loved this book for its inventiveness, the mystery within a mystery within a mystery that left me with more questions than answers. Who are we? How did we become the way we are? Maybe the answer to that question can’t be given, only lived. It’s a silver road each of us has to navigate on our own.
