Review – These Prisoning Hills

Posted August 19, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

These Prisoning Hills, Christopher Rowe

I’m going to just admit it: I didn’t really get this one. There’s a history and a world built up here that I feel I only half-understood, from the politics to the geography to the relationships between people and things. There’s a lot of atmosphere to it, and I found it intriguing, but at the same time the narrative jumps around so much — and often without a logical link between the jumps — that I just… didn’t follow.

I feel like I missed something, some vital context that would make it all make a lot more sense. I grasped some of the basic stuff (Athena Parthenus is a massive AI that tried to take over the world and involved controlling people somehow; there’s heavy body modification in the opposing side as well), but… I couldn’t fit it all together, and figure out the characters’ place in it. I wonder if there are short stories in this world or something? Or a previous book?

Anyway, I can’t personally recommend it, though I see that others enjoyed it a lot. Whatever the key to it is, I missed it.

Rating: 2/5

Tags: book reviews, books, Christopher Rowe

Review – The Navigating Fox

Posted May 10, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

The Navigating Fox, Christopher Rowe

Received to review via Netgalley

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.