Book Review: The Taken by Inbali Iserles (Foxcraft #1)

 

I have had this book on my to-read shelf of Goodreads for literal years, yet never actually bought the book for whatever reason. I knew that this trilogy was one I definitely wanted in paperback and not as an ebook, however with many Dutch webstores and real-life bookstores for whatever reason being unable to order the book I kept having to wait. 

Until now, since I now finally own books one and two and hopefully get to order book three soon. Let's have a look at Isla's adventure. Spoilers ahead.

Isla is a young fox living in the Big Snarl, a human city, together with her grandmother, mother, father and her brother Pirie. However, one day her family goes missing and a skulk of villainous foxes is pursuing her. Isla, joined by another fox named Siffrin, sets out on a quest to locate her family all the while fleeing the evil skulk, while Siffrin lets her in on the secrets of a magical power unique to foxes known as Foxcraft.

While I was really enthusiastic going into this one, I will say that I didn't like it as much as I expected to. But, honestly, I think that's on me for building up the excitement all these years about getting to read a fantasy xenofiction from a fox's POV. Those elements inherently make me interested in a book, but that of course doesn't mean that the execution will be perfect. That said, this book was still good!

What I like the most about the book is the lore and world-building. It's all still pretty vague so far, but what we do know definitely sparks my interest. We know that all canines call themselves "children of Canista" and each species (dog, coyote, fox and wolf) have an unique culture. The foxes also have interesting takes on life (such as not trusting others outside of family or having friends because foxes tend to be solitary) and there's a bigger group of foxes known as the Elders that is very important in fox society. They also seem to be the keepers of Foxcraft.

As for the titular Foxcraft itself, it's this very interesting magic system. It's not hard magic, but there's definitely some rules to it. The basic powers Isla has is slimmering (briefly turning invisible, doesn't work on everyone) and karakking (imitating the noises of other animals). There's also wa'akkir, shapeshifting, which Siffrin is very adept at. The powers shown so far I thought were really interesting and it seems that there's going to be more of them shown in future books as we meet the Elders and presumably Isla learns to master them more, as she's still at a novice level in this book. There's also an evil mysterious creature known as "the Mage", who seems to be our main villain for the trilogy and practices a darker form of magic, subjecting other foxes to his will.

The characters are...mixed. I don't think they're bad, but the thing is that in this entire book we pretty much have only two major characters we follow: Isla and Siffrin. Any characters outside of them barely show up, except maybe Karka who is the leader of the skulk of evil foxes (the Taken). And with us having only two major characters and me connecting to neither one of them in particular, it leaves something to be desired. Neither are badly written or bland, I just didn't vibe too much with either character. I do like both, but I didn't love them or anything. 

Isla is a young and somewhat ignorant young vixen who is very determined to save her brother, and I admire that. Siffrin is a somewhat older fox, messenger of the Elders and pretty adept in Foxcraft. He's a bit more cynical than Isla and has a more pessimistic outlook on life, but in the end the two bond decently despite being at odds with one another at first. And I like them fine, but I just didn't find either one of them to be that interesting. Siffrin is the more interesting of the two, with him having once been a part of the Taken before being able to escape, but still, I didn't vibe too much with either character, so the fact that we spend nearly the entire book with only them felt a bit disappointing to me. 

I wanted to get to know more about Karka, Tarr and especially Isla's brother Pirie, who literally everyone in this book (Isla, Siffrin and the Elders and the Taken) is after. We don't even really know why they want Pirie at this point, but I'm going to assume it is because his Foxcraft is pretty strong for his age and/or for his unusually colored pelt. I really liked him in the brief instances we saw him and I thought he was honestly just more interesting because of everyone who is after him and I liked him more in his brief appearances. He was cute and likable, I liked his interactions with his family and Isla. So the main characters aren't bad or bland by any means, just so far not my personal preference and I wanted to spend a little more time getting to know our side characters.

Another distracting thing I spotted was that certain flashbacks are being written in the exact same tense as the main story, making me have to do a double take when I wasn't paying attention for half a second because suddenly we were back at Isla's family's den with Pirie and Greatma. I'd have written those in a different tense if I were the author to make this less distracting.

That aside, the story was well-written and well-paced. I didn't particularly enjoy the setting of a big dirty busy city (I tend to just not like large city settings, unless abandoned), but luckily that seems to be solved as Isla and Siffrin do leave it behind eventually. For now I'm really curious to read the next book and learn more about the Elders, Foxcraft, the Mage and just why exactly everyone wants to get their paws on Pirie.

Rating: 3.5/5