I was given this book for free as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Spoilers ahead!
We meet Ashiy, a young red fox who was raised by his elven godmother. When one day he gets involved with some sketchy business with humans, Ashiy's world soon thereafter turns upside down. He goes on a journey with several characters. On this adventure he'll learn more about himself, and it all comes together in a large climax where Ashiy and his friends might just end up saving the day.
This was a fun and adventurous fantasy to read. I don't read too many furry/anthro xenofictions (most of them I read have the animals on four legs and act slightly more natural), so this was a nice change of pace in the xenofiction genre.
The book had a lot of good elements about it that I enjoyed. This includes the interesting world-building and the many settings the reader really gets a feel for. Sometimes I truly felt like I was in Whim's Haven, it felt like a real and lived-in town.
The journey itself was also interesting and I liked how some secrets were uncovered bit by bit throughout it. No doubt future installments will have more secrets and revelations up their sleeves, but for now we're given satisfactory enough answers to the main question this book poses: who is Ashiy and where does he come from, and what really happened to his parents? Who were they? And what's up with Ceilia and her backstory? Who is Dusklight exactly? It's all handled in a satisfactory way while leaving room for more to be explored.
I also greatly enjoyed the colorful cast of characters. This is not a book with only anthropomorphic animals, there's also other inhabitants of this world such as humans, elves and trolls. We meet a few of these up close, and the characters overall I consider well-written and enjoyable, with a few rotten apples you love to hate throughout. My personal favorite character was Ziliac, his friendship with Frelik and eventually Ashiy was just super nice to read.
Ashiy himself is also an interesting enough protagonist, however I do think he's pretty standard as far as fantasy protagonists go. He is your do-gooding, heroic yet somewhat impulsive protagonist and while he is interesting enough, I do think he could've had maybe just a tad more to him. His character is fine and does grow a bit throughout the story, but also not a whole lot. He's pretty much good and heroic from the start and his development is more so in his connection to the characters around him (such as his growing relationships with the rangers and Ziliac, and his souring relationship with Eckner near the end) than Ashiy really growing a lot personality-wise. But since this is the first book in the series I won't hold that against it too much. I just think he could've been a tad more interesting as a protagonist even if he is by no means a bad one.
Overall this was a good first installment though! When the future installments are published I might give them a look as well.
Rating: 4/5
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