I put down my copy of Heckin’ Lewd from the same publisher and decided it was a fluke. It had to be. Inexperienced fiction editor given too much to do too soon. I walked into this one hopeful it would be much better.

A Fox in Shadow is a lesbian-focused fantasy novel set in the Shadowlands outside the Kavillian Empire. The setting is a pastiche of Rome and Celtic Europe pre-Caesar, cued by senators and elections and earthworks built by proud free folk with vaguely Welsh names. Cassie is a bright, scheming tool of her family’s ambitions who is “banished” from faux Rome to exploit a sex scandal her family orchestrated. She arrives in the hillforts of the unconquered Shadowlands as an envoy to the barbarian Lycanthi tribe and immediately locks horns with Arian, sister of King Gethryn of the Lycanthi. Arian is understandably unimpressed with the colonial officer, but Cassie senses that part of her disdain is located elsewhere. A spate of murders brings the women closer together, and the court intrigue spirals into war.

I am perturbed by the setting. The author hasn’t done much to differentiate the historical edge of empire from the fantasy edition. It feels like the author either wasn’t confident enough to work in a historical setting or didn’t want to bother doing the research. We genuinely don’t know a lot about the structures of Celtic Gaul or Iron Age Britain: it would have been very easy to set the Lycanthi’s matrilineal structure on the Batavii or the Catuvellani. The Kavillian empire is so obviously Rome that it’s just distracting.

As an aside: the colonized limes of an empire has some implications that the worldbuilding isn’t skilled enough to deal with. I’m not sure what to do with the fact that the author created on one side a utopic world without homophobia but with chattel slavery and endemic sexual abuse of said slaves by their masters. I’m not sure the author did the requisite thinking when they made the matrilineal colonized barbarian outlands culturally homophobic. This homophobia doesn’t seem to be expressed in terms harsher than made-up slurs until it suddenly derails a murder investigation.

My main difficulty with this book is that the writing itself is so mechanical. It’s riddled with cliches and a reluctance to show rather than tell. Characters explain plot points to each other over and over again. The plot chugs along competently and then stops dead for Arian to remonstrate with herself. Arian and Cassie don’t act like middle-aged mothers of children but like overbright teenagers trying to one-up each other. Their relationship comes together a little too quickly, as does the climax of the story. The violence (there is a rather graphic execution scene) imply this is a book for adults, but the vocabulary, the coyness about sex, and the general simplistic layout of the world and the subplots drop it down into the lower age range for YA.

I think this publisher is doing a good thing, looking for own voices authors. I just wish the publisher prioritized developing those own voices into readable talent. This book wasn’t offensive, or at least where it was it wasn’t thinking clearly rather than being outright bigoted, but it slides in and off the brain. Teens and young adults might enjoy this as a quick read, but I’d sooner point them towards Memoirs of Hadrian or The Eagle of the Ninth or Ruth Downie’s Medicus series. Or the album The Arcane Dominion by Eluveitie. There’s a very good book in here, but it needed more coaxing to come out in full.

Three stars.

Thank you to Bold Strokes Books for allowing me to read a copy for review.