A decidedly odd and mysterious novel with an interesting framing device, 381 is a ponderous journey with an entrancing point of view.

It’s hard to really classify this book - it’s sci-fi, but it’s unclear whether it’s post-apocalyptic, set far in the future, or set on another world. We spend most of the time following Farily on her quest, with Rowena’s journey being carried by the footnotes for the most part.

I can understand if people aren’t as into it as me, though - it’s rather meandering, the purpose isn’t very clear, and while things happen, it’s not an action-packed book. I found it a meditative, entrancing journey. I love a story where you’re not really sure what is going on, that leans into its weirdness.

I’m going to talk about something that’s not really a spoiler but is also an integral part of the story that I absolutely loved, and that’s the POV. It shifts between first, second, and third, and the swapping is based on things that happen in the novel. We’re following the same character, but certain waypoints cause the POV to shift. In this way, we are reminded that the story we are reading is a story that Rowena has found and is reading. In this way, we’re led to question: what is this story? Is it a work-in-progress where the writer hasn’t decided on a pov and was potentially going to modify it to one later? Is it a finished, published novel? What are the POV shifts meant to signify in terms of our understanding of the journey and Fairly’s character?

Moving to Fairly, one of the other barriers to entry in this novel is that she isn’t very likable. She’s rather bland, and while she isn’t afraid to strike out on her own, there is a particular scene where she does something I found rather offputting. My opinions about her didn’t really change over the course of the book, but I found her a fine person to follow - in a sense, I think she’s rather bland because she’s meant to be the purveyor of the journey more than a character study.

The world is the most interesting thing. I’m very fond of open-world games like Fallout and Skyrim, where you can just wander around wherever you want and discover the odd things along the way. This book felt a bit like that - you know weird things are coming, and there’s an anticipation of not knowing what’s going to show up next that made it so I couldn't put it down.

There are also other little mysteries that make the novel fun. What are the Cha? What is 381? Who made the horned road?

Overall, this was a great book to start off the new year with, as it was intriguing, contemplative, and unique.

This is a rather unique story for sci-fi -- all about internal journeys rather than an external plot. I'm a fairly plot-based reader, so this wasn't always super enjoyable for me, but that's personal preference. The novel contains two storylines, and one of them worked better for me than the other.

In the January of 2314, Rowena Savalas, a curator tasked with managing the extensive archives of the primitive internet from the twenty-first century, stumbles upon a captivating story posted in the summer of 2024. Intrigued, she becomes entangled in the enigma of the narrative: Is it a genuine autobiography, a work of fantasy, or perhaps an elaborate fraud? The recurring number 381 adds another layer of mystery to the tale.

The story introduces Fairly, the protagonist, as she embarks on the Horned Road—a rite of passage for the youth in her village. Pursued relentlessly by the mysterious "breathing man," Fairly's journey challenges everything she thought she knew about her world. As Rowena follows this quest, she begins to question her own life choices. What was once a predictable existence centered around curation transforms into a narrative of exploration, adventure, and unexpected love.

In the convergence of both women's stories, as they approach their respective conclusions, Rowena realizes a profound truth: the veracity of the story matters less than the essence of the journey itself. Whether the narrative is rooted in reality or not, akin to the Horned Road quest, it is the path taken that holds the true significance.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

2.5 stars

As I’’d started reading this, I’d forgotten the synopsis and so for a little while the story felt very sci-fi horror-esque, with the very plain language and vague unfamiliar world.

Once I refreshed myself of the synopsis, I still couldn’t understand the plot and message too well - the changing point of views, and the separate timeframes with accompanying footnotes was interesting (and reminded me of Pale Fire, which I’ve also struggled to read).

There were points at which I was really invested and enjoyed the story, but I think overall the style of story and lack of tangible details and meaning wasn’t for me.

2.5

Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for providing me with the e-arc of this book.

It was quite the journey, reading this story. It was confusing at times, quite a lot, and this is probably why I wouldn’t rate this book higher than I did. With that said it is very well written, the style is easy to follow and fast paced. After the 50% I became more engaged in the story and I overall think the book got better little by little.
I still cannot make sense of a lot of things, this bothers me a bit because I like when everything falls into places like a puzzle, but I understand this is not exactly the meaning of the book.
It is for sure an unusual sci-fi, if you are up for something different and want to evade reality for a little while, I think this is a good read for you.

The dual timeline and storyline was a bit chaotic in my opinion.

P.S. I grew quite fond of the breathing man, just me?

Three eight one is a science fiction fantasy read that follows two storylines, one from 2024 and another from the future.
Rowena is the curator of the archive of the twenty-first century's internet who stumbles across a story posted in the summer of 2024.
This story/Fairly's quest (Fairly was a villager from 2024) leads Rowena to question her own choices and embark on a life of exploration, adventure, and love. It’s a bit of an odd one but a thought provoking read nonetheless.

As a literature student I loved the concept of this book, watching how someone of the future may look at a book of our age in the way we read Jane Austen or Penelope Aubin. Aliya Whiteley’s Three Eight One was an enjoyable read that handled this concept well.

I enjoyed swapping between Rowena’s analysis and Fairly’s quest but at some points I felt it hard to completely follow either - potentially due to the amount of swapping.

Overall a good story and a good length.

I’ve completely fallen in love with this - the author, the lyrical prose style, the almost otherworldly aspect of the novel.
Genuinely brilliant

This was a bit of a weird one for me! Loved the sound of the premise, but not sure whether it lived up to it for me or not... its definitely kept me thinking about it though!

This is a very poetic book. The language flows and the world is described well. This is definitely trying to be an allegorical tale, about someone’s journey to find themselves. That being said, it just didn’t grab me & I found it disappointing. I wasn’t rooting for Fairly or any of the other characters & I really struggled to engage. This is why I can’t rate it any higher.

Thanks to the author, publisher & NetGalley for access to the ARC in order for an honest review.

This is a strange parable of sorts , deceptively simplistic and childlike in the main narrative style. It is then interspersed with almost existentialist philosophy in the ‘footnotes’! I rather suspect that I will be pondering this one for a while…
A tale within a tale, our character? Consciousness? From the 24th century is mining data in preparation for a possible career as a Historian when they come across the parable referenced above , a quest narrative written by a young girl from the 22nd century - a BildungsRoman of sorts- involving a mix of rusticism, stalkers, space-age technology and cute but furry creatures ! Saying any more will spoil the surprises. I loved this especially for its footnotes - LOVE fiction with footnotes 🤣

Aliya Whiteley’s novel: Three Eight One is an immensely odd book. It is a story within a story; one of which is set hundreds of years in the future, 2314; while, the other is set in the summer of 2024. A person by the name of Rowena Savalas spends most of their days sorting through archives, now that the world has too much information about history, rather than too little. It is during this time that The Dance of the Horned Road is discovered, from 2024, the Age of Riches. In this narrative, Fairly has set upon herself, a coming of age quest to follow the Horned Road wherever it may lead-while being pursued by her Breathing Man. The Breathing Man is the only constant, and ominous presence throughout her journey, as she tries to become an adult, and to understand…something, anything about the world or herself.

Though this story is unique and interesting, in the pursuit of trying to delve into self-discovery, learning, the confusing circles of thought and actions while trying to better oneself, the narrative became too repetitive and at times was difficult to understand or follow.

That was a wild ride! I am honest, there were points I wanted to give up, because I couldn’t make sense of what I was reading, It was a journey for me too and when I reached the last quarter of the book I didn’t want to part with Fairly and Rowena. Both grew close to me and I didn’t want to let them go. I felt more complete with them being around even though it seemed like I didn’t get the big meaning behind, I just wanted to stick around a bit longer and watch them.

That was a wild ride! This book has many unexpected twists and turns, and even more for me as a non-native speaker! I like when science-fantasy embeds in concepts and social realities from the present. As a reader, you simply accept certain circumstances. Like the fact that there is a culture that obviously lives isolated from the rest of society in a very hermetic, small circle that sends its young people on a journey to adulthood, in which they pass through cities that seem to function like our big cities, but are nevertheless also different. Telephones are not called telephones and certain facts simply have to be deduced from the context.

But things got really wild when the narrative voice of Rowena, who comments on the document about Fairly and her journey, intervenes in the story and takes up questions and thoughts in the form of footnotes, which you find throughout the document. So it is somehow a commented story that we, as readers, in the third instance also comment on internally and try to understand. Both voices, Rowena's and Fairly's, are searching for their place in the world in which they live and I can tell you that this documentary, this adventure report and autobiography have a wide appeal. You are inevitably drawn into the stories. The more abstruse and opaque it gets and the more you try to find clarity, the more nebulous it seems to become. At a certain point, I simply stopped trying to find a deep and philosophical meaning and just let it happen, I just read and waited with anticipation to see what would happen and in the end, it became clear.

I don't want to dive deep into the content, because this book wants to be experienced! There are so many funny comments from Rowena and these parallel stories in particular made it feel at times as if you were reading in between Fairly and Rowena, which had a magic all of its own. The book had some really strange moments and again, I've seen this before in some of the author's other books and for me it's these oddities that make the stories so appealing. For me, they break with convention and create space for reflection or simply wonder. 381 was an exciting pilgrimage, not only for Fairly and Rowena, but also for me.

If you made it this far: hello. I’m waving at you. Both hands. And read this book! It’s worth it!

I originally started off this review thinking 3⭐ rating, then realized I was rambling on and on about what I read and how I felt about it. The fact that it occupied so much space in my head is worth an extra ⭐!

Three Eight One is definitely one of those books that straddles fantasy and sci-fi. It's told in dual POV, but in a very unique style. One POV (Fairly) as something like a journal or memoir detailing a fantasy quest trope. The other POV (Rowena) is footnotes or annotations to the first and is clearly set in a more technologically advanced future. I read each footnote as it occured, but also went through them again at the end for a more cohesive perspective.

As a general read, I'm not sure I would recommend it for everyone. It can be slow paced and confusing. I kept thinking "WTF is going on?" the entire time I read it. But, I had to get to the end because I was hoping for clarity. One of the footnotes actually reads...

"Basically, I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m lost in history. Help me."

You and me both honey!

I had to look it up, but 381 is apparently called an angel number and means I Love You...3 words, 8 letters, 1 meaning. It also has a lot of connotations in numerology, astrology, etc. I won't go into to them other than to say that Whiteley somehow incorporates many of those themes into this story, as part of Fairly's and Rowena's journey. I wish I had known this before I started the book, as it probably would have made a lot more sense for me.

So on one hand, this was brilliantly done and (in hindsight) I can absolutely appreciate the style and format. On the other hand, it totally twisted my brain while I was actually reading. I swear I went on multiple internet search tangents trying to figure out if something in the story was referring to a real life event. And I still have no idea if that is the case.

If you enjoy contemplating abstract and hidden meanings, then this is for you. If you are looking to breeze through something entertaining, leave this for another day.

Three Eight One follows two storylines – one is a story from 2024 in which a young protagonist, Fairly, goes on a quest; the other frames it: Rowena, a curator living in 2314, tries to make sense of Fairly’s story.

This novel explores some interesting themes – the reliability or not of historical evidence, the ways historical evidence must be categorized and ‘made sense of’ at later times, the nature of quests and the ‘hero’s journey,’ and more. Understanding all aspects of the novel is emphatically not the point – I think readers with this expectation will be frustrated or disappointed by it – and it leaves one with, perhaps, more questions than answers. I really enjoyed this novel overall, but I did find the pacing inconsistent – I found the first 40% or so dragged compared to the rest, which I found much more captivating.

Thank you to Solaris & NetGalley for the ARC I read for this review.

“I’m beginning to understand that the world is not my friend.”

I wavered between three and four stars for this book. I genuinely did enjoy it. I found it a very easy read, and got through it quickly. I love modern surrealism in literature (Mieville and van der Meer are examples that come to mind) and this book definitely winked at other weird literature. In the end I went for three stars because I feel like it wasn't clear enough what the author's intent was.

This book starts with a foreword by a gestalt consciousness who chips in throughout the real story through footnotes. This is a great set up, reminiscent of other ergodic literature like Danielewski’s House of Leaves. As the “narrator” takes us through the literature they’re analysing, we learn more about them, their life and their feelings, and we witness a change in them, as there are time skips between their notes. Meanwhile, the core of the book is a digital fairytale that has deeply affected the narrator.

I feel like I needed more from the interjections. More about the narrator’s life and their journey reading the digital fairytale. But I also needed more about the fairytale’s origins. Who wrote this, and why? Why did the narrator not do more to uncover this? A journey to uncover the truth of this piece’s inception could have been a great parallel to Fairly’s own journey. The balance between the two parts of the book felt off to me, just by a little but enough that it felt unfinished. In addition, the narrator’s decline into existential dread felt very rapid, and I think I would have preferred it if it had felt more like an inexorable slide. Aside from this, I struggled to pull meaning from the fairytale. It was clearly very impactful on the narrator, but I couldn’t really see why. The metaphors were a bit too opaque, perhaps, the surrealism just on the far side of comprehension. I feel like I need to sit down with the author and have them explain to me what it all meant and what they were trying to say, which isn’t a feeling I enjoy after finishing a novel.

That all being said, there was lots to like about this book. The writing was at times very good, and I ended up with plenty of lines highlighted in my Kindle. I especially liked the changes in person (from third to first to second and so on), something that felt genuinely fresh and exciting. Ultimately, I would recommend this book if you enjoy books that play with structure and technique in fun ways.

Thank you to NetGalley and Aliya Whiteley for providing me with an ARC of this novel in exchange for my thoughts on it!

I’m really impressed by Whiteley’s attention to detail in segmenting the story into 381 word segments, I can’t even begin to imagine what the editing process must have looked like to pull that piece of symbolism off.

I loved the use of footnotes to tell the story within the story, however this may be a product of me having read this as an ebook which made jumping back and forth from the footnotes to the main text much easier. I imagine for people reading a physical copy the process may get a bit more frustrating, especially in segments that are a bit more note heavy.


I’d like to return to this book someday knowing how it ends to dig further into the earlier sections now that I know more about the rules of the world and Fairly’s/the narrators place within it.

An oblique, deconstructed quest narrative, apparently published in 2024, as annotated in 2314 by someone looking back from that Age of Curation to our own Age of Riches, where the problem for future historians is not fragmentary evidence but a surfeit. The story within the story would, by itself, already have felt like the other Whiteley I've read, with its unsettling reversals, its sense of multiple lives occupying the same space on completely different terms. I especially liked the way that the quester kept ending up in spaces thronged with tourists, yet having completely different interactions to theirs; think the distinction so self-consciously imposed by those who define themselves as travellers not tourists, except more so, and as if they were fooling anyone. Gradually the mysteries of the Horned Road deepen, but so does the suspicion as to whether the whole odyssey means a damn thing. You know when you look at a map of the Mediterranean and see what a trivial distance Ulysses actually had to cover? Part of me wonders whether thinking about that was the inspiration for this book.

Enfolding that, the framing device, which you could sometimes suspect might be a way for the author decently to point out how clever she's being, making sure that the reader notices when the narrative switches from third to first to second person and suchlike. But there's also a long tradition of fictional footnoters gradually revealing the extent to which they're losing the plot, in which this proudly takes its place. As it proceeds, we gradually pick up more and more hints about this Age of Curation, and the losses which might shadow the gains of living in a vastly more stable and safe world. I'm usually a little suspicious of that line of argument, which can feel like human logic twisting itself into knots in an attempt to console a person for living in a chaotic era, but the realisation here is, if not quite Ada Palmer-level, certainly more substantial and plausible than is often the case. And as it reflects on the quest story, the two together add up to something more, a musing on aloneness, growing up, and how hard it is to sum up knowledge gained by experience and pass it along without it ending up sounding really trite. This last, of course, also meaning that it's hard to sum up Three Eight One, a book I could equally see becoming a cult classic, or sinking without trace. I'm hoping the former.

(Netgalley ARC)

"Three Eight One" is such an interesting and thought-provoking SFF novel and I am still turning it over in my head. I'm not sure I fully understood every aspect of the story but I loved it and will be thinking about it for a long time.

Review was published on my Instagram account, see text below:

Three Eight One by Aliya Whiteley :: Mapo Tofu

Three Eight One is my first advanced copy read from @netgalley and rebellionpublishing, whose synopsis and cover caught my attention. This book was one of the most interesting books I’ve read as there are two story lines, however, the second story line takes place entirely in the footnotes. To be honest, I felt that the constant flipping back and forth took me out of both stories which I then found difficult to follow. As both also take a place in a futuristic world, adapting to language and setting was also tough when constantly changing. That being said, in the end, I felt myself enjoying the self-reflection that both main characters focused on. While it may seem depressing, I do love the thought and idea that not everyone is destined to make big sweeping changes, sometimes just journeying on a commitment to frivolity.

Throughout the ‘main’ story of this novel, Fairly talks a lot about the power of ‘Cha’ and the influence the Cha have. For awhile I had selected my own imaginary idea of what a Cha was, but at some point it turns out that Chas are just pigs? I’m still not convinced I got that right/understood, but hey, that’s what we’re going with! For this book pairing, I wanted to do a pork dish but also since Fairly didn’t seem to happy to be eating the Cha, I thought mapo tofu would be the ideal pick. Made both with ground pork and tofu, this dish can help fill you up if you find yourself on any quest.