An unusual read, but not bad.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

This dual POV sci fi created an interesting world told from two narrators who lived in different years: 2024 and 2314. In 2314, Rowena decides to annotate The Dance of the Horned Road as she yearns to understand this piece of literature from 2024. These annotations are depicted through the footnotes - don’t skip these or you will miss a large part of the themes explored. Like Rowena, the reader isn’t sure if this document is fictional or a true, historical experience of a 17 year old girl, Fairly, who is sent on a quest. At first, the reading experience was very odd and slightly confusing, but my interest grew as I had to find out what happened next. To me, this felt very The Giver mixed with Stargirl and oftentimes felt dreamlike. There are quite a few profound themes and quotes throughout the last half of this novel, which has me inclined to pick up a physical copy! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a free arc in exchange for my honest review.

This book is quite possibly the weirdest book I've ever read but it's compellingly weird.

Fairly’s quest, the 'Breathing Man', Rowena Savalas and her own adventure, strange creatures, space travel... this book has a lot going on. As the book definitely creates a lot of questions this would be a good one for book clubs to discuss.

This literary crossover novel masterfully explores the pressures of growing up and the nature of authorship. In 2314, Rowena Savalas, a curator of 21st-century internet archives, finds a mysterious story from 2024. The story, featuring Fairly on a coming-of-age quest shadowed by the "breathing man," captivates Rowena and leads her to question her own life.

As Rowena delves deeper, her predictable existence transforms into one of exploration, adventure, and love. The novel intertwines their journeys, highlighting that the value lies not in the truth of the story but in the journey itself. This captivating read beautifully examines growth and the power of storytelling.

4.5 stars - Whiteley basically can do no wrong

Having already read and loved Whiteley's Skyward Inn I was really looking forward to reading her newest novel Three Eight One.

The format is that of a story within a story - Rowena Savalas from the Earth of the Year 2314 finds a document with a story, that of the girl Fairly who goes on a "quest". Is this story pure fiction? Are there autobiographical elements to it? Rowena becomes obsessed and this story never quite lets go of her for the rest of her life, even changes it for her.

Through footnotes we follow Rowena on her own quest of making sense of Fairly's story, of drawing her own conclusions and of her changing perspective on the world she lives in and how this reflects in her footnotes.

The heart and soul of the novel then is of course Fairly's story - and if ever magical realism was an apt description for a story then it's for this one! It's a coming of age narrative that is presented as a "quest" young people are being sent to by a village. They travel "the road" and their objective is to push the buttons of certain devices, and to find all of them before returning. All of it is written in this dreamy, evocative and deeply metaphorical way that I have come to associate with Whiteley's writing. I don't think the idea is to actually make sense of everything that happens but just to let the images and moods speak for themselves.

All of the themes of coming of age and adulthood are there: Fairly acts selfishly, makes some bad decisions, refuses to see uncomfortable truths and abuses power. Sometimes she cannot make up her mind about what she actually wants or who she is.
But she also experiences friendship and human kindness, finds love, assumes responsibility and ultimately comes into her own.

The great star of the show is Whiteley's writing! It is just SO good! Not only is her way with words a marvel, but also the way the themes of the novel are presented, how they play off of each other and how the two narrative levels of Fairly's and Rowena's story create layers upon layers. This is just a whole different league. I didn't even mind that most of the time I had no idea what was going on which normally would make me lose interest very quickly. I just could not stop turning the pages.

The only reason this is not 5 stars is because I liked Skyward Inn just a little more. Still, if you like your Sci Fi or Magical Realism with a literary flavour this is for you!

I have received an advance review copy from Rebellion Publishing via NetGalley and voluntarily provide my honest opinion. Thank you very much!

Aliya Whiteley writes such original and different novels, I can't help loving them even if I don't quite know what's going on! "Three Eight One" is a very surreal story set in the far future and contains two stories, one about a part-AI curator reading an "old" quest story, and then that story itself. The quest story is like a very strange dream. I find readers either love this kind of thing or hate it. Happily I am in the first camp and I adored this!

This is a tough book to review. It's hard to hang one's thoughts on what actually happens in the story, because the events are designedly fantastical, contradictory and, well, suspect. And their nature is in any caseanalysed in the book itself by one of the narrators, who makes her points much more clearly than I can.

To try to clear this up, the main narrative is about a young woman called Fairly, who decides to leave her village on a Quest, following the "horned road". Her part of the narrative, set in 2024, is therefore called "The Dance of the Horned Road". It's suggested (from the one concrete geographical clue) that Fairly's village is in Southern England, though with a sea voyage, the story may decamp across the sea (so - to France? But there is no idea of a different language being spoken?) However, while familiar in details - a campervan features, as do pubs, hotels, a jukebox - the atmosphere, motivations and assumptions of Fairly and everyone she meets are odd, definitely placing this in a different world, I think, a point driven home by the presence of a Spire from which rockets are launched.

The other narrative is a commentary, by way of footnotes in Fairly's account by Rowena Savalas in 2314. Rowena inhabits a future where the boundaries between human and machine are blurred, and the conservation and interpretation of data from the past has become a subject of philosophical and practical interest. Rowena's interpretation of Fairly's journey is in some respects her life's work, the footnotes yielding new and startling information both about Fairly and her world and about Rowena's own far future. As the footnotes grow longer, the two women almost seem in dialogue, Fairly's "quest" and Rowena's task of interpretation paralleling one another.

There is a lot to interpret - or perhaps wonder over - including the "Cha", animals that feature heavily in Fairly's world though whether they are real (and if so, what they are) and the roles they play (variously, saviours, currency, food and teachers) are both mysterious. The Cha are deeply embedded in the story (and in the mythology that underlies Fairly's society) but they are ambiguous, subject to contradictory narratives and often only known in a frustratingly oblique way - though you may find traces of them where you don't expect!

The other central theme is the "Breathing Man", a person whom Fairly suspects of following her and whom she sees as a threat although we're never actually told what this might be. More than a mere bogeyman, the Breathing Man also seems to have a place in the mythology of Fairly's people, but given that Quests such as hers are an assumed part of a young person's life the threat of an encounter with him seems oddly binary - very threatening but, surely, inevitable - and also unclear: Fairly doesn't tell us what other Questers experienced of him (but, nor does she tell us the purpose of her quest, a lot is unsaid).

These, and other elements, of the story could provoke lengthy speculation which would I think be to miss the point of the book, which must be about experience - the Quest, again, has an obscure and ill-defined purpose, necessary but with no clear object or end. In Fairly's case it perhaps catalyses changes in her society which must be a focus of Rowena's interest as she lives in a society that presumably developed form Fairly's - yet Rowena absents herself from commentary as this story nears its end, so that is only speculation.

A complex, involving story, at once simple on the surface but fiendishly complex inside, Three Eight One was like nothing I'd read lately, calling to mind for me puzzle filled, treacherous narratives such as Charles Palliser's The Quincunx or John Fowles' The Magus.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Often at times some book stay with me and it just clicks with me. Unfortunately this books didn't. I'm not able to pinpoint either. Maybe it was due to my erratic reading time or busy life..I couldn't find myself engaged as much as I expected.

An interesting work of speculative fiction. At it's heart is a fantasy novella of someone taking a journey to find meaning, purpose, meeting characters and situations along the way with an unspecificied 'threat' in the background from their follower. A well-constructed story though with some elements that defy a little logic or 'humanity' in the protaganists actions, from the casual casting off of the life of another onwards, Nonetheless a strong and interesting novella.

It has mixed in, an intro/conclusion and footnotes from a far future reader from a time of uniformity, seeking to understand and comment on the narrative. I didn't find this distracting but equally could easily have read the story without this.

This is a weird and wonderful novel! It's really two stories in one: one told in the main text, and then a second one told only in the footnotes. The main story is a hero's quest much in the style of "The Phantom Tollbooth"-- often whimsical, with bizarre twists and turns as the protagonist makes her way through strange lands. This story has a timeless and unplaceable quality. There are some details that make it seem as though the story takes place a long time ago (old-fashioned devices and machines, social organization of some places, etc), but other details point to the future (commercial rocketships and colonization of other planets). The second story takes place in the footnotes, as an archivist is reading the main story and notating it. The archivist's annotations make clear that she is just as puzzled about the main story as the reader-- and that she lives in the far future, where humanity and life are very different.

It's pretty experimental, so I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but if you like inventive storytelling, speculative fiction, or just being challenged as a reader, I'd recommend it. I'm happy that I came across the opportunity to read this ARC, as I had never heard of this author. I will absolutely read her other novels.

**I was provided with an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

Having read Whiteley’s Skyward Inn I knew I was in for an absolutely baffling read that will give me much to think on when picking up Three Eight One.

This little novel is written in the from of an essay where a curator of the future is analysing a 3 centuries old text telling the story of a young woman going on a coming of age quest. The majority of the book is this tale that feels like an Alice in Wonderland-esque, acid trip type of adventure. Then there are added footnotes where the curator questions the authorship and meaning of the text, whether it is factual or pure fiction as well as adding in their own reactions and personal introspection.

I will admit that I didn’t find I could really connect to either of the protagonists plus the curator’s notes often went on a lengthy tangent that took me out of the story a little but Whiteley’s writing was still compelling. Both the bizarre circumstances of Fairly’s quest down the Horned Road and all the tension of being followed by the Breathing Man meant I was pulled back in to see what would happen next. There is also the mystery of the significance of the number 381 woven into it all which though by the end was a little underwhelming, I thought it was still clever.

I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone but there are plenty of thought provoking quotes to stumble upon and it is truly a unique reading experience if you have the patience for irregular narrative styles and storylines that don’t entirely make sense.
Final Rating – 3.5/5 Stars

<i>First off...<b>DISCLAIMER:</b> I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Rebellion Publishing for providing an ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.</i>

I'm often drawn to books that bring something new on the table in terms of style and format, but alas, they don't always work for me. Three Eight One is maybe a step too far in terms of experimental storytelling for my tastes (not to mention that the back-and-forth between the quester's narrative and the archivist's notes is a bit challenging, especially when performed on a digital copy). Both the quest and the commentary have a strange quaint flavour, which of course is a precise stylistic choice and can be intriguing in the hands of the right reader, but it's not really my thing. Looking back at the digital age as we know it via a story set almost 300 years in the past (which would be our present) is a neat idea and makes for some interesting observations, but I struggled to retain their meaning and ended up feeling like I was studying for a test, while the story itself didn't hold my interest. So this one was a DNF for me (a first when it comes to titles provided by Rebellion/Solaris), but I can see it work for more patient/philosophical readers and fans of audacious writing styles.

Aside from the Classics, your Austens, Brontës, and Tolkiens, there aren't a whole lot of authors whose name immediately has me pulling out my wallet, or Kindle. Aliya Whiteley became one for me over the last decade or so, however, as each new novel, novella, or short story from her would open up new worlds and new ways of storytelling for me. So naturally, I was excited to see what she had in store for me next, after the Sci-Fi/Speculative wonder that was Skyward Inn. I was not prepared for Three Eight One, however. Thanks to Rebellion and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a Medievalist, which means that when I'm not getting lost in the maze of admin, I'm exploring the intricacies of texts that are centuries old. Some are even a millennium old. While I immensely enjoy this activity, it also poses a whole variety of problems. Often medieval texts are artifacts without context. They usually don't have a title, we give one to them so we can talk about them. They don't have a named author, they don't have dates attached, they are collected alongside other texts which may or may not relate to them. They are often in formats, rhyme schemes, etc. which we cannot entirely define or explain. They tell stories, but not in a way that we're used to in the twenty-first century. Reading Three Eight One reminded me of reading medieval texts, pouring over them for meaning, attaching little footnotes or post-it notes to random pages and phrases with questions, exclamations, personal connections. Medieval characterisation, without going into an entire essay, often feels flat to first-time readers. We don't get the same deep-dive into the internal lives of the characters, their motivations remain opaque, their actions seem to follow a prepared path that they do not resist or chase. This is what 'The Dance of the Horned Road' represents to our main character as well, I think. A text that somehow connects and which yet is so drastically different from what she knows. This story must have meant something then, so surely it can mean something now? Even if the answer to that question is yes, we still wonder what it could mean. If you enjoy these puzzles, if you enjoy encountering narration which shifts and changes without giving you an explanation, you'll adore Three Eight One.

Rowena, from the distance of hundreds of years, combs through the vast remains of the twenty-first century, known as the 'Age of Riches', looking for meaning. In her present, life works differently, humanity works differently. There is less danger, violence, and war, sure, but is there also less... well, life? Is she as free as humans of the past were in choosing her future? As she mulls over these questions, needing to make a choice about where to take her life, she decides to annotate a story from the twenty-first century, 'The Dance of the Horned Road', which tells the story of Fairly and her quest. In Fairly's village, every teenager who feels called can set out on a quest, following the Horned Road. They are given three "cha" and must press specific button they come across on their journey. By the end, she will be different, or so Fairly is told. But what is the Horned Road, who are the Cha, and who is the Breathing Man following her? Is there a point to her journey, or to Rowena's? What is 'The Dance of the Horned Road'?

Like I said above, Aliya Whiteley has been a favourite author of mine for quite a number of years now. Each time I pick up a new book by her, I am surprised at the directions she takes me in, the questions she poses, the themes she plays with. What I enjoy about her writing and the worlds she creates is that they usually require the reader to dig a little deeper into themselves as well, into their own response to the story. It creates a quite layered reading experience, in many ways, which is brought to the surface in Three Eight One. It is, perhaps, her least penetrable work, in the sense that the search for meaning is so elemental to the story that you will truly have to find it for yourself. Neither Whiteley, nor Rowena and Fairly, will fully make sense of what occurs in the novel. There is no clear answer as to why all of 'The Dance of the Horned Road' is written in chapters of 381 words. It can all mean something, however, and putting that together is something each reader will have to do for themselves. It's a puzzle without a previously-defined picture to aim for, if that makes sense. In this way Three Eight One might not be for everyone, which is absolutely fine. But I can only say that it does reward to time and effort. Unlike other reviewers, I had no issue with the footnotes, but then I do adore a good footnote. I liked the way in which these interruptions of Fairly's narrative both engaged directly with it and did not. Rowena's life takes its own turns, which can only partially be mapped onto the organised Hero's Journey Fairly is undertaking. And yet, together, the two stories tell a tale of humanity, of questioning, of losing, of finding, and of journeying.

Three Eight One is a fascinatingly complex novel about storytelling, growing up, finding meaning, and then losing it again. It is a novel that will reward rereading, I am sure, and is another impressive piece of work from Aliya Whiteley.

I really like Aliya Whiteley's stories and I'm always curious with what she comes up next. Her mind must be fascinating. I'm usually not a huge sci-fi reader, but for Whiteley I will read anything.
This is a very ambitious story, but the reader is in good hands with this author. I really liked the journey Fairly goes on and the coming-of-age aspects. It took me to some unexpected places and makes one question the meaning of life. Really fascinating

Many thanks to NetGalley and Rebellion for providing me with an eARC of Three Eight One in exchange for my honest review!

I can admire how ambitiously this tries to portray its intertwined stories, but it left me feeling pretty damn confused and detached for significant stretches of time. It reminds me a bit of After World by Debbie Urbanski, another sci-fi book that weaves together separate story arcs and timelines in order to convey an intricate and thought-provoking narrative. However, I'd connected much more deeply with After World (enough that it's becoming one of my favorite books of 2023), whereas Rowena and Fairly's journeys fail to get me all that invested in them, even as I'm recognizing the laudable effort that Whiteley has put into crafting this strange tale. There's a charm about it that I can appreciate as it presents a multilevel and puzzle-like structure for readers to interpret for themselves. If only my brain and my soul could latch onto it and try to solve it.

Overall, I'm officially rating Three Eight One 2.5 out of 5 stars, which I'll round down to 2 stars. I wish I could be higher on it, but I'll keep an eye out for more of Whiteley's work in the future.

A little confusing in the back and forth but I don’t think this will be an issue in the physical copy. Become more engaged the more I read, and testament to the great writing because I’m not a sci fi person but I was invested.

Three Eight One is an interesting premise; a curator from 300 years in the future becomes obsessed with a story from 2024 and is drawn into its mysteries – but is it fact or fiction?

Most of this book focuses on the story that is being told about Fairly and her quest on the Horned Road, with asides and comments from the historian written in footnotes. Thankfully these are clickable in the Kindle edition which makes them easy to read but I’m not sure how well they’d work in a print version – you’d either have to spend a lot of time flicking backwards and forwards (there are 85 of them in total), or they must take up a lot of room at the bottom of each page. I personally found these just ended up breaking up the flow of the narrative and I found myself getting annoyed at them – particularly as I got more engaged in the fantasy story.

I really liked the idea of a future historian reading a text from present day and trying to piece things together, but I think it was a real shame and a missed opportunity that the novel the author chose to write was a straight fantasy. There is nothing in Fairly’s story that mirrors or parallels real life and so I found myself caring very little about what the historian thought of any of it. If there had been references to life now, or asides where she misunderstood certain things or had incorrect information, it could have been quite a fun read, but I found the footnotes to be increasingly irritating.

The fantasy story itself was an ok read, however it’s very fractured and I struggled to picture or understand a lot of what was being written about. I didn’t understand the Breathing Man or the Cha or the fact that everyone didn’t seem to mind that certain people just went on quests. The chain machines that were sometimes buttons and sometimes phones also made little sense. I think there could have been a stronger or darker reveal about what the quest really was, and after the reveal the rest of the story just got confusing. I didn’t really feel like we got to know Fairly as a character either, she made some odd choices and took quite a lot of side tangents on her quest.

Overall, I found Three Eight One to be a bit of a mess, the fantasy element of the story took away from the historian narrative, and the story itself was muddled and frustrating. Thank you to NetGalley & Rebellion – Solaris for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a foggy, confusing, and enlightening story this is! Reading this book was sort of like sitting down to read, only to have a person just leaning over and speaking to you about their life, which feels related, interrupting your flow, from the footnotes. They turn out to be a friend, earnestly trying to help you make sense of things. Since this person is speaking from centuries after Fairly's story (set in 2024), the historical context and archival citations they offer provide extra fun.
Confusing is not, for me, a bad thing. The reading experience for this reminded me of Ishiguro's The Buried Giant or Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland. Maybe it's not always clear, but there is meaning to find. (Will it be the same meaning others get? Only maybe!) I'll be reflecting on this book for a long time, and genuinely look forward to the time I sit down to it again.

I'm not even sure how to write a review for this one, which is probably the highest compliment I can pay it - it's engrossing, genre-defying, brilliantly written speculative fiction at its absolute finest and I LOVED IT. This has solidified Aliya Whiteley as one of my top favorite modern writers - the ability to weave such a complex, multilayered story together is a true talent and I'll read anything else she writes. WOW, just wow.

Speculative fiction at its best, a well written and thought provoking story that I found intriguing and kept me enthralled.
I wanted to know what was going to happen and learn more about the symbolic elements and the plot.
Well plotted, excellent storytelling.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine