LGBTQIA+ Artist & Author of YA and children's books

The Foxhole Court is the first trilogy in Nora Sakavic’s All For The Game series. The three books encompassed are: The Foxhole Court, The Raven King, and The King’s Men.

  These books follow Neil Josten, a teenager on the run from his serial-killer father, and the Japanese yakuza. After his mother is killed, Neil washes up dry in Millport, Arizona, with no real plan of how to continue running on his own. He is approached by David Wymack, the coach of a college Exy team, who offers him a sports scholarship at Palmetto State University in South Carolina. In doing so, he sets in motion the events of the trilogy.

  Neil has been running from his serial-killer father, AKA ‘The Butcher of Baltimore’ since he was a child. Believing the story his mother tells him when she takes him, he never looks back or questions her motives. But when he is taken in by the Palmetto State Foxes, the underdogs of Collegiate Exy, he realises he is in far more danger than he imagined. The Foxes are in the midst of a yakuza war, thanks to their coach signing Kevin Day, the infamous son of Exy – but Kevin is hiding from his master, Tetsuji Moriyama, and Tetsuji’s nephew Riko, both of whom have owned Kevin as a pet ever since Kevin’s mother died and Tetsuji received custody rights of the orphaned boy, and proceeded to gift him to Riko as a playmate and toy. The Moriyamas are a two-fold crime family – the secondary family, consisting of Tetsuji and Riko, were cast out of the main family due to being the second-born sons. The main family, comprising of Kengo and Ichirou Moriyama, are the heads of one of the most dangerous yakuza families in the US and Japan.

  But Neil has a secret: he knew Kevin and Riko as a child, and they both know his father – the three boys watched The Butcher kill a man and hack his body to pieces.  Neil has changed identities countless times since, in his attempt to outrun his father’s shadow.

If either of them find out his identity, it could put his life in even more danger.  

If any of his father’s people find him, he knows exactly what The Butcher will do to the boy intended to be his prodigy, but who vanished into the night instead.

If anyone joins the dots between Neil and his past, it could mean his life.

So when Andrew Minyard, the Foxes’ goalkeeper who is viewed as their resident psychopath, takes Neil under his wing after learning some of Neil’s secrets, and suggests Neil hide in plain sight by basking in the spotlight of Collegiate Exy, all of Neil’s instincts tell him to run. But can anyone truly outrun their past?

  As the season commences and Neil is thrown into the spotlight, all of his lies and disguises are put under the microscope of the media. Yet, the more Neil learns about the Foxes and the closer he grows to Andrew, the more he realises he doesn’t want to leave them behind.

  But when Riko learns of Neil’s identity, he reveals things Neil never knew – including the real reason his mother made him run away in the first place. With Riko promising retaliation in the form of damnation and horrors beyond comprehension inflicted upon each of the Foxes, Neil has a choice to make:

Run away again, or stay and fight for a life he isn’t ready to give up.

I have to say, I have a lot of “favourite” parts of this trilogy. So instead of writing a soliloquy about each of them, I’ll talk about one of my favourite things which is consistent throughout all three books: the world building.

  Sakavic has invented a sport which is proclaimed as ‘a bastard sport… an evolved sort of lacrosse…. with the violence of icy hockey’. It is played on a court which sounds like a mix of a basketball court and a hockey rink. With its own rules, regulations, positions and plays, it should be implausible – yet Nora introduces it so authentically that readers don’t even question its validity. Not when we read what all the parts of the uniform and armour are, not when we’re told how they play, not even when one team scores over 100 points in one game. It has theories of cults and child-stars, and was created less than two generations prior to the plot-line by Kayleigh Day and Tetsuji Moriyama (hence why she felt close enough to him to give him custody of Kevin in the event of her death).

  All three books take place in the mid-2000s, some time around 2006 / 2007. Sakavic immerses us in that timeframe entirely, with her use of language, culture, fashion and environments.  

  There is a yakuza war in the United States, a serial-killer, and an entire sports season for a fictional sport, all while the characters are trying to keep their grades up in college, and it’s all completely believable due to Sakavic’s writing and thought-out world design.

  There are a lot of themes which are woven through this series: found-family, trusting yourself, learning to trust those around you, forming connections even when it’s dangerous, caring even when you know it will hurt, learning to stand up for yourself and those you care about, and so many more. Sakavic also explores what ‘family’ means – is it the blood we have running through us, or the people we surround ourselves with, or is it the people we choose to let into our lives? The Foxes and The Ravens (Edgar Allen’s Ravens, the team which Riko and Kevin were the face of prior to Kevin’s escape to The Foxes) are both a type of family, in their own right. Both are dysfunctional, but one is healthy while the other is toxic.

One of the strongest themes, though, is second chances.  

  Wymack has a very unique recruitment standard, and that is: the broken ones, who won’t be given a chance otherwise. The kids from broken homes. The addicts. The ones with juvie records. The ones with mental health issues. It damages his reputation and gets him pity from the rest of the coaches and the college administrators, and all of the Exy Rules and Regulations Committee, but Wymack sticks to it. Even when his team are infamous for being bottom of the league. Even when they spend more time dosing up than practising. Even when they have a penchant for killing themselves or getting arrested before graduation. He never lets up, and he never bows to what would be far more conventional. Because Wymack believes in second chances – and third, and fourth, and fifth, and as many as it takes. Just one more chance, is all he wants to give his Foxes. One more chance than what anyone else is willing to give them. Just one more, always just one more. Because all they need is another chance.

I love how this is shown in the characters and their arcs.  

  The Foxes are split into two main groups – the Upper-classmen, and The Monsters. The Upper-classmen, comprising of Dan, Allison, Renee, Matt and Seth, are a few years above The Monsters, which include Andrew, Kevin, Nicky and Aaron. The two groups are very strong parallels of one another: the Upper-classmen have let go of their trauma, they revel in their recovery, and they don’t let their pasts weigh them down. They are all in the “good” part of healing – Allison has recovered from her eating disorder and is in a relationship with Seth, who is recovering from his addiction, while Matt is clean, Renee is a born-again Christian, and Dan has fought tooth and nail for her place as captain. Meanwhile, The Monsters are in the “ugly” part of healing – Nicky uses humour as a deflection tool and still suffers from depression and anxiety, Aaron is mostly clean but is prone to anger issues and apathy, Kevin is an alcoholic with severe anxiety and PTSD, and Andrew is excessively violent, volatile and has a habit of carrying knives, which he will very cheerfully put through someone’s ribs while pinning them against the wall. They’re still weighed down by their pasts, and their traumas still define them. In a way, it can be seen that The Monsters are what The Upper-classmen never want to become again, while The Upper-classmen are what The Monsters could be if they’re given enough chances to get there.

  Neil is caught in the middle ground between the two groups. On one side, there’s the “sane” Foxes; on the other side, there’s Andrew and his promises of safety, trust and protection.

  The character arcs shown throughout the trilogy are amazing, and extremely empathetic towards the backgrounds given to each of these characters. Nobody miraculously recovers. Nobody is “fixed” in order to be worthy of love or a home or a family.  

  Likewise, they’re not all shown to be perfectly accepting of one another. One of the best examples of this is how the team treat Andrew. He’s branded as Wymack’s most dangerous investment, and the rest of the team treat him like an unmuzzled attack dog – he’s psycho, he’s evil, he’s crazy, he’s a murderer, he’s this and he’s that. Even in a group of outcasts, he’s cast out as unwanted, impossible to save, and unworthy of being trusted. Until Neil gives him another chance. As Andrew slowly lets Neil in, and Neil proves his strength again and again by seeing past Andrew’s defences and deflections, we see an entirely different version of Andrew – and, by extension, of The Monsters – than what The Upper-classmen see. Neil is able to look at the darkness within Andrew and not balk, because he knows he can handle anything Andrew is willing to do to him. In turn, Andrew is able to take the weight of Neil’s secrets and truths, and hold them without pushing Neil away. They ground one another, and it is one of the most stunning depictions of “like knows like” paired with “trust needs to be earned” that I’ve seen in fiction.

Thinking of something I dislike about this trilogy is quite difficult. But if I think back to the first time I read it, I’d have to say the thing which grated on me the most was some of the dialogue. At times, some of the characters have a tendency to speak as if they’re reciting lines from a high-school drama movie which would have aired on Disney Channel. Dan is the most prone to this, though I appreciate it’s difficult to write a young woman captaining a team of misfits without giving her at least a few cliché lines and traits.  

  Still, this is balanced out quite well by the rest of her dialogue and her characterisation, so it’s only a nit-pick.

  The Foxhole Court is the first trilogy instalment of Nora Sakavic’s gritty YA series, All For The Game. It is crazy enough to encompass yakuza wars, murders, serial-killers and runaways, and partner it up with teenagers sporting facial tattoos, cults, college athletes and the pressure of needing to keep their grades up. There is on-page murder, rape and torture, and mentions of paedophiles, killers for hire, corrupt doctors, assassinations, and canonical familicide, including filicide, fratricide, avunculicide, matricide, and honour killings. There are legitimate suicides, and staged ones. There is an entire fictional sport created by Sakavic. Yet interspersed through it all, there is humour, affection, understanding, found-family, forgiveness, love, second-chances, and creating bonds worth fighting the yakuza in order to keep hold of.

It’s crazy, it’s wonderfully written, and it’s amazing. I was left thinking of the characters months after reading it, and years after first picking up the trilogy, I bought the first book in the second trilogy instalment of this universe. What better praise can I give than that?