Imagine a world where fairies were discovered in the early 1600s and where the study of them has been a legitimate area of academia ever since, studied by Dryadologists all over the world. This is the world of Emily Wilde. Emily Wilde and the Encyclopedia of Fairies focuses on the story of Emily Wilde, a young Dryadologist in Cambridge who is spending a few winter months in the Arctic town of Hrafnsvik to observe a previously undocumented group of Fae. She is working on her life’s passion, to fully record all of the world’s fairies in a definitive guide, that she hopes will become the base resource of future Dryadology. She is unexpectedly joined by her colleague, the enigmatic and mysterious Wendell Bambleby, who has a penchant for comfort, breakfast, and Emily. The third main character in this book is the town and community of Hrafnsvik. From town elder Aud to the small child who has been whisked away by fairies, the people of Hrafnsvik are a dynamic force in the book, and not one of them is left to languish as an insubstantial side character. It is a richly created tapestry. As Emily learns more about the Fae of Ljosland and about the people of the town, she is drawn into more than one story of her own and becomes a part of her own narrative in ways she never anticipated nor dreamed of.
Since I was a small child I have devoured books. I went to college to study books, then stayed in college to study more books. I visit a bookstore in every town I travel to. Without a doubt, I have read a lot of books in my 42 years. Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett is the first book I have read that I have immediately started reading again within days of finishing it. I enjoyed the book so much that I wanted to relive the experience and immerse myself in the world of Emily Wilde again as soon as I was finished. I would very easily place this in my top ten books, if not my top five. Needless to say, it made a very strong impression.
There are several factors behind my instant captivation with this book. Firstly, I have long had a fascination with narratives that treat the other—in this case fairies—as part of normal life. In the world of Emily Wilde, fairies have been an established part of human knowledge for centuries. As someone who once longed to be a college professor, I now know that it is a professor of Dryadology that I would most like to be. One of my favorite works in this genre is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. She explores the world of magic and the existence of fairies from a studious vantage point but with a lot more brevity than Fawcett. I have since learned that this is also one of Heather Fawcett’s favorite works, which makes it even more delightful. The two books have theming in common, representations of a casually malevolent Fae in common, but take two very different approaches. The weighty intellectualism of Mr. Norrel is mirrored in the work of Emily Wilde as a character, but the temperament and human nature of the characters make Emily Wilde a much lighter and more accessible work than the 782 pages of Clarke’s most excellent work.
Over the past few years, inspired greatly by my love of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I have delved more into modern works of Fae. Along with the big headliners, Holly Black and Sarah J Maas, there are many on the market at the moment depicting the interactions between the fairy world and the human world. In my mind, the romance that develops in Emily Wilde however, far outshines the “fairy porn” that currently dominates the landscape. The romance in Emily Wilde has been described as a “grumpy romance” and, while it is not a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it affair, it has far more Austen about it than ostentatious.
Beyond the inclusion of fairies as fact, the writing style is something that I found very appealing, beginning with the notion of a book within a book, whereby the work of fiction is called Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries within which the character Emily Wilde is writing an Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Typically I am not drawn to epistolary narratives, and so I was surprised to hear Fawcett describe the book as such. The book does indeed follow a journal format, in which Emily is writing to herself to record her days and her discoveries. I am not usually a fan of the diary format, but so lovely is the language employed and so brilliant are the characters that I didn’t even notice the things that usually put me off such a literary device. Fawcett has said that she did not intend to write the book this way, but that as she put the story together, this is the way Emily’s voice emerged. And perhaps it is that natural development of the character and voice that leaps off the page for me.
One of my favorite episodes of Grey’s Anatomy is when Tyne Daly appears as Derek Shepherd’s mother. She points out that while one character sees things in black and white, the other sees all shades of gray, describing Meredith Grey as the type of person who can have pity on a murderer. Fairies do not fit into our human notions of morality. They are neither all good nor all bad, and this lends itself to some delightful literary adventures. The flexibility of their morality, if it can even be described as such, provides endless avenues to explore. Fawcett’s presentation of the fairy world resonates strongly with my own notions of the genre.
I could have gone on about faerie stories—I’ve written several articles on the subject—but I didn’t know how to talk to him about my scholarship, if what I said would be nonesense to his ears. The truth is that, for the Folk, stories are everything. Stories are part of them and their world in a fundamental way that mortals have difficulty grasping; a story may be a singular event from the past, but—crucially—it is also a pattern that shapes their behaviour and predicts future events. The Folk have no system of laws, and while I am not saying stories are as law to them, they are the closest thing their world has to some form of order.
A great conversation with Heather Fawcett can be found on the podcast Breaking the Glass Slipper in the episode “Away with the fairies.”
The second book in the Emily Wilde series, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands was released on January 9, 2024. I approached this book with a little trepidation. Having loved the first book so ardently, I was a little worried as to how I would receive the second. Instead of racing through, as I am often wont to do with a much-anticipated book, I took my time and read the book over three days instead of twenty-four hours! I relished each word, and each page, pausing between journal entries to bathe myself in what had just happened. The narrative voice that Fawcett has created in these books lends itself to luxuriating in the language and the stories. She invites you with cadence and craft to deliberate over each part of the tale, to not rush headfirst, but to take stock of what is going on. It is masterfully done.
In Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands we rocket quickly from the halls of Cambridge University to the foothills of the Alps, in search of a fairy door that has long been dismissed as nonsense. We see a few of the characters from the previous book and are pleased to learn that the relationships formed have been maintained. We are also introduced to several new characters—Emily’s niece Ariadne and her department head Dr Rose become chief among these. After the love I felt for the people of Hrafnsvik, I did wonder if I could enjoy a different set of characters as much, but Fawcett continues to create beautifully intricate and compelling characters. Ariadne could be one dimensional but does not remain the simple relative that she at first appears to be, and as Emily grows to appreciate her, the reader is drawn into their own relationship with her, independent entirely from that of her aunt. However, it is the Department Head, Dr. Rose, that I consider Fawcett’s masterpiece in this book. Upon first introduction, you want to hate him (and indeed do hate him) with the passion of hating Delores Umbridge from the Potterverse, but the hatred is tempered very quickly by his common sense and mutual love of Emily’s field of work. They share a passion but not an approach. They share a drive but not a disposition. His character is not linear, it is complicated. You do not grow to love the man, but I found myself vacillating between love and hate. By the end of the tale, you have a rich relationship with him, as does Emily. It truly is a delightful process to go through with her. He is never entirely what you expect him to be.
The Fae that are encountered in this book continue to straddle the line between wicked and our world, but Emily’s approach to them continues to prove reliable and she is in no danger of being overshadowed by anything in her story. Emily herself continues to develop as a character that makes me as fond of her in mere months, as I have been of Lizzy Bennet for most of my lifetime.
My stomach is in knots even as I write these words, and in general I prefer to avoid thinking about the whole business so as not to be sent into a minor panic. It is in part, I suppose, that the thought of marrying anyone makes me wish to retreat to the nearest library and hide myself among the stacks; marriage has always struck me as a pointless business, at best a distraction from my work and at worst a very large distraction from my work coupled with a lidfetime of tedious social obligations.
The delightful Wendell Bambleby remains on the periphery for much of this second book, which turns out to be a stroke of genius, giving Emily pride of place in the story, as it should be. Fawcett has already pronounced that these books will be a trilogy, and so I wait with bated breath for the final installment. The setup of the ending of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands is quite a cliffhanger.
If you need a cozy read for the winter, are inclined towards fairy stories, or just simply enjoy a story well told, then Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series is exactly what you need. The Emily Wilde books are published by Del Rey, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
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