Sep. 15th, 2022

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Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries: A NovelEmily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries: A Novel by Heather Fawcett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Set in a slightly sideways version of 1909 (Scandinavia and Cambridge) , this is an epistolary fantasy with a truly imaginative premise and a generous dose of wit. The underlying premise is that faeries are real and dryadology is a recognized field of study -- with all the academic infighting and bizarre footnotes that this implies.

The heroine, a young Cambridge scholar, is on a research trip to investigate the "Hidden Ones" of Ljosland. Accompanied by her large and mysterious dog, and soon joined by her equally mysterious colleague / rival Brambleby, she plunges into several months of increasingly dangerous adventures in the name of knowledge -- and, in the process, finds her own prickly and scholarly personality (not to mention her whole life) changing.

Professor Emily's journals are our window into this world, and her dryly humorous observations keep the pages turning / clicking even when the plot itself takes a while to rev up. When it does, however, there's a genuinely dark edge. The fae here are closer to Machen than Disney. Frightening things happen, good people suffer and die, and even the friendliest of the Folk are truly Other. They don't think like we do, and expecting them to is a potentially fatal mistake.

Nothing is quite what it seems in this fae-ridden environment, though Emily maintains her academic composure throughout (with one or two exceptions) and refuses to allow even Brambleby's considerable attractions to distract her. I was genuinely sorry to see this book end, though it did so more abruptly than I'd expected, with some unresolved plot threads. I was glad to discover that this is Book One of a series, but I'd have still have preferred a bit more resolution.

Recommended for lovers of historical fantasy, dark academia, and/or folklore fiction.

[Disclaimer: I received a free e-galley of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]




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