Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands

August 1, 2023

In the LJ-starred, nationally best-selling Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Cambridge scholar Emily Wilde, who specializes in faerie folklore, learns that rival scholar Wendell Bambleby is actually a faerie king, exiled by his bloodthirsty mother and eager to return home. In this second book in the series, Bambleby has proposed marriage--Emily's tempted--but then his mother sends assassins his way. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 6, 2023
Set in September 1910, seven months after the conclusion of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, the entrancing second volume in Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series focuses on her protagonist’s attempts to locate a faerie nexus in the alpine village of St. Liesl. Emily’s interest in the cozy-yet-sinister village is not strictly professional: though she aspires to publish a map of Faerie kingdoms, she also wants to help her colleague and love interest, Wendell Bambleby, find the mystical door leading back to his home realm. Joining them are straitlaced Farris Rose, the head of Cambridge’s dryadology department who is constantly threatening to fire them both, and Emily’s enthusiastic but inexperienced niece, Ariadne. The presence of these characters helps contextualize Emily’s personality, and her grumpiness plays better here than in the first installment. With Wendall’s stepmother out for his blood, their search becomes even more urgent. Along the way, they must rescue two other dryadologists who have been trapped in time. Fawcett handily expands the scope of the series, building on all that worked in the first volume and largely doing away with anything that didn’t. Upping the danger and the darkness while still retaining all the beauty of the prose, this takes Emily’s story to new heights. Agent: Brianne Johnson, HG Literary.

November 1, 2023

In Fawcett's second novel in the "Emily Wilde" series, after Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, it's 1910, and Emily, a Cambridge professor recently granted tenure, has published her encyclopedia of faeries and now endeavors to create a map of the faerie worlds. When Wendell Bambleby, a colleague and exiled royal faerie, is attacked by assassins sent by his stepmother, Emily is forced to begin her map of the Otherlands sooner than she planned, as she and Wendell need to find a door to his realm to get him home to stop the assassination attempts. Emily believes that she can find that door in the Austrian Alps. She attempts to navigate socializing with the villagers to gain insight into the local folk to locate the door's whereabouts and also to find a long-lost faerie researcher who mysteriously disappeared over 50 years ago. VERDICT In this historical fantasy of manners, Fawcett brings readers back to a beautifully atmospheric world in which faeries exist in the regular human realm. Recommend to fans of Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons and R.F. Kuang's Babel.--Leigh Verburg

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Starred review from November 1, 2023
Emily Wilde is back (after Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, 2023), and this time she is headed to the Austrian Alps, ostensibly to work on her map of Faerie. But she has an ulterior motive: Wendell Bambleby, fellow Cambridge professor, has been poisoned and Emily believes the cure lies in Silva Lupi, the faerie court where Wendell should be king. Plus, his stepmother keeps sending faerie creatures to campus in an attempt to assassinate him. A fellow scholar, Danielle de Gray, was lost trying to find the door to the kingdom, but Emily, along with Wendell, her niece, Ariadne, her dog, Shadow, and, unexpectedly, the Head of the Department of Dryadology, are determined. A mysterious man bedecked with ribbons appears to Emily, but that's nothing compared to the dangers she and her motley crew face, from killer fox-like faeries to otherworldly magic. Once again, the tale is told through Emily's journal, with scholarly asides in footnotes adding to the charm. Readers will be pleased that curmudgeonly Emily hasn't lost too much of her edge, but she's still susceptible to unexpected bonds of friendship. This utterly enchanting series will appeal to readers of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate books.

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December 1, 2023
The second in a series chronicling the adventures of an English dryadologist--an academic studying faeries--in an alternate Europe. Emily Wilde has refused the marriage proposal of her former academic rival, Wendell Bambleby, because she would be mad to marry a deposed faerie king disguised as a human. But she has devoted herself to finding a door into his kingdom, which would allow him to take back the realm stolen from him by his stepmother. Emily's quest takes her to the isolated Alpine village of St. Liesl, accompanied by Wendell and two unexpected companions: Emily's niece Ariadne, an aspiring dryadologist, and Farris Pole, the prickly head of the Dryadology Department, who blackmailed Emily into including him. Much of the plot follows the outline of the previous volume, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (2023): Emily and her cohort stay in a guesthouse; everyone but Emily manages to befriend the locals (she's hopeless at social niceties); Emily encourages hikes into the countryside, where they have perilous encounters with the local faeries; and Emily's determination leads her to behave rashly, endangering everyone's lives, until her cleverness and intuitive understanding of faerie behavior allow her to triumph. But Emily's adventures remain entertaining, thanks to the neurodivergent heroine whose blunt behavior and affinity for peculiar logic present a problem when interacting with humans but prove an asset with faeries. This book also offers new emotional depths for Emily, who struggles with her growing but potentially life-threatening love for Wendell, unexpected affection for her niece, and fraught relationship with Farris Pole. Now that she has people to care about, the previously solitary young woman has to reckon even more closely with the consequences of her behavior and how it affects those around her. Emily feels like a character worth following; hopefully the next installment shakes up the format a little. A strong second outing for a well-built world and an interesting, strangely well-matched pair of lovers.

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