Serena’s Review: “Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands”

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Book: “Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands” by Heather Fawcett

Publishing Info: Del Rey, January 2024

Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publishers!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.
 
Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore—she just wrote the world’s first comprehensive of encylopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Folk on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival, Wendell Bambleby.
 
Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, and in search of a door back to his realm. So despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and danger.
 
And she also has a new project to focus a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by Bambleby’s mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambley’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.
 
But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.

Review: Here we are in a new year starting off with one of my most anticipated reads of 2024 right off the bat! And with a highly anticipated book always comes a bunch of nerves. What if the first book was a one-off?? What if the story takes a turn in a direction that I won’t like? What if I was slightly delirious when I read the first book and it was all in my head?? (Well, less so on that last one, as the first book was well received by pretty much everyone!). But, gentle reader, I am here to assuage your fears: not only did I enjoy this book as much as the first one, I think I liked it even more!

Now, given how much I liked the first one, that’s a pretty big claim to make. But I think it’s pretty easy to back up by simply going through what I liked in the first book and how well this book built upon and expanded on those original concepts. First of all with the world-building and fairy elements. While the first book follows Emily’s experiences out in the field, this book not only does the same (this time seeing her and Wendell off to the Austrian Alps) but we also get a brief look into her life as a professor on campus. The story only briefly stays in this location, but through these insights into her life as professor, we meet other important side characters, such as another professor who is a more senior member of the faculty, and a student assistant who bewilders Emily constantly. I really enjoyed these academic elements of the story. Yes, of course, the fairy stuff is the most exciting, but you can’t have academic fantasy without the “academic” stuff as well, and I was pleased to see this book lean into this aspect of the story.

Speaking of side characters, Emily and Wendell are not the only two off on the expedition to the Alps. The aforementioned professor and student tag along as well. Through this book and the first, it becomes clear that while Emily is a great character on her own, she’s at her best when bouncing off of other characters. Wendell is the main focal point, but I think that these other two characters also allowed Emily’s character to grow and expand as well. We see her struggle to connect to a colleague who approaches their shared work in a very different manner, forcing her to reflect on her own choices, recognizing which are strengths worth fighting for and which could do with a second glance. I also enjoyed watching her interaction with the young woman, Ariadne, her student. These interactions are as hilarious as you’d expect, especially in the light of the fact that it’s obvious that Emily herself probably presented many similar challenges to her own mentor.

I also really enjoyed the fairy elements. I remember mentioning in my review of the first book that I enjoyed how vicious the members of Fae were, something that you don’t always see. Here, we get even more of the same, from some truly frightening new creatures to a much larger exploration of some of the realms of Fae itself. There were moments where this book very much walked right up to the line of horror, which is such an odd thing to say about a book that also falls solidly within the “cozy fantasy” subgenre. Yes, bloodthirsty foxes with baby faces are “cozy!” You heard it here first.

The larger exploration of Fae also touches on another area of improvement in this book (again, this is all “improving” from a very high starting point to begin with.) Due to the nature of the first story, Emily ends up as a fairly passive character in the final section of that book. It works for that story and I didn’t have an problems with it there. But I was incredibly happy to see this book swap Emily and Wendell’s roles in this story, with Emily spending the majority of the book fighting to break a curse brought down upon Wendell. And in pursuit of this, she must enter Fae without him, putting to test all of her skills as a scholar and adventurer. There is so much great stuff in this final third of the book, but obviously I can’t get into much of it without falling into spoiler-y territory. It’s all action-packed, tense, and highlights just how awesome of a character Emily is! She’s smart, brave, and, of course, unintentionally hilarious!

And, lastly, the romance! Obviously, I loved everything we got from Emily and Wendell in the first book, but we get even more here. I was mildly curious how the book would manage the change in their relationship, but they and their interactions with each other are, at the same time, exactly as before and, of course, much further along in their relationship with one another. Each is still bewildered by the other, and their bumbling around within their own emotions is just as cute as you could imagine. There were several moments that were incredibly sweet, and I enjoyed Emily’s internal exploration of what it means to love and trust another in this way. This is just the sort of romance that I love to see in my fantasy stories.

I was so happy with this book! It really met every expectation I had built up in my head and exceeded my wildest dreams in many ways. High praise, but in this case, well earned.

Rating 10: Take the high that was reading the first book and somehow expand it a million times over! Absolutely brilliant in every way!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Fantasy Romance Releases January 2024 and Historical Romantic Fantasy