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eni_se 's review for:
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
by Heather Fawcett
<b> TW: hand injury -on page traumatic non-medical finger amputation </b>
I flew through this book. It's an easy read. And yet...
Wtf, Fawcett, this was supposed to be a feel-good, cosy, whimsical book with low stakes! A finger being violently and unexpectedly self-amputated with an axe does not fit the vibe! And this trauma wasn't even necessary for the plot! It happened for the stupidest reason! Literally not much would have changed if this character hadn't done it. Emily was still taken prisoner anyway and she was still ensorcelled by the faerie without the ring--and finger.
This leads me to the character issues I had with this book: the protagonist is very mousy, bland, and stupid. While I love an academic or scientist protagonist and characters who make stupid mistakes, Emily Wilde was honestly as bland as a plain baked potato and barely competent despite her academic position and experience. She has no wildrerness/camping survival skills whatsover. She fails to consider basic survival at all while doing research in a polar island in the dead of winter around the 1900s. Right. Like has she even gone to another field trip before? Supposedly she has, but it doesn’t seem like it… Lucky Bambleby the love interest was there to save her ass.
It doesn't help that we get the story from Emily's journal entries and she writes as blandly as you would expect for someone with the personality of a filing cabinet. It's not like she's cute in her reactions, or even relatable or understandable; she's not weird enough, and her behaviors cannot be explained by her autistic coding either. Yes she is autistic-coded, but in my opinion this isn't integrated enough or well into the story and it's also not a justification to be incompetent at her job putting not only her own life, but others' in mortal danger. It would have honestly been so interesting if she was actually more explicitly autistic, and see how she navigates academia and field work, her struggles but also successes, maybe see how she interacts differently with certain people vs faeries and let's her connect to them in ways others can't. How others actually make mistakes with faeries she doesn't, because she actually does take into consideration her expertiese with them, like with the love interest. And especially considering there’s a changeling plot here, so considering how the myth has been linked to the treatment of neurodivergent, specifically autistic people in the past, it could have been an interesting point of discussion. But the book never does anything with this plot. It’s just there. It's all so vague here.
Honestly think I read a different book to everyone else. And I'm not saying the book needed to focus entirely on her neurodovergency, but please give us some sort of focus! The book is like all and nothing at once. Why is she the protagonsit? Aside from her making the encyclopedia, I can't think of one. I am seriously amazed that she managed to survive this long to finish writing it... Emily shines the best when she's interacting with faeries, yes, as it's her area of expertise, that until she also makes amateur stupid decisions WITH the fae that put her survival, their coworkers, and the entire village at risk. She's a boring version of the antisocial academic archetype like Temperance Brennan. And it would be fine, only I don’t think it’s a successful iteration of the trope.
Temperance might struggle a lot with neurotypicals and social stuff, but she is empathetic towards other cultures as an anthropologist, she is smart, she makes sometimes seemingly strange decisions or says weird things, but she’s professional and aware of her limitations and she instead uses her academic knowledge to study cultures as a whole, and try to make guesses of individuals too. Which is such solid character work. Temperance speaks about her struggles, and you can see them clearly (and yes the character is not perfect, it’s a product of her time), but she is never belittled by the narrative nor any neurodivergent misstep or “quirk” equated to inadequacy. I can’t say the same for Emily Wilde.
Speaking of, Emily wins over the village people pretty quickly from one chapter to the next for someone who managed to antagonize the entire place in the first hours after arriving to the island. These locals are fickle! I had no problem with her misteps with social interactions (honestly, same), but she fails to even consider local human cultures and traditions of the people who interact with the faeries daily. As if the two cultures are completely isolated from each other, which is a huge academic faux pas. It never even crosses her mind! Like you can be autistic/neurodivergent and still understand or consider theoretically how the two would impact each other. That’s what a good fae-anthropologist would do. (Side note, I do not consider her a biologist because of the focus of her work and she’s dealing with human like level of intelligence and culture in the fae, not other animals.) And she seems to not learn a lot from this big mistake. Ultimately what the villagers know of the local fae is irrelevant to the plot, cause she’s the scholar, the foreign savior in the end. It was such a missed opportunity to make social comparison and commentary on human vs fae behavior. But no…
This is my problem with cosy fantasy (or sci-if) as it exists now: it has none of the emotional stakes of the rest of the genre, none of the depth, but it wants you to care about the characters and themes just the same. But it doesn’t work like that. Because if nothing matters and nothing happens, then why should I care? I need more. I can’t even interact with a book the way you would a cosy video game, so I get nothing out of this aside from wasted time. I need you to earn my emotions for the book, my thinking about the themes, my attachment to the characters, my time I spend reading honeyed scenes. (And this book wasn’t even that cosy anyway! So what was the point?!)
And here’s the thing, I would forgive this book not being that cosy if it had given me something else to work with, maybe it was the marketing that was wrong saying it was cosy fantasy. But this book has nothing else of substance to offer. No social, anthropological discussions, no exceptional writing to carry it, no discussions of neurodivenrgence in history, no romance, no deep character connections, no fascinating characters (aside maybe from Bambleby), no interesting subversion of fae folktales, nothing. Truly a nothing burger.
Honestly, the love interest, Bambleby, was a much more engaging character and perspective to follow. I wish we'd gotten the book from his point of view. I loved his attitude, friendliness, drama, vanity, obsession with interior design and that he's an excellent tailor. (I half expected the love interest to be a local from the island but him being Emily's co-worker works too.) If only we've gotten even more banter from them, though. Or more romance. More anything! It’s such a lackluster romance.
Also, I found it a little weird that the two interns/students just leave at some point and they have no consequence in the narrative at all. Why were they even there?! Haha, what a waste of pages. How awesome would it have been if Emily herself had a female student/intern with her, maybe one who also struggles with social stuff, and this student is the one who falls in love with the village's wood-chopping lesbian? Then we actually have stakes when that couple get's in trouble with the faeries in the latter part of the book and Emily and Bambleby have to go save them . Then it would also provide a social connection to the village other than Bambleby doing all the work for Emily instead of her having to actually try and connect and understand these people’s way of life. But no, we get a boring bland generic Sapphic couple from the village instead. Literally the two of them are only there to be the damsels in distress and that's it.
While I enjoyed this book for the most part (up until that traumatic bloody injury thing happened out of nowhere), I was also left wanting much more from the romance and the setting. I was expecting either a little tension and sensuality in the veins of [book:The Cruel Prince|26032825] Folk of the Air trilogy, or more swoony, sweet romantic moments between the pair like a historical romance. And I got neither. And yet somehow the relationship is also pretty rushed. While the banter between Emily and Bambleby is pretty good, they didn't connect deeply enough for me or had a truly romantic moment. (It doesn’t mean it had to be physical, but there’s no intimacy, no connection beyond colegial banter.) They rarely talked about deeper topics, about themselves outside of what we already knew from the get-go, or shared soft touches, or soft words or had heated interactions charged with sexual tension. Nothing. We get nothing but a rushed marriage proposal in the last chapters for some reason?
The setting wasn't that well integrated into the story either. I can't help feeling it was a little interchangeable; there was nothing about the village being in a cold Nordic island that truly affected much. It could have been set in a tropical town too and it would be pretty much the same story but with beach faeries instead of ice faeries, because the fae we get are pretty generic and forgettable.
The writing is pretty good though, some of it could be a tiny bit more polished but some scenes had really cool imagery too--the frozen lake market, the old white cursed tree, etc. I wish it was far more atmospheric and the ice and snow and cold played a bigger role, though. If you’re gonna set a story in the arctic, you better take advantage of that setting. It would have helped a lot to elevate this story. Also they somehow are so close to the north pole yet they can easily travel by ship to and fro during both early winter and early February in the equivalent of our 19th century??? Yeah, I dont live close to the artic but even I know that would be the dead of winter and it would be hard to reach such a place unles you have like a modern plane or icebreaker ship or something. Also, no polar night??
I do love me a black shadow puppy dog as animal companion, though. He was the best part of the story. And the little forest ice faerie who loves a good fashionable cape is also precious.
The story overall is engaging, fast-paced, but sprinkled with a lot of awkwardness. I initially rated it 3 stars, but the more I think about it the more annoyed I get. Like I said, this book truly was an air sandwich for me. Was it a romance? Not really. A fairy tale? Nope. A deep exploration of human cultural and social aspects reflected and challenged by these faerie folk? Also no. (Huuuuge missed opportunity here.) A dark haunting faerie book? Not really considering the tone and content of the rest of the book. An exploration of a neurodivergent character and her navigating life and academic research?? I mean, if you squint, maybe.
I don't understand what was this book even trying to be? It didn't seem to know its goal and didn't deliver on the promises in the premise. It's not romantic enough, atmospheric enough, historical enough, academic enough, adventurous or epic enough to be anything but a disappointment. I am half tempted to read the second book because of Bambleby, but I'm also thinking I would rather read something else. Was I just misled by the marketing??
Edit: I've heard that the second book isn't "as good" as the first one. And since I didn't like the first one, I'm not going to continue this series.
I flew through this book. It's an easy read. And yet...
Wtf, Fawcett, this was supposed to be a feel-good, cosy, whimsical book with low stakes!
This leads me to the character issues I had with this book: the protagonist is very mousy, bland, and stupid. While I love an academic or scientist protagonist and characters who make stupid mistakes, Emily Wilde was honestly as bland as a plain baked potato and barely competent despite her academic position and experience. She has no wildrerness/camping survival skills whatsover. She fails to consider basic survival at all while doing research in a polar island in the dead of winter around the 1900s. Right. Like has she even gone to another field trip before? Supposedly she has, but it doesn’t seem like it… Lucky Bambleby the love interest was there to save her ass.
It doesn't help that we get the story from Emily's journal entries and she writes as blandly as you would expect for someone with the personality of a filing cabinet. It's not like she's cute in her reactions, or even relatable or understandable; she's not weird enough, and her behaviors cannot be explained by her autistic coding either. Yes she is autistic-coded, but in my opinion this isn't integrated enough or well into the story and it's also not a justification to be incompetent at her job putting not only her own life, but others' in mortal danger. It would have honestly been so interesting if she was actually more explicitly autistic, and see how she navigates academia and field work, her struggles but also successes, maybe see how she interacts differently with certain people vs faeries and let's her connect to them in ways others can't. How others actually make mistakes with faeries she doesn't, because she actually does take into consideration her expertiese with them, like with the love interest. And especially considering there’s a changeling plot here, so considering how the myth has been linked to the treatment of neurodivergent, specifically autistic people in the past, it could have been an interesting point of discussion. But the book never does anything with this plot. It’s just there. It's all so vague here.
Honestly think I read a different book to everyone else. And I'm not saying the book needed to focus entirely on her neurodovergency, but please give us some sort of focus! The book is like all and nothing at once. Why is she the protagonsit? Aside from her making the encyclopedia, I can't think of one. I am seriously amazed that she managed to survive this long to finish writing it... Emily shines the best when she's interacting with faeries, yes, as it's her area of expertise, that until she also makes amateur stupid decisions WITH the fae that put her survival, their coworkers, and the entire village at risk. She's a boring version of the antisocial academic archetype like Temperance Brennan. And it would be fine, only I don’t think it’s a successful iteration of the trope.
Temperance might struggle a lot with neurotypicals and social stuff, but she is empathetic towards other cultures as an anthropologist, she is smart, she makes sometimes seemingly strange decisions or says weird things, but she’s professional and aware of her limitations and she instead uses her academic knowledge to study cultures as a whole, and try to make guesses of individuals too. Which is such solid character work. Temperance speaks about her struggles, and you can see them clearly (and yes the character is not perfect, it’s a product of her time), but she is never belittled by the narrative nor any neurodivergent misstep or “quirk” equated to inadequacy. I can’t say the same for Emily Wilde.
Speaking of, Emily wins over the village people pretty quickly from one chapter to the next for someone who managed to antagonize the entire place in the first hours after arriving to the island. These locals are fickle! I had no problem with her misteps with social interactions (honestly, same), but she fails to even consider local human cultures and traditions of the people who interact with the faeries daily. As if the two cultures are completely isolated from each other, which is a huge academic faux pas. It never even crosses her mind! Like you can be autistic/neurodivergent and still understand or consider theoretically how the two would impact each other. That’s what a good fae-anthropologist would do. (Side note, I do not consider her a biologist because of the focus of her work and she’s dealing with human like level of intelligence and culture in the fae, not other animals.) And she seems to not learn a lot from this big mistake. Ultimately what the villagers know of the local fae is irrelevant to the plot, cause she’s the scholar, the foreign savior in the end. It was such a missed opportunity to make social comparison and commentary on human vs fae behavior. But no…
This is my problem with cosy fantasy (or sci-if) as it exists now: it has none of the emotional stakes of the rest of the genre, none of the depth, but it wants you to care about the characters and themes just the same. But it doesn’t work like that. Because if nothing matters and nothing happens, then why should I care? I need more. I can’t even interact with a book the way you would a cosy video game, so I get nothing out of this aside from wasted time. I need you to earn my emotions for the book, my thinking about the themes, my attachment to the characters, my time I spend reading honeyed scenes. (And this book wasn’t even that cosy anyway! So what was the point?!)
And here’s the thing, I would forgive this book not being that cosy if it had given me something else to work with, maybe it was the marketing that was wrong saying it was cosy fantasy. But this book has nothing else of substance to offer. No social, anthropological discussions, no exceptional writing to carry it, no discussions of neurodivenrgence in history, no romance, no deep character connections, no fascinating characters (aside maybe from Bambleby), no interesting subversion of fae folktales, nothing. Truly a nothing burger.
Honestly, the love interest, Bambleby, was a much more engaging character and perspective to follow. I wish we'd gotten the book from his point of view. I loved his attitude, friendliness, drama, vanity, obsession with interior design and that he's an excellent tailor. (I half expected the love interest to be a local from the island but him being Emily's co-worker works too.) If only we've gotten even more banter from them, though. Or more romance. More anything! It’s such a lackluster romance.
Also, I found it a little weird that the two interns/students just leave at some point and they have no consequence in the narrative at all. Why were they even there?! Haha, what a waste of pages. How awesome would it have been if Emily herself had a female student/intern with her, maybe one who also struggles with social stuff, and this student is the one who falls in love with the village's wood-chopping lesbian? Then we actually have stakes
While I enjoyed this book for the most part (up until that traumatic bloody injury thing happened out of nowhere), I was also left wanting much more from the romance and the setting. I was expecting either a little tension and sensuality in the veins of [book:The Cruel Prince|26032825] Folk of the Air trilogy, or more swoony, sweet romantic moments between the pair like a historical romance. And I got neither. And yet somehow the relationship is also pretty rushed. While the banter between Emily and Bambleby is pretty good, they didn't connect deeply enough for me or had a truly romantic moment. (It doesn’t mean it had to be physical, but there’s no intimacy, no connection beyond colegial banter.) They rarely talked about deeper topics, about themselves outside of what we already knew from the get-go, or shared soft touches, or soft words or had heated interactions charged with sexual tension. Nothing. We get nothing but a
The setting wasn't that well integrated into the story either. I can't help feeling it was a little interchangeable; there was nothing about the village being in a cold Nordic island that truly affected much. It could have been set in a tropical town too and it would be pretty much the same story but with beach faeries instead of ice faeries, because the fae we get are pretty generic and forgettable.
The writing is pretty good though, some of it could be a tiny bit more polished but some scenes had really cool imagery too--the frozen lake market, the old white cursed tree, etc. I wish it was far more atmospheric and the ice and snow and cold played a bigger role, though. If you’re gonna set a story in the arctic, you better take advantage of that setting. It would have helped a lot to elevate this story. Also they somehow are so close to the north pole yet they can easily travel by ship to and fro during both early winter and early February in the equivalent of our 19th century??? Yeah, I dont live close to the artic but even I know that would be the dead of winter and it would be hard to reach such a place unles you have like a modern plane or icebreaker ship or something. Also, no polar night??
I do love me a black shadow puppy dog as animal companion, though. He was the best part of the story. And the little forest ice faerie who loves a good fashionable cape is also precious.
The story overall is engaging, fast-paced, but sprinkled with a lot of awkwardness. I initially rated it 3 stars, but the more I think about it the more annoyed I get. Like I said, this book truly was an air sandwich for me. Was it a romance? Not really. A fairy tale? Nope. A deep exploration of human cultural and social aspects reflected and challenged by these faerie folk? Also no. (Huuuuge missed opportunity here.) A dark haunting faerie book? Not really considering the tone and content of the rest of the book. An exploration of a neurodivergent character and her navigating life and academic research?? I mean, if you squint, maybe.
I don't understand what was this book even trying to be? It didn't seem to know its goal and didn't deliver on the promises in the premise. It's not romantic enough, atmospheric enough, historical enough, academic enough, adventurous or epic enough to be anything but a disappointment. I am half tempted to read the second book because of Bambleby, but I'm also thinking I would rather read something else. Was I just misled by the marketing??
Edit: I've heard that the second book isn't "as good" as the first one. And since I didn't like the first one, I'm not going to continue this series.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Self harm, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Blood
The main character self-amputates a finger with an axe.