rachbreads 's review for:

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

3.0

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My life has been one long succession of moments in which I have chosen rationality over empathy, to shut away my feelings and strike off on some intellectual quest, and I have never regretted these choices, but rarely have they stared me in the face as bluntly as they did then.

I flew through this light historical fantasy (with a hint of romance), and while I enjoyed the book, it left me wanting a few things. It felt underwritten, and definitely too short. While I usually enjoy a journal entry/epistolary-style format, and it wasn’t entirely out of place here, it felt like I blinked and major events had passed and I was still left with a lot of questions and missing a lot of detail. I think the idea to structure the book as a journal for scientific record was clever, and I really enjoyed the moments when Emily directly referenced the reliability of her journal, or Wendell snuck in to write down his two cents. I just wish Fawcett had found a way to keep us more in the story, instead of everything being told after the fact, because it just felt a bit lackluster. I also wish it had been a standalone—in my opinion I would prefer for the storylines to all be wrapped up and this just be one 400-500 page book. But alas, the publishers must make their dollars, so a stretched out trilogy it is.