Book Review - Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands
Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
Published by: Del Rey Books
Publication Date: January 16th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
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Cambridge professor, Emily Wilde, PhD, MPhil, BSc, Dde, tenured, is back and this time she's going to be the one doing the rescuing! Because the Folk are calling again. And their intent is deadly. Emily and Bambleby are back at Cambridge teaching. She's now a published author with tenor and a much more spacious office that gives her a little distance from Wendell. After all she hasn't decided yet if she'll accept his marriage proposal. He is deposed faerie royalty and that is problematic. Especially when his stepmother sends several assassins after him. The attack during one of his lectures does rather out him as one of the Folk. Thankfully only one person was paying attention. But it couldn't have been a worse person to have witnessed it. The Department Head of Dryadology, Dr. Farris Rose. One doesn't know if he's angry at his own ignorance or at the danger that has been lurking nearby for his entire tenure since his predecessor was abducted by a bogle in the Hebrides. One thing is clear, he's willing to help Emily get Bambleby back to his realm as fast as possible. Which means it's time to put Emily's theory about a back door, a nexus, used by the common fae that courtly fae are unaware of, to the test. Plus it will be invaluable to her new project, a mapbook of the faerie realms. Emily believes she has located a nexus in the Alps, specifically the village of St. Liesl in western Austria. The reasoning behind this is that the famous dryadologist Danielle de Grey mysteriously disappeared there over fifty years ago while investigating fauns in the region. Tree fauns that are unique to Wendell's realm. And getting Wendell home is more dire than ever because he's losing control of his powers. It turns out that the attack on his lecture wasn't the only attempt on his life. His stepmother has also poisoned him. And on his birthday no less! Has she no decency!?! So the expedition to the Alps is happening immediately, and Bambleby and Emily won't be alone. Dr. Farris Rose has spent years studying the Folk of the Alps, he convinces them they need his expertise. This is not exactly a magnanimous gesture. He sees it as a way to help Emily and get ride of Wendell. Plus, he's willing to live with a lapse in ethics in exchange for answers to the great scientific mysteries of our times. And then there's Emily's niece, Ariadne. The brightest student Emily has ever taught with an impressive alacrity for getting what she wants, like being included on this excursion and being Emily's assistant. They are in for a dangerous adventure. The townsfolk of St. Liesl warn them that the night is full of dangers and the kingdom they are searching for has had a disproportionate number of disappearances. But it's their only option if they are to save Wendell. If they're lucky perhaps they will solve the disappearance of de Grey as well. If they're unlucky they may never be heard from again.
Oh my, I don't know when I've enjoyed a book so much recently. And while I love Emily and Bambleby and all the new characters, even Dr. Rose, my heart is in it for Danielle de Grey. The very idea of folklorists becoming folklore brings a smile to my face. To be out there, searching for the answers, theories of trade routes connecting faerie realms, and to just disappear. To have all your research, everything about you overshadowed by your disappearance. And yet this doesn't diminish her reputation, she was known as an irreverent character who has become something of a folk hero. An enduring legend of dryadology, and here is Emily accidentally solving the mystery while trying to help Wendell. Because while it was thought that she had become lost in the Otherlands, an old name for the faerie realms, she was trapped in the borderlands, wandering the edges of different overlapping realms where time lost all meaning. Which is why spottings of her around St. Liesl show her at different ages. She's in a fluid and amorphous fog enshrouded land where she can appear at any age. Was she even being seen or was she some echo imprinted on the wind? What's more, the love of her life, a fellow professor, Bran Eichorn, disappeared in 1862 searching for her in the environs of St. Liesl. He too was lost to the borderlands, forever searching for her. It was he that Emily first encountered. There was some connection between the two of them, perhaps the foot that Emily nicked that used to belong to de Grey. But he understands what she is trying to do and attempts to convince her that finding Dani is the answer. Emily can't be sure if this is altruistic or not. But just the idea of these two lovers walking through the mist for over half a century calling out to one another is so Bronte-esque that I can't help but love every second of their apparently doomed romance. Thankfully things end for them better than they did for Cathy and Heathcliff. But then again, it's not like any ending could be worse than there's now can it? Just the whole vibe here made me want to go to the Alps and hide in a cottage and wander through the fog, but only during daylight hours while being tethered to an immobile stricture. What I also find interesting is that in reading about Eichorn and de Grey's relationship, they were unmarried but lived together in the 1860s. Were the social mores of this world that different from ours? Was it because she was viewed as irreverent that this was allowed? Or was it because she was a professor? Or is it because of the interaction between the human realm and the faerie realm creating different sexual mores due to what's been observed? I mean, Emily and Bambleby are at it in a tent and I have to ask, is this socially permissible? Because I love everything about this world and if they are a lot less prudish and "Victorian," well, all the better!
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