strange and random happenstance

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: ★★★★★
To Buy

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 theirs 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!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alps, Borderlands, Bran Eichorn, Brontes, Cambridge, Cathy Earnshaw, Danielle de Grey, Dr. Farris Rose, Emily Wilde, Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, Fauns, Heather Fawcett, Summer School, Top Ten, Wendell Bambleby

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Published by: Del Rey Books
Publication Date: February 11th, 2025
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Stories are the architecture of Faerie, more powerful than magic, more powerful than kings, and Cambridge professor, Emily Wilde, PhD, MPhil, BSc, Dde, tenured, is now in the middle of one. She and her fiance, Wendell Bambleby, are about to retake his kingdom. They've both taken a sabbatical from Cambridge to accomplish this goal. Wendell has been in exile from the Silva Lupi since his stepmother killed his entire family and assumed the throne. Thanks to Emily he not only has a way back, but his stepmother might have already perished by poisoning and he has a rather intimidating entourage. One wouldn't want to show up in one of the most dangerous Faerie realms without a plan. So they swan in with the guardians lead by Razkarden, the trolls, the tree fauns, and the fuchszwerge, the fox-faeries, lead by Snowbell. And they are met with no opposition. Which might be the most unnerving thing about entering the Silva Lupi. Eventually Queen Arna's half-brother, Lord Taran, saunters up and tells them the lay of the land. Arna isn't dead but if Wendell wants the throne he has to best Lord Taran. It's nothing personal, violence comes as naturally as drawing breath to the monarchs of the Silva Lupi, and he promised Wendell's father that he would protect the kingdom from a weak ruler. Lord Taran is the greatest swordsman in the land, and, for a while, Wendell holds his own, but it's not in swordplay that he bests his father, it's by his needle and thread. The path cleared they ascend their thrones and it seems that their only problem will be Emily adjusting the the great many monsters in Wendell's court. But Queen Arna has a neatly constructed vengeance in store. As Emily poisoned her she has in turn poisoned the land. Emily and Wendell worked so hard to find a way back to his world, that all their efforts should have been brought to this; only Wendell's death will lift the curse. Nothing more, nothing less. The Folk do appreciate a story that comes full circle. So in the logical extension of the illogic of Faerie, Emily will save the day due to her living a life lead by scholarly tomes. Stories are the foundations of this world, they may be used as a compass, a guiding star. They just need the right story, they need their guiding star, and this problem will just go away. Once she finds "King Macan's Bees" she thinks she has the answer, the story echoes the present problems, but it's uncanny how accurate it echoes them. Which worries Emily. Queen Arna is cunning and while Emily will never tire of untangling a faerie mystery, could this one be Wendell's last?

Heather Fawcett's Lady Emily series has been a magical, if at times menacing, romp through Faerie and it's academic accouterments. And while I've loved all the volumes in this series I find myself singling this one out as the most magical. While I could say it's because I've grown accustomed to the horrors, much like Emily is attempting to with the monsters in Wendell's court, I think it's really because of a few scenes of such magic that my breath was taken away. The most magical of these is when Emily and Wendell officially marry. In Faerie you don't have to have a big ceremony, you just have to declare your intentions and the deed is done. Which, let's be honest, Emily enjoyed far more than being the center of attention. But when they make their intentions known on a boat as they go to confront his stepmother when they pull apart from sealing their bond with a kiss the world around them is celebrating their love. Faeries are gathering along the shore with lights, like a forest full of fireflies, they illuminate the dark in a way that is pure magic. This is what I've always pictured when I think of the realms of faeries. Little me laying in bed being told fairy tales thrills at this moment. And my love of fairy tales is brought to a whole new level in this volume. Because Heather Fawcett tackles the intersectionality of ghost stories and fairy tales. That's right, Heather Fawcett is bringing in spiritualism into a story I already love and upping the game to a whole new level. So, ghost stories and fairy tales. They could both be under the umbrella of folklore, but personally I like to put them under the umbrella of horror. Because true ghost stories and fairy tales are terrifying. And that fear, that aspect of horror is what draws me in every time. It's the dark shadow of bedtime tales, those that keep you up at night because they have the ring of truth. For me, these types of tales are interchangeable. They are both about something otherworldly. And that this was acknowledged in this series makes me giddy. What's more, it's one of the reasons dryadology even exists as a discipline, because of people studying ghosts. Though, to take this even further, Archibald Robbins of the University of Amsterdam was an iconoclast who theorized there were interactions between the Folk and the spirit world. Then Helen Worthington-West took this further and presented a paper about a brownie who had spoken with the recently deceased using a door. Doors, like the door Emily needed to find to return Wendell to his realm. But this door goes to a spiritual limbo. A place half in the world, half elsewhere, where the ghosts of the Folk linger. Oh my, it's the commingling of two things that in my mind have always been linked that I just can't get enough of. I want more. And I totally agree with Emily, she should have been studying ghost stories instead of the histories of great faerie monarchs.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cambridge, Emily Wilde, Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales, Faeries, Fairy Tales, Ghost Stories, Heather Fawcett, King Macan's Bees, Poison, Queen Arna, Silva Lupi, Spiritualism, Stories, Summer School, Wendell Bambleby

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: ★★★★★
To Buy

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!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alps, Ariadne Wilde, Borderlands, Bran Eichorn, Brontes, Cambridge, Cathy Earnshaw, Danielle de Grey, Dr. Farris Rose, Emily Wilde, Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, Fauns, Heather Fawcett, Summer School, Wendell Bambleby

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Published by: Del Rey Books
Publication Date: January 10th, 2023
Format: Hardcover, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Cambridge professor, Emily Wilde, PhD, MPhil, BSc, Dde, untenured, is hoping to change this status with her research trip to Hrafnsvik, Ljosland, the most isolated of Scandinavian countries, an island situated off the Norwegian coastline brushing the arctic circle. Emily is the foremost dryadologist in her field, but being a prickly woman inept at small talk has limited her advancement within the remorseless academic hierarchy. She knows better than most, she's been ensconced there since she was fifteen. When Emily's Grandfather, an amateur folklorist, died when she was a child his library became her best friend. Most children love faeries for their magic, but not Emily. To her the Folk were another world with their own rules and customs, and to a child who felt ill-suited to the human realm the lure was irresistible. And it's in the stories you unlock the secrets of the Folk. There are held the deepest truths. Because the Folk cannot be understood, living in accordance to whims and fancies that are little more than a series of contradictions with jealously guarded traditions that are erratically followed. They can be cataloged but true understanding is impossible. And that is exactly what Emily plans to do to achieve tenure. She is writing an encyclopedia. Her encyclopedia with be a pinnacle of faerie scholarship, though it is still incomplete and in manuscript form. A heavy thing presently totally some five hundred pages not including the appendices. It will be extensive, alphabetized, cross-referenced, and paired with illustrations as well as a phonetic guide. She is in Ljosland to learn about their Hidden Ones. They will be the feather in her cap and form the final entry to her life's work. She arrives with her dog Shadow and soon turns the village against her. Luckily, or not, depending on your point of view, her colleague Wendell Bambleby has decided to follow her in her hunt with his servants, commonly referred to as students, in tow. He has a reason for being there. He's been under a cloud of suspicion since it turned out his Schwarzwald study was faked. The incident has tarnished his reputation and therefore his ability to get funding and someone as unassailable as Emily could launder his reputation. They could coauthor a paper and do a joint presentation at the upcoming International Conference of Dryadology and Experimental Folklore in Paris. This would limit her time in Hrafnsvik and cede some of the credit to Bambleby. But it is acceptable. The only problem is Bambleby embeds himself into the lives of these villagers. They are suffering at the hands of the Folk. Five people have been taken in the last four years and a rather horrific changeling is in residence. And Emily feels the need to help. Though it might be far more dangerous to herself than she ever could have imagined and reveals Bambleby's secret to the world.

For quite some time now, in other words, the two years since this book has been in print, people have been telling me how much I needed to read it. And, I have to begrudgingly admit, that they were right. I don't like to admit I'm ever wrong if you were wondering, which I think is something Emily and I might agree on. Emily might be a bit too prickly for me at times and her empathy can wax and wane depending on her scholarly goals, but the book is a delicious blend of Amelia Peabody and The Mummy, obviously the 1999 classic staring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, with a huge helping of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Yet at the same time wonderfully unique while capturing a bygone era were academic research and journaling were in high regard. Sigh, for the academic life of a bygone era. Though it's the concept of home and homeland that weaves through this book that connected to me and made my heart ache. Homeland both ancestral and personal. On my mother's side I am fully Norwegian. You get all my family together and not only is it obvious we're related, but we're all blonde hair and blue eyes and about as tall as you can make us. The Scandinavian ideal. So I really connected with the people of Hrafnsvik. Yes, Ljosland doesn't exist and is an amalgam of Norway and Iceland, but it felt like my ancestral home. Here though I have to drop a note in for those people who say that this book insults Norwegians by being more Icelandic than Norwegian by saying that firstly, this is fictional, and secondly, the cross-pollination of myths, legends, and even names plays into Emily's theory that the Folk are far more in contact with each other than most academics think and just because this island is off the coast of Norway it is not Norwegian. Though you can't help thinking of Scandinavian cultures and Norway in particular with their fairy tales, folk tales, and fables. Oh, and the trolls. There are A LOT of trolls according to Norwegians. But when it comes time for a book to be written about fairies they're almost always set in England. It was wonderfully refreshing to see the less represented cultural creations takes center stage. And one of those creations has a big secret I'm about to spill, so if you don't want to know what Bambleby's secret is, turn away now. So Bambleby is Folk. In fact he's a dispossessed king. While he puts on a show of a lackadaisical cad he's really just someone horribly homesick. And I know exactly how he feels, mourning for a home you may never return to. I felt his pain because it is mine. While home is where your family is and he and Emily find a home in Hrafnsvik, it's also the homes that they can't return to, that I can't return to or have never been to that made this book resonate with me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Cambridge, Dryadology, Emily Wilde, Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries, Folk, Found Family, Heather Fawcett, Hidden Ones, His Dark Materials, Home, Iceland, Norway, Scandinavian, Summer School, The Mummy, Wendell Bambleby