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A review by amelianotthepilot
Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
3.5
Similar to the first book of this series, although I love the cover of these books I find the cover and title a marketing nightmare-for years I saw these and assumed they was actual little kids encyclopedias and did not understand why the book girlies were hyped about it. After reading it i’m still eh. However I liked this one better than the first and presume i’ll like the third better yet.
The story is written as academic Emily Wilde’s field journal as she goes on a new expedition to discover fairies in the Austrian mountains. In this world fairies are known about and avidly studied in universities but still largely regarded as mischievous tricksters that the general populace leave alone. Emily is an academic from Cambridge and is attempting to discover a faerie door while working on her latest book. She and her colleague Wendell Brambley end up entangled in a small wintery mountain town’s fae community drama and an adventure ensues with vague romance. Mostly same as the first.
My opinions on the series remain the same after reading this one. I think the characters are interesting and the world building fascinating however the dedication to writing the whole story from the perspective of a scholar’s field journal left it extremelyyyyy boring and bland and very young sounding. This limited perspective made the romance mostly left to the readers imagination. I found the plot twists particularly boring as our main character is very clever and would often just state things as they are. Although I do appreciate this dedication to writing an erudite character who actually is smart and useful and not just supposed to be smart. I often found Emily’s character sorta boring since she solely focuses on her research and rarely mentions emotions, romance, or social interactions. There was an allusion to her perhaps being aromantic which would be nice rep and make more sense. It could also be argued this lack of romance is because it’s supposed to be academic notes but that is ridiculous since she often mentions things that are not academic related.
I also disliked the one chapter we get from Wendell’s perspective. I found it quite lazy. It’s exciting to get the love interests perspective but I think that should either be a consistent choice to have every other chapter from a different POV or do it as a seperate novella or just tumblr release.
Although the story was fun I found the climax events escalated entirely too fast and resolved too quickly and easily. However I do think it was better than the first book’s. There is also virtually no character development. But I did enjoy when the human characters experienced fae lands. It had a very visceral feeling to the descriptions and woozy character actions. I also absolutely love the fae world building it’s fascinating.
The story is written as academic Emily Wilde’s field journal as she goes on a new expedition to discover fairies in the Austrian mountains. In this world fairies are known about and avidly studied in universities but still largely regarded as mischievous tricksters that the general populace leave alone. Emily is an academic from Cambridge and is attempting to discover a faerie door while working on her latest book. She and her colleague Wendell Brambley end up entangled in a small wintery mountain town’s fae community drama and an adventure ensues with vague romance. Mostly same as the first.
My opinions on the series remain the same after reading this one. I think the characters are interesting and the world building fascinating however the dedication to writing the whole story from the perspective of a scholar’s field journal left it extremelyyyyy boring and bland and very young sounding. This limited perspective made the romance mostly left to the readers imagination. I found the plot twists particularly boring as our main character is very clever and would often just state things as they are. Although I do appreciate this dedication to writing an erudite character who actually is smart and useful and not just supposed to be smart. I often found Emily’s character sorta boring since she solely focuses on her research and rarely mentions emotions, romance, or social interactions. There was an allusion to her perhaps being aromantic which would be nice rep and make more sense. It could also be argued this lack of romance is because it’s supposed to be academic notes but that is ridiculous since she often mentions things that are not academic related.
I also disliked the one chapter we get from Wendell’s perspective. I found it quite lazy. It’s exciting to get the love interests perspective but I think that should either be a consistent choice to have every other chapter from a different POV or do it as a seperate novella or just tumblr release.
Although the story was fun I found the climax events escalated entirely too fast and resolved too quickly and easily. However I do think it was better than the first book’s. There is also virtually no character development. But I did enjoy when the human characters experienced fae lands. It had a very visceral feeling to the descriptions and woozy character actions. I also absolutely love the fae world building it’s fascinating.