Rating: 4 stars
Nowhere Books Bingo 2025: A fantasy book by a female author
Buzzword Cover Challenge 2025: Contains books
Spoiler warning! This is book 3 in the series and not the best place to start reading. This book will contain spoilers for the previous books in the series. Start at the beginning, with Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries.
Intrepid professor of dryadology (faerie scholar) Emily Wilde is facing her most challenging adventure yet - reclaiming the rather terrifying faerie kingdom of Silva Lupi, where her former academic rival, now impending husband, Wendell Bambleby (not his faerie name) is the rightful king. Emily loves Wendell, and doesn't regret her decision to marry him, but isn't entirely sure about becoming queen of a merciless and dangerous faerie realm. Nevertheless, the project offers up unique opportunities to further her research and writing, and Wendell has worked for so long to get back to his home.
His wicked stepmother, who killed most of Wendell's family and stole the throne, has vanished. Emily successfully poisoned her towards the end of the previous book, but the lady isn't entirely dead yet, and has in addition managed to use her magical connection to the land to place a deadly curse on Silva Lupi, which keeps poisoning larger and larger areas. Emily's research suggests that the only way to break the curse is either to find and kill the former queen or for Wendell to sacrifice his life for the realm. Obviously, the latter option isn't very appealing to either of them.
I'm not going to lie, I have been waiting for this book pretty much since I closed the covers to Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, the previous book in the series. Our Emily has come such a long way since she was trying (and failing) to communicate with the sceptical villagers in Ljosland. Now she has a number of friends, family members and allies to assist her in her quest to free Wendell and his kingdom from the quest left by his stepmother. While she loves Wendell, seeing him fully embrace his faerie powers and the changes that brings takes some adjustments. She also struggles with the idea of herself as queen, a role she feels wholly unfit for.
Did this book live up to my expectations? Not entirely, but after finishing the book, I see that my expectations of the story were unlikely to ever be satisfied. I had been hoping for more romance between Wendell and Emily, but the romantic subplot of these books has always been light, and I'm not sure why I didn't expect Wendell to be sidelined in the plot for much of the book, while Emily did what she's best at, researching and investigating folklore and faerie stories, and then of course, throwing herself into ridiculously dangerous situations to save the people she cares about. This was a very fitting and adventurous chapter in Emily's story, I shouldn't have suddenly expected the series to go down paths with more romance. Not to say there isn't romance here - some of Wendell's romantic gestures towards Emily are absolutely lovely (and show how very well he knows his grumpy intended). Emily, on her side, literally challenges death for his sake.
As far as I'm aware, this is the third and final book in the Emily Wilde trilogy, and it's a very fitting end for Emily and Wendell. Fawcett nevertheless leaves the ending open-ended enough that she will be able to return to this imaginative world at some point in the future, should she choose to do so.
Judging a book by its cover: Yet again, I think the UK cover is much prettier than the US one, although I wish it wasn't quite so pink. It also looks deceptively cute and quirky, considering how dark some of the themes explored in the book are. I'm not sure this cover entirely sells the story. Then again, I also hope people don't start a series with book 3, so even with the pastel pink cover, most readers know that Emily's adventures can go dark places.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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