Book Review: Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

I was so excited to pick up the second installation of Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series, the first of which I also read in January of last year, so maybe I’ll make this a yearly January tradition as long as Fawcett continues the series. I haven’t read a series in such a long time, and I’ve forgotten the anticipation that you feel in between books. 

This book was still charming, but not as charming as the first. There was the banter, but it didn’t make me smile like an idiot or chuckle aloud as much as the first. However, there was still the whimsy, the writing style, and the Wendell that made this a very good sequel. 

Perhaps it’s the scientific approach in which Emily Wilde explains the fae world, since she is a scholar, but the first book (and the majority of the second book), almost seem like realistic fantasy. As in, everything that happens makes sense for the world that Fawcett builds. But in this second book, there were a couple parts that were too fantastical for me, like the part where they are on a boat over invisible water in a museum. It took me out of the story. I don’t remember getting that impression from the first book.

A part that genuinely annoyed me was after they had discovered who was scraping at their door throughout the majority of the novel. 1) Did they never think to look out a window to see who was at the door? If they addressed this in the novel, I don’t remember it. 2) Even after I had figured it out and knew how Emily had come to this conclusion, all of her scholarly peers and superiors were still in shock and awe and demanding how she figured it out, because of course Emily is so much smarter than her counterparts and unnaturally clever. I had this same criticism of the first book, where Emily at times seems to have a hero complex, both intrinsic and imposed by the author, but not to this degree. But that is one scene. I just would have rather it not be in there or written so annoyingly.

Throughout the novel, I was looking forward to Wendell’s dedicated chapter, which I just knew was coming simply by instinct, because how could Fawcett deprive us of his wonderful POV? Again, I don’t think the series would be nearly as endearing without Wendell’s humor. 

I’m not as itchy to buy the next book in the series to the same extent as I was after the first novel, but I do want to finish the series, and am hoping the third book will be the last. A trilogy seems like the perfect length for this story. 

“You must not hesitate […] simply ignore the impossible until it ceases to be so”