Dryadologist Emily Wilde employs research methods that may occasionally make her colleagues shake their heads. That doesn’t seem likely to change now that she’s engaged to a faerie prince and responsible for the overthrow of his stepmother, the former queen. All that’s left is for Wendell Bambleby, Emily’s former academic rival and newly betrothed, to take the throne. But Wendell’s stepmother is not so willing to give up her hold on life or the realm. As Wendell and Emily adjust to their new roles, they must contend with a growing malignancy in the land of Silva Lupi, one that threatens to corrupt its landscape and destroy its residents. But faerie is ever ruled by the conventions of fairy tales, and Emily knows that if she can just find the right story, she’ll also find the way to cure the rot. Her only fear is that the story—like so many of its kind—won’t give her the happy ending she wants.
As with previous installments in Heather Fawcett’s bestselling series, Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales is charming in both its presentation and its main character. Presented as a mildly edited version of the titular professor’s personal notes—complete with the occasional dry citations and footnotes—the novel captures its narrator’s eccentric love of faerie and perpetual difficulty in understanding the rest of the world. But where the Emily of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries was closed-off and curmudgeonly at best, the Emily we meet in her latest adventure has somewhat softened. Although she usually remains more interested in research than her fellow humans, and still struggles to understand other people’s unreasonableness, the once hermit-like Emily now has a small group of comrades who she loves and who love and accept her in return. Her eccentricities, once a force that drove others away, are now the assets she uses to show her affection. Full of heart and wonder, Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales is a conclusion fitting for its heroine: thoughtful, fantastical and dotted with thoroughly informative footnotes.
