Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales Heather Fawcett
Reviewed by: Melissa Friedlund, Adult Services Specialist
Genre: Fantasy
Suggested Age: Teen, Adult
Spoiler Alert: This is book #3 in a series. Read with caution as this review may contain spoilers for earlier books.
What is the book about? Emily Wilde is an early 20th century scholar in England; a scholar of dryadology...the study of faeries. At this point in Emily’s career, she has fallen in love with Wendell, a prince of the Irish fairy kingdom, the Silva Lupi. Because Emily poisoned his stepmother, the previous evil queen of the realm, Wendell can now take his rightful throne and rule with Emily as his queen. There is a problem though. The evil queen is not quite dead yet. She has managed to use the poison in her body to poison the whole realm. Fortunately, Wendell’s blood seems to be the antidote. However, curing the who kingdom will mean giving his life. Emily must find a way to save the kingdom that won’t cause Wendell to sacrifice himself, but can she?
My Review: I enjoyed this listening to this audiobook. It is a “light fantasy” as opposed to epic fantasy with intense world-building. Since this is the third book in a series, there is less explanation of how the author constructed the world which allows the reader to jump right in. Faeries and dryadology are everyday topics in this series, for university scholars anyway, and the characters easily travel between the mortal and fairy realms multiple times in this story alone. The story is told as if we are reading Emily’s journal and she does tend to interrupt herself to quote sources of her fairy knowledge now and again, which I found this amusing. No gore, no bedroom scenes, just an enjoyable jaunt into another world.
Three Words That Describe This Book: Charming, Delightful, Entertaining
Give This a Try if You Like…A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh, and The Absinthe Earl by Sharon Lynn Fisher
Rating: 4/5