Category: Fantasy

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Heather Fawcett
Genres: Fantasy
Pub. Date: Jan. 2024

I sound like a broken record, but I cannot get enough of Heather Fawcett’s books! Emily Wilde is her first adult fantasy series and I am obsessed! I’m so glad to see it get such high reviews because I do think it’s the type of series that’s not for everyone. It’s a slow burn read and I don’t think it’s everyone’s type of storytelling because it leaves the reader to work out a lot of the intricacies of the world-building. But I think it’s also why it’s resonating with so many people. 

This fantasy world is a mix of the real world and the faerie world. It’s never quite explained to us, but rather it feels like you’re walking into this fully formed world to discover it for yourself. It’s always going to seem a bit mysterious to the reader, but the people in this world don’t really understand faerie either, so that’s exactly the way it should be!

If you’ve heard the term “cozy fantasy”, this is it. Despite always having the coldest settings in her books, this story is filled with warmth. Choosing to tell the story through Emily’s diary entries definitely isn’t the easiest way to build drama because by the time Emily gets around to writing about the drama, you can be lulled into security by knowing that she has at least escaped and is now safe enough to write about it. But this narration also works so well because Emily has the perfect voice to tell this story. Her logical and scientific mind is able to maintain a certain distance from what’s taking place around her, but her soft heart lends a sweet, emotional aftertaste to the story. 

This is the second book in the series and it picks up more or less where the first book leaves off. Emily, Wendell, and Shadow return in this book, but we are also joined by two new characters, Ariadne and Rose. Rose was a good foil to the story and it was fun to see Emily grapple with her academic pursuits while also trying to wrangle her young and enthusiastic niece, Ariadne. It’s another slow burn story, but somehow, it just works so well with this series.

No fantasy is complete without a romantic side plot and this one is so precious! Where most fantasy heroines these days are fiery and passionate, Emily is methodical and soft. She’s undeniably interested in Wendell, but given the complications of where they are both from, the logical part of her brain very much tries to win out over the romantic part. It’s such a different approach to romance than other popular fantasy series and that’s why I think it’s so refreshing. Emily has a different kind of strength and it’s nice to be reminded that women can be a hero in many different ways. She’s not the ‘chosen one’, she doesn’t have any magic, but she is quietly assured of her good reasoning and intellect and uses her smarts to outwit faeries rather than to fight them.

Anyways, this was a pleasure to read from start to finish. The setting and characters are impeccable. I’m so glad we get to spend one more book with Emily and Wendell and I can’t wait to see where the story will go!

Babel

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Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: R.F. Kuang
Genres: Fantasy, Historical
Pub. Date: Aug. 2022

DNF @ p. 292

I spent months trying to read this book and it’s time to move on. I’ve been sitting on it since February and as much as I’d like to finish it, I can’t stand to read another 250 pages. I’m still rating it because I made it past 50%. There is honestly a lot to like about this book, it’s smartly written and includes a lot of interesting social commentary about language and colonialism.

The reason I’m moving on? It’s incredibly dull. No shade if you loved it – but even after 300 pages I found it slow moving and it didn’t capture my attention. While the ideas presented are great, they are repetitive. It’s a brilliant concept, but I wanted to see Kuang push the boundaries with it instead of just beating us over the head about the injustice of England growing rich and strong by stealing from other countries. It’s accurate, but not that insightful beyond its initial premise.

I liked her newest book, Yellowface, but it suffers from some of the same shortfalls in that it says the same thing in many different ways. The difference is that Yellowface is short and doesn’t take itself too seriously, making for a fast and engaging read. I do admire Kuang for what she does in this book, but the plot could definitely be tightened up to make this a shorter and easier read. It doesn’t turn me off her writing though. I would definitely recommend Yellowface and I also liked her debut, The Poppy War.

On a side note, I hated the footnotes. First of all, the little asterisk in the text was so small I literally always missed it, but it didn’t matter because the footnotes were boring as hell anyways.

Six Crimson Cranes

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Elizabeth Lim
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Pub. Date: July 2021

After I read and loved The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, I found Six Crimson Cranes suggested as a similar read and quickly purchased a copy of the beautiful UK edition. Six Crimson Cranes is about 17 year old Princess Shiori and her 6 brothers, who are cursed by their step mother. Her brothers are turned into cranes and Shiori is forced into silence, her identity hidden by a bowl covering her face. She is abandoned far from the castle where she grew up and forced to try and break the curse and save the kingdom.

I did enjoy this. It wasn’t my favourite, but it wasn’t hard to read and was a compelling story. There are lots of really likable characters, it has a creative and intriguing world, and Shiori has a lot of characterization. There’s a lot going on and it made for a compelling start to the novel. Between the dragon and the curse, there’s a lot of action to take in. Although I did think the book struggles with some pacing issues. It starts off quick and it has an explosive ending, but it gets a bit lost in the middle of the book and I found the story dragged once Shiori is cursed. She spends a lot of time at Castle Bushian, and while this is a very important part of the story for character development and relationship building, I really think it could have been trimmed down. At 450 pages, I think this book could easily have been 50-75 pages shorter.

That said, it has a very smart plot, but maybe a little bit too smart. In some ways it’s predictable (I had no trouble guessing who was behind the shenanigans at Bushian Castle), but in other ways it’s convoluted. There’s a lot going on in the kingdom, but limited information is revealed to the reader before the end of the book, which I found confusing and overwhelming after such a slow middle. I will be returning for book 2 once the paperback releases, but I kind of wish this had been a standalone instead. That said, there is definitely some unfinished business, so I’m excited to see where things go in the next book!

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Heather Fawcett
Genres: Fantasy, Historical
Pub. Date: Jan. 2023

I’ve been a fan of Heather Fawcett for years (BC based author!) and I’m so glad to see so much buzz about Emily Wilde this year! If you liked this one, definitely go check out her YA series, Even the Darkest Stars, which I also love. Besides that she has a few middle grade books that are still a lot of fun. I’ve seen Emily described as “cozy fantasy” and I would describe all her books that way.

Because her last few books have all been middle grade, I assumed Emily Wilde was also middle grade. I was delighted to learn that it’s actually her first adult fantasy! It reads a bit more like YA, but there’s definitely some violence in here. It’s very infrequent and not gratuitous, but who knew such handsome faeries could be so casually violent when they get angry. 

Anyways, let’s get into it – Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries is set in the fictional country of Ljosland (although Google informed me this is also a small village in Norway). It’s appropriate because Ljosland is a cold, northern country that made me think of Finland or Iceland (or Norway). Emily is a young professor who has been working for many years writing an encyclopaedia of faeries and this is her last field trip to research “the hidden ones”. 

Initially she finds it hard to fit in in cold Ljosland and is not sure why the villagers have rejected her. Things get even more challenging when her enigmatic colleague Wendell Bambleby arrives at her cottage and she fears he has come to piggyback off her research and success. However, the two soon discover that there is something nefarious going on between the hidden ones and the villagers and Emily must apply all her research of faeries to help protect the villagers.

This is quite different from most other fantasy novels I’ve read and even though I found it a bit slow moving, I really enjoyed it. I’ve always said that Heather Fawcett is great at creating setting and atmosphere and this novel was no exception. She really excels at writing these desolate, cold landscapes and despite the chill, I love to escape into them. What I liked about this book is that Fawcett trusts her reader to be able to infer information and context without spelling it out for them. This world is very similar to our own world (though set in 1909), with only subtle changes in terms of geography and the existence of faeries. Her world building is strong and I felt like I walked straight into this slightly kooky world that was fully realized without a lot of tedious info dumping. In short – she’s good at showing, not telling. A skill many fantasy authors have not been able to hone.

Emily is a great character. She’s relatable, yet flawed. She’s intelligent, capable, and quick-witted, yet she recognizes when she should ask for help. She makes lots of smart decisions and plays hero to several of the villagers, yet she also makes mistakes and requires a rescue of her own. Despite being set in a fantastical world of faeries, she’s incredibly genuine and believable, which I think will appeal to a lot of readers.

Like any good fantasy, this story also has a side-romance. It’s definitely subtle, but this is one of my favourite types of romances. It doesn’t dominate the storyline, rather Fawcett focuses on relationship building, while weaving a simple element of romance between the characters. Their love is tangential to the story, but makes it so much more meaningful because of it. Any good series author will also weave ongoing plotlines throughout multiple novels, which Fawcett has done, so I can’t wait to see where this relationship goes in the next book.

So overall, there was a lot to like about this book, but I do have some criticisms as well, mostly with the ending. The book moves along at a pretty slow pace – I didn’t mind it, but overall I thought it had some pacing issues. What I didn’t like was how quickly everything wrapped up at the end of the book. I felt like the story ended too quickly and was not resolved. There’s no real conclusion to the conflict the village was having with the faeries and it seemed to me like Emily and Wendell were just disappearing off into the night without accomplishing their objectives. Otherwise, it was a really fun book. I’ll definitely be picking up book 2 when it releases and may now have to get to a few of her backlist books that I haven’t read yet!

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Spoilers Below

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What was the most frustrating to me was how Emily stopped the poisoning plot because “it didn’t feel right”, basically because it wasn’t in line with the faeries stories and she didn’t want to see things ended that way. So instead they run away and leave things even more unresolved in my opinion. As a reader, it just didn’t feel very satisfying. I was hoping to see some resolution in Emily and Wendell’s relationship as well, but that one I could accept because it will be continued in book 2. It doesn’t sound like we’ll be returning to Ljosland, so the poor village is going to be more or less left on their own. Overall, I just felt like I had whiplash from how quickly the story ended and it left me feeling a bit unsettled and incomplete. I would have liked to see a bit more closure to the main plot points. It just felt a bit sloppy.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Axie Oh
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Pub. Date: Feb. 2022

I really loved this book! I’ve been hearing a lot of really good things about it and after reading and loving Daughter of the Moon Goddess, I decided to pick this one up. It’s a short standalone fantasy and I really wish there were more books like this out there. You rarely find standalone fantasy books and I think it’s really special when you find a beautifully written one like this.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is about a 16 year old girl who sacrifices herself to be the Sea God’s bride. Her village has been at the mercy of the sea for 100 years and every year they sacrifice a young and beautiful bride to try and please the Sea God and stop the storms. This year’s bride, Shim Cheong, is in love with Mina’s brother, so Mina jumps into the sea in her place and enters the Spirit Realm. There she discovers that things aren’t quite as they seem on the surface and she starts searching for a way to free the Sea God from a deep slumber and save her village.

The writing is definitely the first thing I want to comment on because it is really beautiful. The story of Mina’s journey through the Spirit Realm is interspersed with stories that her grandmother shared with her as a child. The author connects myth to reality and uses the medium of stories to uncover the truth of the spirit realm. The story is filled with magic and the beautiful prose used by the author only elevates the setting.

It’s hard for me to say whether it’s a character or plot driven novel because I think it is such a good blend of both. The story starts off with a bang and we’re quickly introduced to a whole new world. There is lots of action throughout the book and the world building is very well realized without being confusing. We’re introduced to lots of new characters, but it’s never overwhelming. The book has a lot of depth and Mina’s character not only grows throughout the story, but her storytelling also inspires growth in others.

Overall it’s just a really smart book. There are a few twists within the story, some of them are easy to see coming, while others surprised me. I loved the inclusion of the ancestors in the story and even though I saw the main twist coming, the how and why were still a mystery to me until the very end. It’s a smart book and together all of the elements add together to build something truly magical.

With a 16 year old protagonist, it sounds like YA, but it didn’t read that way to me. There are definitely books out there that feature children or teenagers that are still written for adults. I don’t necessarily think this is one of them, but the magic and prose combined made this not your typical YA novel. It’s my first 5 star read of 2023 and I’d definitely recommend it. I’m strongly debating whether I might be ready to make a soft launch back into the world of fantasy – for me I think it’s more about being intentional about what fantasy books I read and picking up ones that interest me and not just because they’re hyped up on social media (looking at you SJM and JLA). That said, this one deserves the hype.