Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands: Complications abound and danger stalks our heroes

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

This review of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands contains spoilers for Book One, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Heather Fawcett’s second book, published in 2024, advances the adventures of scholars Emily Wilde and Wendell Bamblely as they prepare to embark on a perilous quest. It also introduces some new characters to the mix, and I’ll be interested to see if they appear again in the third book of the series.

It’s been a little over a year since Emily’s adventures in Ljosland, and things are going well for her and her partner Wendell Bambleby. Emily’s encyclopedia has been published and she has gained tenure at Cambridge. One fly in the ointment is that her niece Ariadne has come to the university and made herself Emily’s assistant. Emily doesn’t really know what to do with an assistant, and she doesn’t want anyone to stumble across the secret she and Wendell are keeping; that he is a deposed faerie prince, and he and Emily plan to find the door to his kingdom and mount a campaign to regain the throne from his usurper stepmother.

When the book opens, Emily thinks she has found an important clue to the location of Wendell’s door. As she crosses the campus, she is accosted by a strange, beribboned man who seems to know her. He spouts nonsense and vanishes. Although that behavior is in keeping for the faeries, Emily’s instinct is that the man is human. Soon, however, more immediate concerns distract her. Wendell is suffering from the effects of a magical poison; Dr. Farris Rose, the Department Head, has uncovered proof that Wendell falsified some of his scholarly findings, and moments after he confronts Emily, all of them are attacked by faerie assassins. While they survive, the truth of Wendell’s identity is out of the bag now. When Emily and Wendell prepare to leave immediately for Germany, where Emily believes Wendell’s door is, Rose horns in on the expedition, and Ariadne also insists on coming.

While the primary storyline is about finding the door and saving Wendell, who grows weaker every day, there is an important secondary storyline about a long-missing scholar, Danielle de Grey and the beribboned man. More faerie folk are introduced, and scarier ones. I worried that the addition of Rose and Ari would dilute the story and its suspense, but both characters added strengths and complications. Rose, a hidebound traditionalist, distrusts Wendell and assumes that Emily is under a spell, not merely in love with him. In fact, the strength of this series is the depiction of Wendell as truly a faerie. While he’s assimilated pretty well, his values aren’t human ones, and it makes him a precarious ally, even though there’s no doubt he loves Emily.

As his condition worsens, Wendell reveals that his magical cat is probably the only thing that can save his life. There are a few problems with this solution. The first is that Emily is emphatically not a cat person. More seriously, Orga, the cat, is in Wendell’s enchanted realm, in the castle held by his stepmother. Emily makes a dangerous decision and sets off on her own hero’s journey, entering Wendell’s kingdom with Ari by her side.

I enjoyed this outing even a little more that the first book, but you must read the first book to truly grasp all the points made. The character of de Gray was introduced via footnotes in Book One, and she plays an important role here. While Emily makes her usual human-centric mistakes, it’s her nerve and her intelligence that serves her best when she confronts the usurper queen. Rose becomes a multi-dimensional character who is more than a huffy adversary.

I am looking forward to the third book in this fun series.