Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries the cosy and heart-warming Sunday Times Bestseller

Awkward scholar researching violent fairies

Mar aus - am 03.01.2025
Bewertungsnummer: 2377742
Bewertet: eBook (ePUB)

Right after reading the description of Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries, I was hooked. A slow-paced story about fairies, written from the perspective of a scholar in the cold winter of Norway at the beginning of the last century? Sounds wonderful! And truly, in many aspects, it is. This book is meant to be a cozy fantasy novel and so I fully expected quite a bit of elaborate writing and not much of a plot. And this is exactly what I got. Most of the book is about Emily's encounters with and documentation of various fairies and while she also tries to help the village people with some of their issues caused by a particular violent type of fairy, her main ambition is always her studies and learning as much as possible about this (rather unknown) species. Despite enjoying the writing style and overall idea of the story, I found Emily's character quite difficult to like. She does not only show social awkwardness but behaves in rude ways, never saying thank you, please or sorry and thinks in a very self-centred manner. Also, despite describing Wendell (her colleague) as her "only friend" in her journals, she does not treat him as such. Instead, she puts blame and demands on him every time that he comes to her rescue (and he does need to save her many times). He on the other hand, takes her behaviour lightly, maybe because he's quite a character himself, showing arrogant and lazy features (given his background, it was easier for me to warm up to him though). On a completely different note, considering it is 1909, I find it hard to believe that two of the young village women are in a relationship, and at least one of them with many previous partners, without anybody objecting to this (even in Scandinavia, that would be too early). I'm usually a fan of inclusive writing in contemporary novels but this seems to be too much of a stretch here. Overall, I liked the idea of the story better than the actual result, mainly because of the difficult character of Emily. But, after reading through some reviews on-line, this seems to be a hit or miss critique and so it is worth picking the book up yourself. (3,5/5 stars)

Bewertung am 19.07.2024
Bewertungsnummer: 2248101
Bewertet: eBook (ePUB)

I loved this book! I needed a little bit to get into the story, but I grew to love the characters and the atmosphere. The story was just interesting enough to get me hooked and keep reading, while keeping this cozy atmosphere! I can't wait to read the next books!