Scan barcode
A review by unluckycat13
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Did not finish book. Stopped at 80%.
This book sucks. This is a romance novel masquerading as a general fantasy story, but containing basically every negative romance trope. Main character fails to do something and needs the man to rescue her? Consistently. One wonders how she even survived in the world before he got there. There are worse issues in the book though.
It's also unclear how such an amazing person, who's so powerful, the most knowledgeable about fae in the world, the most competent, the most talented, able to do so much on a shoestring budget and often mostly alone, is so widely disrespected and unknown. I applaud an author who makes being a woman or LGBT not subject to discrimination and prejudice, but the author surely must understand those are the reasons why a character in this situation would normally be disrespected and have their work ignored. Even the authors this book is in homage to faced this situation, and it is why their books are like that both in how they're written and the general reception.
What we have here is the most talented and amazing woman to ever live, who is more impressive than many of the impossible folk tales she collects, who is smarter, harder working, more talented than seemingly any of her peers, with singular insight lacking by everyone else in the world-- And no one knows or cares who she is. Not the fairies, not her colleagues, all cause she's not very sociable? Come on.
To add to that, the earth shattering nature of her adventures and finding in this book (which surely continue into the future books, but seemingly mostly didn't happen in any previous book) paint a picture of her life as just starting with this book. It breaks the illusion that she's a character with an entire life prior.
One of the larger disappointments in this book for me, aside from the romance, is the fairies. Poe is honestly quite the interesting creature... Who ultimately is just a human being who looks weird. As you get to the courtly fae, they indeed are also just dudes. Even the things it describes in them such as their moody natures where their emotions flip on a dime is something probably anyone could observe in other human beings. Sure we can't create ice swords from tears (oh wait, we can do that too), but they're just attractive people. It's baffling.
Ultimately this book is only fulfilling if you're reading it for the romance where Emily comes to realize how awesome and actually flawless her male companion is (for even his flaws are really just also awesome and endearing), and love him. Any other aspect of this book will be a let down as it increasingly goes in the direction that you can read in just about any het-romance book.
Shout out to the moment where the main character mentions that Irish folk lore seems to have been "christianized" at some point but she doesn't know why, how, or by who. Is that supposed to be a character flaw on her end or is the author making a joke?
I also feel compelled to add there is a scene where they torture a child which did not sit right with me. The child is not evil, the child is literally abandoned by his parents and hated by his foster parents. He's probably one of the more innocent people in this book and is looked down on with more disdain than the courtly fae who are hollowing people out for fun. When you add to this that changelings were kind of historically just an excuse to torture autistic or otherwise disabled children, the distressing aspects of the scene are renewed. It pushes Emily over an event horizon of not just being a little immoral or maybe having her own sense of justice, she's quite explicitly a little bit evil although the book would not present her as such. This book in general seems to have very little empathy towards children. I realize not having much empathy is a trait Emily has at the start which she slowly learns to get over as she becomes more suitably womanly for her male love interest, but I think this book is particularly weird about children.
It's actually unclear in general what causes Emily to grow a heart here when she seemingly never had one before except that it makes her more feminine to contrast against her suitor.
It's also unclear how such an amazing person, who's so powerful, the most knowledgeable about fae in the world, the most competent, the most talented, able to do so much on a shoestring budget and often mostly alone, is so widely disrespected and unknown. I applaud an author who makes being a woman or LGBT not subject to discrimination and prejudice, but the author surely must understand those are the reasons why a character in this situation would normally be disrespected and have their work ignored. Even the authors this book is in homage to faced this situation, and it is why their books are like that both in how they're written and the general reception.
What we have here is the most talented and amazing woman to ever live, who is more impressive than many of the impossible folk tales she collects, who is smarter, harder working, more talented than seemingly any of her peers, with singular insight lacking by everyone else in the world-- And no one knows or cares who she is. Not the fairies, not her colleagues, all cause she's not very sociable? Come on.
To add to that, the earth shattering nature of her adventures and finding in this book (which surely continue into the future books, but seemingly mostly didn't happen in any previous book) paint a picture of her life as just starting with this book. It breaks the illusion that she's a character with an entire life prior.
One of the larger disappointments in this book for me, aside from the romance, is the fairies. Poe is honestly quite the interesting creature... Who ultimately is just a human being who looks weird. As you get to the courtly fae, they indeed are also just dudes. Even the things it describes in them such as their moody natures where their emotions flip on a dime is something probably anyone could observe in other human beings. Sure we can't create ice swords from tears (oh wait, we can do that too), but they're just attractive people. It's baffling.
Ultimately this book is only fulfilling if you're reading it for the romance where Emily comes to realize how awesome and actually flawless her male companion is (for even his flaws are really just also awesome and endearing), and love him. Any other aspect of this book will be a let down as it increasingly goes in the direction that you can read in just about any het-romance book.
Shout out to the moment where the main character mentions that Irish folk lore seems to have been "christianized" at some point but she doesn't know why, how, or by who. Is that supposed to be a character flaw on her end or is the author making a joke?
I also feel compelled to add there is a scene where they torture a child which did not sit right with me. The child is not evil, the child is literally abandoned by his parents and hated by his foster parents. He's probably one of the more innocent people in this book and is looked down on with more disdain than the courtly fae who are hollowing people out for fun. When you add to this that changelings were kind of historically just an excuse to torture autistic or otherwise disabled children, the distressing aspects of the scene are renewed. It pushes Emily over an event horizon of not just being a little immoral or maybe having her own sense of justice, she's quite explicitly a little bit evil although the book would not present her as such. This book in general seems to have very little empathy towards children. I realize not having much empathy is a trait Emily has at the start which she slowly learns to get over as she becomes more suitably womanly for her male love interest, but I think this book is particularly weird about children.
It's actually unclear in general what causes Emily to grow a heart here when she seemingly never had one before except that it makes her more feminine to contrast against her suitor.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
Minor: Child death and Alcohol
Romance