Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Amy  

fantasy

Emily Wilde is a professor of faerie folklore. She also travels the world, identifying and studying faeries, for the purpose of writing her Encyclopaedia of Fairies which would be the first comprehensive publication about all the known faeries of the world. While on a Scandinavian island doing research about the native faeries of that region, her coworker, Bambleby, whom she suspects of being a faerie himself, shows up unexpectedly. Her research trip and field studies are suddenly not entirely in her control.

The story itself is often slow-going due to the nature of “scientific” research and the need for Heather Fawcett to provide a lot of detail in order to bring the reader up to speed on Emily’s interests. The novel is actually the text of Emily’s research notebook so everything is from her perspective. Emily embarks on her systematic study of faeries. She’s not good with people—at all. Thankfully, Bambleby arrives in the story to liven it up a bit. However, even though adventure ensues and there are several scary faerie scenes to add a little excitement, I found myself wishing I had another book to listen to instead. That’s never a good sign. Alas, without another option, I kept listening.  The last fourth of the book is, certainly, the best part.

I kept being reminded of the Veronica Speedwell series because Veronica’s passion is butterflies in a very similar way that Emily’s passion is faeries. It looks like this faerie novel is the first in a series but I’m not interested in hearing more about Emily Wilde. Bambleby turned out to be my favorite character but even he isn’t enough to make me want to read more.

The main narrator, Ell Potter, did a good job. She gave the various characters appropriate accents and inflections and did a nice job voice acting. I’ll give her an A-. Michael Dodds read a few sections which were written by Bambleby within Emily’s notebook. He also did a fine job although his overall participation was very small. I agree with the production decision to have a male voice reading Bambleby's few sections.