A Quick Note On This Review: This article includes affiliate links to Bookshop.org as a way of supporting both local bookshops and my own ability to write.
Also: This review may contain spoilers for the Emily Wilde series; If you haven’t already, I suggest reading book one and two of the series before proceeding.
Emily Wilde’s career as a renowned dryadologist has taken a rather peculiar turn: accustomed as she is to dryly studying the faeries, she sets out to document the inner workings of a faerie realm as its newly appointed queen. Emily, along with her colleague-turned-fiancé Wendall Bambleby, finds herself plunged in the deadly court intrigues of Faerie as they try to secure their place as its rulers. But as a deadly curse spreads over the land, Wendall and Emily soon realize that there are far more dangerous things lurking in this magical land than anything their books and stories could have prepared them for.
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett is the final book in her Emily Wilde series, and caps off the tale of Emily and Wendall in a wonderful fashion. Fawcett’s ability to create a hard-nosed academic of a character that still comes across as charming and likable in the form of Emily and keep the reader engaged through the entirety of the trilogy has been fascinating to watch, and in this last book the reader gets an opportunity to see Emily’s growth come full circle. In the first book, Emily resists the idea that anything she does could be motivated by something other than science, but by this final installment, Emily has discarded all pretense that she’s indifferent to the lives of those around her and uses her knowledge as a researcher and academic to develop solutions to the problems facing her realm.
Fawcett’s latest novel also comes with a bit more cerebral heft than some of the previous installments, because it delves into what it means to belong. Emily has always been a compelling character, but in Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales, the reader gets to see a more vulnerable side of the character as she tries to wrestle with a major change in her identity, from an accomplished academic to a monarch of a faerie realm. While Fawcett doesn’t belabor the point that shifts in identity are often navigated best with community, it’s clear that Emily learns this through leaning on the cast of characters that she’s come across throughout the three books.
For casual readers, Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales would be a fantastic read for anyone who has read the first and second book in the series, but it’s also valuable if someone is looking for a story that deals with navigating important life transitions without losing our sense of self along the way. This theme loomed large while reading the book and it is an important lesson that many would benefit from. While the book has some romantic overtones, it doesn’t delve deep enough into the genre’s tropes to alienate someone who isn’t particularly fond of those kinds of books.
For writers, Fawcett’s novel offers similar lessons to her other books in the Emily Wilde series, but Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales offers a lesson in how to cap off a series without alienating the readers. Story endings are always difficult and it can be particularly challenging for a story about an academic who learns to lean into her humanity without claiming academia is inherently bad, but Fawcett does a lovely job of threading that needle in the Emily Wilde series, and that makes it worth reading for anyone trying to wrestle with the nuances of institutional identities. Additionally, there are parts of the story that deal with death which were unique, so it would be useful for anyone trying to write about dead or dying characters to read Fawcett’s novel for ideas on the ways it’s been handled.
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What’s Next?
I am an avid reader and have quite a few thoughts on how some books could benefit both people that want to be entertained and those looking to sharpen their literary skills.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve been reading – and how it could benefit you – I will be publishing those thoughts on Fridays on a weekly basis. Check back next week for a discussion of Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar!
The Writerly Review 