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Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Emily Wilde · Book 1 · 2023

Audiobook available

Cambridge professor Emily Wilde travels to the northern village of Hrafnsvik to study elusive faeries. Understanding her human neighbors proves harder. Then her academic rival Wendell Bambleby arrives, wins people over and gets in the way of her research.

From the publisher’s blurb

“But Emily Wilde is not good at people.”
Read the full description at Del Rey / Penguin Random House
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What makes it funny?

Emily can approach a dangerous faerie as a research subject, yet ordinary social niceties defeat her. Her sharp assessments of Wendell give their scholarly rivalry a running supply of irritations. He's charming; she has work to do.

The comedy at work

The story takes the form of Emily's journal, complete with academic footnotes. Her orderly scholarly account gives us a dry view of messy encounters, while Wendell's conversations with her loosen up the formal voice.

Try this if…

Readers who enjoy prickly narrators, folklore and a light romance have plenty to follow here. The jokes come through Emily's observations and her exchanges with Wendell.

Good to know

The faeries are dangerous, including to the people they abduct. Expect menace alongside the fanciful setting. Emily tells the story in first person, with scholarly footnotes.

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