historical – Down the Rabbit Hole

Series: Emily Wilde #2

When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.

Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore—she just wrote the world’s first comprehensive of encylopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Folk on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival, Wendell Bambleby.

Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, and in search of a door back to his realm. So despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of marriage. Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and danger.

And she also has a new project to focus a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by Bambleby’s mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambley’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans.

But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.

Overall Recommendation:

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands dives straight back into the beautiful and whimsical world of Emily and her dryadology discoveries in the early 1900s. It’s everything I loved about book 1 but perhaps a little less loaded in everything. In this new setting in Austria, I liked how plot points left unresolved earlier are now coming into play. Overall, a masterful storytelling that leaves me wanting book 3 immediately.

I was so so lucky to have gotten my preorder copy of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands early to read it before it came out. The journey begins several months after book 1 concludes with Emily and Wendell on the hunt for hidden faerie doors so they can find a way into Wendell’s kingdom.

This book introduces new characters I adored like Ariadne, Emily’s niece who wants to be a dryadologist just like her. It also brought some characters I’m withholding judgment on so far, such as the old-fashioned, cantankerous Professor Rose, one of Emily and Wendell’s colleagues. On this new adventure, the stakes are still high as Wendell’s being tracked by his stepmother’s assassins.

In the mountains of Austria, Heather Fawcett continues to weave more legend and lore in Emily’s new journal dedicated to her research for a map of the faerie kingdoms and secret doors into them. I still love all the footnotes but I found there were less than its predecessor. In fact, that’s probably the one reason I couldn’t give this book a full 5 star rating. Everything felt just less than the first book. There were less character building interactions with the villagers, the pacing wasn’t quite as fast, and the worldbuilding wasn’t as heavy (though I suppose that’s a good thing for those who thought book 1 was an info dump).

Emily and Wendell’s connection continues to be strong as they face looming attacks from Faerie. The tension between them isn’t as present now that they’re not quite rivals anymore, but Wendell’s proposal still hangs over their heads with Emily sorting out her feelings. I do think the romance continues to be the perfect amount balanced with the fantastical elements of the story, with this book taking their romance further.

I will say my favourite part is the way Heather brings together plot lines from earlier that were left open and have now become important in this sequel. Emily’s knowledge of faeries and her fearlessness continues to help her in the varying situations she and her companions find themselves embroiled in. I wish there was a little more action in this book but I suppose it happens when it’s only book 2. I honestly can’t wait to see where this series takes us. It’s definitely an auto-buy series for me.

5 star, adult

Review: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

October 9, 2023October 9, 2023 Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Series: Emily Wilde #1

A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.

Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party–or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones–the most elusive of all faeries–lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all–her own heart.

Overall Recommendation:

With Emily’s unique voice set in a beautifully imaginative historical world where faeries live among us, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries stands itself firmly out among the crowd. Perfect for an autumn or winter read, this book transports you to this alternative history in early 1900s through Emily’s eyes as a researcher of the fae. I loved the extensive world building and Emily’s grumpy character to Wendell’s bubbly nature. The romance was slow burn while the world takes centre stage, but this is everything I could ask for. This is how a cozy historical fantasy should be done!

The hype was real with this book when it first came out, and I’m never too certain if I want to jump on board the hype train while it’s still hot. However, my workplace book club voted to read this so I gladly decided to pick it up now, a little behind most others, and I’m so happy I did.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries is the perfect blend of coziness for an autumn/winter read, intrigue into the world building full of all sorts of faeries, and slow burn romance that makes me want to giggle like a young schoolgirl swinging her feet happily. To describe everything that I feel for this book is not going to be easy, but I can describe the tropes I found I really enjoyed.

Starting with characterization, our protagonist Emily is a grumpy introvert with perhaps more than a dash of social anxiety and a huge love of rational thinking. Think Kathy Reich’s protagonist Temperance Brennan kind of awkwardness and love for scientific discovery. I rather enjoyed Emily’s character, from start to finish. She grew a lot in her experiences at Ljosland as she hoped to finish her encyclopedia with an entry on the Hidden Ones found in this sub-Arctic country.

To balance her character, her mysterious colleague and sometimes rival, Wendell Bambleby was an enigma from the start. Bubbly personality that could charm pretty much anyone once he got started, he was the complete opposite of Emily in pretty much most ways. While he enjoyed his work on faeries, he was noted to have many students help him with the “hard” work and may have fabricated data for a study or two (whoops). His teamwork with Emily, though, was one of my favourite things. This was the true definition of a grumpy and sunshine couple, and I loved seeing their banter that brought out Emily’s snarkiness and his teasing. For fans of romance, I will say this was a very slow burn romance that barely constituted much in this book, however, I wouldn’t want it to change a thing as it sets the stage for so much more we can expect in the next book.

The mystery surrounding Wendell, as hinted in the synopsis, doesn’t actually come at the end but gradually builds which was a delightful surprise. It’s not that we know everything, but it’s enough to draw us forward for what’s to come. I thought that was beautifully done by Heather, and she may be an author to love based on this alone.

Other tropes I loved that was featured heavily is the concept of found family. Emily never made ties with the villagers in the remote locations she did field work for her research. She did her thing and left, no emotions or strings attached. But in an isolated place like Ljosland, when things go awry (and oh boy, do they have some interesting misadventures), you need someone to count on besides yourself. I really enjoyed seeing these secondary characters blossom a little, and how they brought out Emily’s softer side that wasn’t so rigid in empirical thinking.

The pace and world building were excellently done as well, something I find can be quite hard in books. Written as a detailed journal with dated entries, it never quite felt like the story was too long or the author dumped a load of information about the world for the sake of knowledge alone. References were made, including little intriguing footnotes, that made me want to know more instead of reading paragraphs full of descriptions that made me yawn. I thoroughly enjoyed this method of giving us information while being true to Emily’s experiences and her voice. If you’re a fan of Piranesi, I would think this similar writing style would be of interest to you.

I’ve done all this talking and I haven’t even gotten to the faeries yet. Honestly, even if this wasn’t a faerie book, there are just so many things to love already. But as it is a faerie book, I will mention there is so much creativity and imaginative thought put into this story. From different faerie stories collected Emily has collected in her research travels to the different species and their unique attributes/weaknesses, even the randomest details in Emily’s notes she references could play a larger role in the overall story than we know. The faeries range from scary/violent to little common fae I would love to meet. Heather has put care into describing them and crafting this folklore feel around everything. If I had to absolutely pick my most favourite element of this book, I’d have to go with this.

I could go on and gush more, but I will end off saying this book more than meets the hype. You may not think of yourself as a historical fantasy kind of reader, but you wouldn’t know until you try. There are so many elements here to love. In a similar vein to Rebecca Ross’ A River Enchanted, there’s not only magic in the story, but there is magic in reading the book itself.

5 star

Review: Babel by R. F. Kuang

May 24, 2023May 23, 2023 Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

This was on my anticipated reads about a year ago, and two friends have highly recommended it to me since then, saying that I would for sure love it. Were they correct? I mean, obviously so.

Babel is a historical fiction with a touch of the fantastical. If you know anything about the biblical Tower of Babel, you already know a lot about this book. Babel takes place around the 1830s, following a young Robin Swift, who is brought from Canton to “Babel” tower at Oxford, taking over Latin, Ancient Greek, and Mandarin classes in his translational studies. This is of course, all happening at the height of the power of the British empire, who have amassed the world’s silver supply for their silver-working, which enhances the might of the empire to extraordinary heights. Robin eventually finds himself caught at odds between the colonialist goals of the British empire and his own conscience and those who oppose it.

I have so much I want to exclaim about this book, but I will start first with the characters. The characters and their relationships with each other were very well-developed considering this is also a part fantasy and the world is built around the historical Oxford as well. In terms of the university life vibes, it really reminded me of Ninth House in the way it was all set-up, which I also really enjoyed and rated at 5 stars. There were many detestable characters, but it felt like no character was there for no reason and although they came from all sorts of different backgrounds, somehow it felt like they were all connected, which I feel like is part of the whole “translation magic” in its own right.

The “magic.” I may not be a linguist or anything like that by trade, but I certainly love learning my languages. Silver-working essentially takes advantage of the meanings that are “lost in translation” between languages and manifests them through the silver to enhance things in the real world. As someone who has learned Latin and Mandarin, and even some Ancient Greek, this book really spoke to me on many levels. But that bias aside, Kuang’s work in explaining all the languages and providing all the context for understanding exactly how this power works was excellent, and this world-building was some of the best I have read recently.

This book was certainly a bit heavier than I expected compared to what I was expecting from the advertised premise. That being said, my bias for the world-building with a topic I love really distorts how I feel about what I wanted in this book, so take that with a grain of salt. I really wanted more of the world, and more of the exploration of linguistics and cross-language studies. However, ultimately this book is more about colonialism and the everlasting fight between those with privilege and power and those without. If that kind of political intrigue is not your cup of tea, you may want to avoid this book. However, if you are at all interested in the whole language thing and especially in translation like I am, it may honestly be worth it just to learn all about that. It was completely fascinating and enthralling and I definitely couldn’t put it down.

In terms of the plot, it was all really set up, and all the moral and ethical dilemmas that arose were excellently crafted and executed. Even as a third-party omniscient, it was impossible to swim through the murky murky waters of when you pass a line from moral to immoral, or from a good cause to revenge. That all being said, the plot was fairly predictable at many points, and there weren’t that many surprising twists. But this may be coming from a thriller/mystery-reader perspective, so take that for what you will. It really didn’t detract from the moment of when everything came to pass anyway, and there was a lot of heavy foreshadowing right from the beginning. Overall, just an excellent read that really made me think a lot, yet still a story I really got to immerse myself in and enjoy. I highly recommend this one.

Overall Recommendations

Babel follows a young Robin Swift as he makes his way from being orphaned in Canton to being part of the most prestigious faculty at Oxford handling the source of might of the British empire—silver-working. This allows meanings lost in translation to be harvested and manifested by the silver by using words in different languages to capture them. Soon it becomes clear that the British empire must expand ever outward, and it seems like their power knows no ends. However, there are certainly reasons why there are those opposed, and even the young students at Oxford may not be sheltered forever in their gilded tower…this is an excellent historical fiction with just a touch of the fantastical, and I highly recommend it.