Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Fairies is an enjoyable, cozy romp through the snow-caked woods that flirts with adventure, danger, and some heartfelt romance. Despite all that, I was quite surprised to find that this novel did not shy away from dark or violent subject matter. Sparkly and whimsical the fairies in this book may be, they’ll still cut you if you’re not careful. The world of the book is an alternate-history setting, the year 1909, in fact, in which it is well-known fact that fairies are real, and our main character, Emily Wilde, is a dryadologist committed to studying them.
Much of the fun to be had with this book is with Emily Wilde herself, which is good, because if you’re going to name your book after the main character, that person better be interesting enough to sustain the reader’s interest. Emily Wilde is an incredibly endearing character who, despite how infuriating she can be, you can’t help but root for. She’s an ever-obsessive scholar, whose ability to shut out everything in the world except what she’s studying is one of her greatest strengths and her greatest weakness. Luckily, she may get some help with those shortcomings of hers along the way…
Besides Emily, the characters are believable and interesting, even the less-prominent ones. The setting, for the red-roofed village of Hrafnsvik is indeed a character unto itself, is quaint, cozy, and ominous, full of mysteries for Emily to unravel and social faux-pas’ for her to commit. Of particular note among the characters is Emily’s colleague and only friend, Wendell Bambleby, who serves as a happy foil to Emily, both for good and ill. Much of the book is devoted to their interactions and banter, and their partnership makes for one of my very favorite relationships in all of fiction.
The story itself moves between the mundane and the dramatic, but knowing it would be so cozy going in, I found all of it to be captivating. It’s a fun mix of tempo that maintains a consistent whimsical tone, even as things become dire for our hero. For all the warm-tea-by-the-fire scenes, which I expected coming into the book, there are a surprising number of impactful scenes involving imminent danger.
Now seems as good a time as any to talk about the fairies. Like I said before, fairies in this world are both fantastical and very dangerous. Huge portions of the book follow Emily as she navigates the seemingly nonsensical “rules” of fairie. In terms of magical systems, this book is very comfortable living in the space between clearly-defined rules and “vibes.” Yes, the old stories said true, but no one’s quite sure why. Not yet, anyway. The descriptions of fairies are, frankly, amazing, and scenes involving fairies put me in the mind of how people describe encounters with aliens and UFOs (I wonder if Heather Fawcett has read Jaques Vallée?), all arcane sights, lost time, and impossible phenomena.
The writing style is also great, even though Fawcett “cheats” a little with the way she uses the epistolary format. The book is presented as a series of journal entries in which Emily herself is documenting her experiences for posterity, and the first-person perspective does a good job of cementing her as an interesting, semi-reliable narrator. Her perspective as a researcher also lends the book a vibe similar to a mystery novel, as Emily discovers clues throughout the book that relate to the overarching mystery haunting the village of Hrafnsvik. Speaking of which, as an aside, I felt that the last “chapter” was perhaps the most appropriate way to end a book like this.
I highly recommend this book for anyone looking for a cozy fantasy, and for those who aren’t sure whether cozy books are their thing, as there’s more excitement here than you’d think. For myself, this was my first foray onto the “cozy train,” and it’s definitely got me wanting to read more like this. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a distracting amount of dust on my computer, and I now have to clean the whole damn room.
O. A. Bhatti 
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