#BlogTour ‘Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia Of Fairies’ by Heather Fawcett

About the book…

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, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.

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.

Thanks to the ever wonderful Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the blogtour invite and pyblishers Orbit books for my gorgeous copy of ‘Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia Of Fairies’ by Heather Fawcett, which is out from January 19th!

Utterly charming and delightful to read, this is the perfect antidote to the seemingly never ending gloom of January.

The truth is that, for the Folk,stories are everything. Stories are a part of them and their world in a fundamental way that mortals have difficulty grasping:a story may be a singular event from the past,but-crucially-it is also a pattern that shapes their behaviour and predicts future events.”

As such, Emily Wilde is on an adventure, to create the first encyclopedia mapping the history and genus of the Faerie folk, in particular, her trip to the ice bound village of Hrafnsvik is primarily focussed on the Hidden Folk, their ways and customs. But in her focus on her academic papers and research, she firstly puts the villagers themselves on guard and then has her travels further confounded by the arrival of her Gilderoy Lockhart-esque (all flash and little apparent substance) Wendell Bambleby and his 2 assistants.

Suddenly that tiny cottage is feeling smaller still, as the race is on to not only create a lasting archive to the fae but also to secure a position at Cambridge which will guarentee Emily’s place in academia.

The absolute joy of supernatural and otherworldly creatures leaps off the page, from the very start you are aware that Emily is fearless and forward thinking-to travel solo (except for her sidekick Shadow, her dog) to Ljosland, and to have attained the position of Professor at a time when women were seen as the inferior sex, shows that she has ambition, and a fierce intellect to back it up.

The novel is peppered with footnotes that create an indepth understanding for the reader, and the diary entry format of writing makes you feel an intimate and very loyal connection with Emily. Her search for evidence and proof is almost diametrically opposed to the way she interacts with humans-she manages to accidentally annoy the matriarch of the village, Aud, and it takes the charm of someone like Wendell to bring her back into the fold and avoid having sheep destroy her very small cottage.

And there is also the affair of Aud’s granddaughter, who appears to have been afflicted by something otherworldly….are the Hidden Folk she is looking for supposed to be revealed to the wider world? Are somethings better off being left unexplored by the enquiring mind of Emily Wilde? And what risk does she pose to the wellbeing of faeries by writing their lores, customs and secrets down? I

I absolutely loved every page I spent with Emily in her studies and hope there will be many more books forthcoming from Heather Fawcett whose talent and energy for her craft shines from each word she writes.

About the author…

Heather is the author of several MG and YA fantasy books, including ‘Even The Darkest Stars’ and ‘Ember And The Ice Dragons’. She lives on Vancouver Island, where she loves getting lost in the woods.

She has a master’s degree in English literature and has worked as an archaeologist, photographer, technical writer, and backstage assistant for a Shakespearean theater festival.

Links-http://www.heatherfawcettbooks.com/

Twitter @heathermfawcett @Tr4cyF3nt0n @orbitbooks