Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Spoilers ahead! 

One of the things I love most about Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series is the Howl’s Moving Castle vibes. While Emily is unselfconsciously frumpy and bookish, unlike Sophie Hatter, she contrasts starkly against her flamboyant, outgoing, gorgeous counterpart. Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, the second in the series, magnifies this effect all the more.

This book features a search for a portal through the mountains of [], and their team of eerie and caricature-ish companions intensifies. This feels much like the vibe of the movie. 

Studio Ghibli movies, especially the works of Hayao Miyazaki, have love stories that challenge and improve both partners. This meme sums it up nicely: 

We saw Emily and Wendell play off each other cleverly in Encyclopaedia of Faeries, but this time around they seem to click on a soul-deep level. Emily challenges Wendell’s royal prejudices regarding lesser fae; Wendell challenges Emily’s anti-social nature in general. The resulting teamwork accomplishes great things, not just for academia, but for the future of a faerie kingdom. 

These books contain footnotes, a reflection of Emily’s intellectual and academic character, and I wondered at first if this would alienate more casual readers. Does it damage the book’s accessibility? When I listened to the audiobooks, there were no dings or sounds to indicate the footnotes; they read surprisingly smoothly as embedded text, brief ramblings of an intellectual. They’re easier to skip in the textual version, which I think makes it an even more streamlined experience for plot readers. 

I said all of that in a fancypants way, but oh, well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this gorgeous installment in this series, and I'm making my way through Compendium of Lost Tales now.

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands is available on Amazon, on Libby, and at Viewpoint Books.