skygiants

genarti got Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries out of the library recently after seeing a couple of positive reviews around DW, so I snagged it and read it before it went back -- and I am glad of the reviews, because otherwise I would have immediately assumed from the title that I was likely to be completely allergic to it. In fact it was much less agonizingly twee than suggested by the title and I was not allergic to it; it was a fun time!

This is one of those books that is written as An Academic's Field Notes, which depending on how plausibly the voice lands can either be enjoyable or excruciating. This one did not grate on me, although I did spend most of the book assuming we were in the 1890s until Emily Wilde mentioned something casually in passing about 'black-and-white like a film' and I was like WHAT? and immediately looked up and demanded of genarti when she thought the book was set. (genarti said '1910s? we must be pre WWI because nobody ever mentions it?' but given givens I have got to assume that this is simply a World With Fairies And Without WWI.) Honestly I think I think the reason I assumed it was set earlier is because it feels like it wants to be the romantasy Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell -- it's got the eerie/incomprehensible fae encounters and the various bits of folklore that genuinely feel like they run on a kind of non-human logic, as well as the fun academic footnotes dropping intriguing hints about other interesting stories along this world's timeline. Obviously it is not much like JSMN, at heart this is still extremely a relatively light romantasy, but aiming in that direction makes it stronger and more substantive and convincing I think than it might otherwise be.

The other thing it feels a bit like it wants to be is Howl's Moving Castle -- the love interest to our awkwardly brisk professor is her annoyingly flamboyant colleague, darling of the department, who never travels anywhere without an entourage of supportive graduate students. One certainly enjoys annoying 4 annoying ( spoilers )

Anyway. Otherwise, Fawcett, as I've mentioned, is very good at coming up with faerie lore if perhaps slightly less good at grounding the human bits of the worldbuilding. Enjoyable read! I think I forgot to mention what the leads are actually doing for most of the book, which is 'being bad at over-wintering in a small Scandinavian town whose inhabitants are constantly judging them for not knowing how to chop wood.'