Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Rating: 5 stars

Recommended Ages: 14+

Note: this review does not contain spoilers for this book, it contains spoilers for the first book in the series.

At about 15% of the book, I thought I might not enjoy this follow up to Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries as much as the original. By about 60% of the way through the book, I was pretty sure I was loving it even more.

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands takes dear grumpy Emily and her infuriatingly charming Faerie king Wendell Bambleby to the Austrian Alps to find a back door to his kingdom after an attack on his life courtesy of his stepmother makes retaking his crown all the more urgent. They are joined this time by the head of the Dryadology department at Cambridge, old-school professor and disliker of Wendell, Farris Rose, and Emily's niece and assistant, Ariadne.

Otherlands is higher stake than its predecessor, with actual potential death on the line at certain points. More time is spent in Faerie and we get our first true glimpse into what life in Faerie might actually look like. Given that Wendell wants almost nothing more than to marry Emily and have her be his Queen in Faerie, Otherlands gives this realm a livable space that was difficult to imagine in the first book.

This expansion of the world, plus the addition of Farris Rose and Ariadne, puts Otherlands in the rare company of second books in a series that are better than the first. Better yet--although the end portends more to come--there is a resolution to the main story arc. Although I would love for the third book to publish now, at least I don't have to remember a dozen different elements of a cliffhanger. Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands was highly enjoyable and this has become one of my favorite fantasy series.