Tag: Fairy Fiction

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3) by Heather Fawcett

Posted on May 15, 2025 by - Book Review

If you have been reading my reviews, you know that I absolutely love this series, and book three doesn’t disappoint.

The Emily Wilde series isn’t my normal fare. Yes, it’s about the Fae, and yes, it does have some degree of mayhem and danger, but it falls dangerously close to historical fiction, and even more dangerously close to Romantasy which I have a love/hate relationship with.

Regardless, I find Ms. Fawcett’s writing quaint and comfortable.

The series is the continuing adventures of renowned dryadologist Emily Wilde and her very complicated fiancé, Wendell Bambleby.

If you’ve made it this far in the series, then you know that the dashing Wendell is a ruler of the High Faerie with a long lost kingdom. The events of this book involve Emily and Wendell returning to his kingdom and taking control of it from his very wicked stepmother who has placed a curse upon the land.

One of the things I love about Ms. Fawcett’s writing style with this series is that she presents it as a series of journal entries from Emily’s perspective. This, for my preference, makes it very easy to pick up and put down the book without having to back-track for context (an annoying habit of mine). Plus, I can’t resist a good footnote.

The worldbuilding is absolutely top notch, and very much enhanced by the magical foibles of Wendell. If Wendell doesn’t want to spend all day climbing up a mountain, he magics it away. The mercurial nature of the land of Faerie also plays a very large role in establishing how in flux the landscape really is. There are allusions to various tribes and species of Fae that we never meet, along with a plethora of strange creatures that we do. Don’t even get me started on the apparent war with, and fear of, the trees.

Pick up this series. It’s fun, semi-relaxing (until it isn’t), and a very well written tale that stays very much on a semi-academic path with a wide variety of madcap adventure.

Echoes of the Imperium (Tales of the Iron Rose #1) by Nicholas & Olivia Atwater

Posted on March 4, 2025 by - Book Review

** This book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review **

It’s the end of the year, and I’m looking for something amusing and Fantasy to pick up to get me into the first bit of 2025. I was perusing synopses, and one caught my eye: pirate goblin with a ragtag group of swashbuckling/steampunk adventurers.

Yeah, I was hooked.

The engaging thing about Echoes of the Imperium is that it hit the ground running and spalled off lore, history, world-building and character development while we were in the throes of getting this adventure going.

William Blair is a goblin who went from being a lowly young cabin boy to the captain of his own airship: the Iron Rose. Wil, and his very eclectic crew have a very unique history and are attempting their best at trying to eke out a living in a post-Imperium world that isn’t always the most sympathetic to their cause.

Wil’s closest friends, and confidants, however, are his ever-supporting crew, and they will do just about anything for their captain.

The real adventure in Echoes of the Imperium kicks of in a two-fold action that gets the Iron Rose in a bit of a pickle. First, Wil agrees to deliver a “no questions asked” shipment of “something,” while, at the same time, takes on a mysterious passenger who seems to need to be getting out of town rather quickly: Miss Hawkins.

Oh, this is very important to know going into this. This world revolves around subservience and worship of the Seelie Fae. That little twist really carries a lot of weight on the history of this realm, as well as to the impending future of survival and conflict.

I’ll cut right to it: I loved this book. The characters were all beautifully developed, and a lot very likable. There were sufficient flaws that helped drive the story along while not being the typical cliches that often get thrown into High Fantasy. The dialogue is very diverse, and random enough to build a nice, tightly woven, story with an excellent variety.

To me, the characters were very autonomous. I never felt that I was on a predestined path, aside from the few parts that were actually intended to be that way.

Echoes of the Imperium is, already, one of my top reads of 2025. I cannot wait for the continued adventures of the Iron Rose, and I’m really dying to see what kind of pickles Wil and his crew can get into going forward.

The epilogue, alone, set the state for much more sinister things rising up in the future. I’m here for it.