Book Review: Saving the Faerie Prince

 Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales, by Heather Fawcett (DelRey)

I’m an unabashed fan of Heather Fawcett’s “Emily Wilde”series. Falling loosely in the genre of “Victorian lady scholar-adventurer”tales, these stories combine the best of the intrepid, self-reliant heroine whofalls in love despite her better judgment with a passion for academic inquiry anda penchant for getting into trouble. Emily Wilde is a professor of dryadology,that is, the study of all things Fae, which in this world are real if often misunderstoodand hidden. In previous adventures, she butted heads with fellow scholar,dashing and mercurial Wendell Bambleby, who turned out to be a Faerie prince inexile.  Discovering Wendell’s identitywasn’t enough, however. Emily found herself called upon to rescue him frompoisoning by his evil stepmother and then to help restore him to his magical realm.Now she’s finally agreed to his marriage proposal despite all the folkloric warningsabout how inconstant and lethal the courtly faw can be. She doesn’t know if shecan truly trust him to remain himself once he’s back on the throne. But she trustsher own heart and the truths that underlie the stories whose study is her life’swork. None of this has prepared her for Wendell’s kingdom or the role she mustsoon play as its queen. As transcendently beautiful as this realm is, darknessstirs in the form of the stepmother’s parting revenge. The only way to save therealm and its people is for Wendell to sacrifice himself—which Emily refuses toconsider as an option. Wendell may have other ideas.

This third volume in the series is every bit as captivatingas the earlier ones, but it seemed to me that the characters were deeper and morecomplex, their inner conflicts more finely drawn. The questions have shiftedfrom “Will he/won’t he?” and “Will she/won’t she?” to “What will he give tosave his world and how will she save him from his better nature?” As before,the answer lies in the depths of folklore, the resonant truths that make thesestories told again and again over generations. Those depths speak as powerfullyto modern readers of Fawcett’s books as they do to the folk inhabiting them.

Truly a joy to read and savor.