Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands

Name: Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands
Author: Heather Fawcett

by Heather Fawcett

Genre

Fantasy, Mystery, Romance

Year

2024

Pages

369

Contents

Overview

Professor Emily Wilde, a brilliant and blunt dryadologist, is back at Cambridge with two problems she cannot catalogue away: her enigmatic colleague Wendell Bambleby is hiding a dangerous faerie secret, and the missing “door” that should lead him home has become a growing threat to them both. When strange warnings, academic sabotage, and unsettling visitors begin to converge, Emily’s research stops being theoretical and turns urgently practical.

Following the traces of a vanished scholar, Danielle de Grey, Emily, Wendell, and Emily’s eager niece Ariadne travel to the Alpine village of St. Liesl, where locals treat faerie doors as part of the landscape—and part of the cost of living. As the group maps hidden entrances and pursues rumors of a rare, perilous species tied to a realm-connecting nexus, they draw the attention of predatory Folk and the forces hunting Wendell. Blending scholarly method with improvisation, Emily must decide what she truly owes to knowledge, to her companions, and to Wendell, as their partnership deepens amid questions of trust, power, and what it means to step willingly into Faerie.

Plot Summary ⚠️ Spoilers

In September 1910, Cambridge dryadologist Emily Wilde keeps a mummified faerie foot close at hand, convinced it is linked to a missing faerie door connected to her colleague Wendell Bambleby. On campus she collides with a ribbon-covered man who speaks in riddles about staying on an “eternal” path and then vanishes. Over breakfast, Emily connects Wendell’s missing route to the work of the discredited scholar Danielle de Grey and to a distinctive species known as tree fauns. Wendell—hungover from his birthday—briefly loses control of his magic, accidentally transforming Emily’s tea into something from his court, and Emily realizes rumors about Wendell’s true nature are spreading among students.

That evening, Emily’s niece Ariadne brings copied maps derived from de Grey’s originals, pointing toward St. Liesl in Austria. Before Emily can plan in peace, department head Dr. Farris Rose storms in, declaring he will expose Wendell as a fraud and implicate Emily as well. During Wendell’s lecture, grey sheerie assassins attack; Emily and Wendell fight them off by drowning them with conjured water and using a magically driven coracle inside the museum. The museum is left in surreal ruin, Rose is psychologically shattered, and Emily collects “spilled” magic from the battle—evidence of how violently Wendell’s hidden world is pressing into theirs.

Emily forces an early departure from Cambridge. She tells Ariadne the truth: Wendell is Folk, the displaced monarch of the Irish court Silva Lupi, and his stepmother has begun sending killers. Emily’s theory is that de Grey tracked tree fauns through a rare nexus door—one that connects multiple destinations—and that this nexus may provide a back way into Wendell’s realm. Rose overhears and coerces his way onto the expedition by offering to drop his academic threats. On the train, the ribboned man appears inside Emily’s locked compartment, younger than before and unseen by anyone else. Soon after, Wendell’s compartment accidentally blooms into a faerie bower, confirming that a poison has destabilized his magic.

In St. Liesl, the locals speak openly of faerie doors and old disappearances: Danielle de Grey vanished here, as did Professor Bran Eichorn decades earlier while searching for her. The village practice of salting and tying ribbons to mark safe paths echoes Emily’s earlier encounter, and nightly “visitors” begin escalating from theft to clawed scratches on the cottage door. Emily surveys the mountains and maps fourteen doors, including one that feels strangely vast, yet the nexus remains elusive. Rose’s hostility softens into wary cooperation, though he warns Emily that loving the Folk can ruin a mortal.

Following de Grey’s ribbon trail into the mountains, Emily and Rose are pulled off course when the mummified foot begins twitching and “drifting” toward a fae-touched valley. There they find human and animal bones near caves and a misty spring, and fox-like trooping faeries attack. Emily’s inside-out cloak reveals hidden power, expanding into an endless, shadowy train that terrifies the attackers. Rose is mauled nearly to death, and Shadow—Emily’s grim—reveals his true, massive form to carry Rose home.

Wendell, inexperienced at healing, uses unsettling faerie magic to save Rose, leaving silver stitched scars and an improperly set ear with unknown side effects. Later that night the ribboned visitor returns and Emily identifies him as Bran Eichorn, trapped in Faerie’s borderlands. Eichorn insists de Grey found the nexus and begs Emily to free her; he has been wandering for decades, time-stranded and tormented by lesser Folk. After storms delay further searching, villagers’ accounts suggest de Grey has been sighted across different decades, implying she too is displaced in time.

When Emily’s party searches again, unnatural clouds manifest into the elder huntsmen, who have tracked Wendell far from Ireland. Wendell repeatedly “steps into the landscape” to escape, but his poisoned magic warps the destinations and puts everyone at risk. He conjures a precarious refuge and slaughters the huntsmen, leaving Rose horrified by the violence. Emily then finds a tale linking shadow-bird shapes in a faerie’s chest to an omen of death, and she becomes convinced Wendell is failing.

With Wendell too ill to protect himself, Emily calls in a debt from the fox faeries and uses a bone “key” given by the brownie Poe to travel via winterlands to Ljosland. Poe reveals the key is literally his folded-up door and gives Emily medicinal cakes to bolster Wendell; he also agrees to gather gossip about Wendell’s embattled court. Back in St. Liesl, the cakes help Wendell recover enough to act, and Emily—lost in fear and exhaustion—follows Eichorn’s cries and fresh ribbons into shifting fog. Wendell finds her in the borderlands and shelters them, and they choose intimacy while acknowledging the terrifying stakes of Wendell’s world and Emily’s possible future in it.

Emily learns Wendell’s stepmother is targeting him in part because she believes Emily will avenge him if he dies. Using Eichorn’s ribbons, Wendell senses and forcibly pulls Eichorn out of the borderlands into the mortal world, worsening the poison and collapsing afterward. Emily, Rose, Eichorn, and Shadow confirm the Grünesauge holds the nexus and find a hidden door where de Grey was dragged in; at dusk, fauns attack, and Shadow—enhanced by a hobgoblin collar—kills a faun but also mauls villager Eberhard Fromm in the chaos.

That night the cottage is nearly breached. Emily realizes the attacker is Danielle de Grey herself, drawn by scattered remains from a faun she once trapped—remains that include the mummified foot Emily stole and a tooth Eichorn carries. Wendell drags de Grey out of deep Faerie at great cost, and she reluctantly agrees to lead them to the nexus. Wendell’s condition becomes unnervingly time-bent and avian, but he manages to send Emily a clue: the only way to save him is to retrieve his powerful faerie cat, Orga.

With villagers moving to expel them, Emily rushes to the Grünesauge with Ariadne, de Grey, and Eichorn. Poe appears with grim intelligence: Wendell’s stepmother has conquered multiple realms and civil conflict is spreading among the high ones. De Grey reveals a door-within-a-door that is the nexus, and Emily and Ariadne enter a hidden house of many knobs and thresholds, narrowly escaping its grotesque resident. By choosing the moss-covered knob, they reach Wendell’s kingdom and begin a westward trek, trying to stay unnoticed as mounted Folk patrol the roads.

Faerie erodes time and memory, and Emily journals to remain grounded. They suspect the faun horn they carry can be ground into a powder that matches the poison used on Wendell. After a deara nearly drags Ariadne away, Snowbell—a fox-like fuchszwerg—reveals he has been tailing them and offers “short roads” through barrows to the queen’s lakeside castle. In the barrow roads, Emily’s memories fragment, but the group eventually reaches the castle and sees the queen’s grotesque owl-spider guardians.

Emily approaches the castle alone, pretending to be harmless while navigating courtly riders and shifting architecture. A mortal, Callum Thomas, recognizes she is not enchanted and brings her to his faerie husband, the queen’s brother, after which Emily’s memory blanks—until she finds herself in Wendell’s abandoned chambers. There she locates Orga and, despite being scratched bloody, captures her. Wendell’s stepmother confronts Emily, offering her a place at court if she will help kill Wendell; the queen admits she considered Emily the real threat because of her loyalty and cleverness. Emily refuses and poisons the queen with faun-horn powder hidden in wine, then escapes through a shattered window as Orga provides a shortcut and attacks pursuing guardians. Emily reunites with Ariadne and Snowbell and flees back toward the nexus.

Back in St. Liesl, Orga drives the poison out of Wendell as blackbird-like creatures and kills them one by one, freeing him though leaving him exhausted. Razkarden, ancient leader of the throne-loyal guardians, arrives with a flock, but Wendell summons the Veil—an ancient darkness between realms—forcing their retreat. When Wendell checks the Grünesauge, he finds the brownie has sealed the nexus, cutting off immediate return to his realm.

Emily, Wendell, and Ariadne leave St. Liesl with a village send-off and renewed research promises, Emily and Ariadne reconciled and Rose now a genuine scholarly ally. Months later, in late December, Emily and Wendell stage in Greece near another access point to the nexus. Wendell promises to shield Emily from Faerie’s time-fog and to bring his realm’s time closer to the mortal world. Allies gather—Razkarden’s guardians, fauns and their dogs, trolls sent by Poe, and Snowbell’s kin waiting to be admitted through St. Liesl—until Emily and Wendell, with Orga and Shadow, finally set out together to reenter Faerie and reclaim what was taken.

Characters

Emily Wilde

A Cambridge dryadology professor whose rigorous field methods and fierce loyalty drive the search for a realm-connecting nexus and for the vanished scholar Danielle de Grey. She becomes Wendell Bambleby’s closest ally while navigating faerie politics, escalating attacks, and the personal cost of choosing to enter Faerie on her own terms.
Wendell Bambleby

An exiled faerie monarch living in disguise at Cambridge whose missing door home and worsening poisoning trigger the expedition to St. Liesl. His immense magic can protect and endanger those around him, and his struggle to survive and return to his realm shapes the book’s central conflict.
Ariadne

Emily’s brilliant, determined niece who insists on joining the expedition and later follows Emily into Faerie. Her growth from eager assistant to capable companion raises both practical stakes and emotional pressure for Emily’s leadership.
Dr. Farris Rose

Emily’s department head and early antagonist who threatens to ruin Wendell and Emily academically, then becomes a reluctant field companion after witnessing faerie violence firsthand. His warnings about the Folk and his eventual scholarly support complicate the group’s alliances and decisions.
Shadow

Emily’s grim companion dog whose protective instincts repeatedly prevent worse outcomes, including carrying Rose to safety and guarding Wendell. His forced transformation through an enchanted collar leads to a pivotal disaster that changes the group’s relationship with the village.
Danielle de Grey

A vanished dryadologist whose maps, ribbons, and theories about connected faerie routes guide Emily’s search for the nexus. Time-displaced and trapped by deep Faerie, she becomes both a hard-won witness and a necessary guide to the nexus door.
Professor Bran Eichorn

A missing Cambridge scholar who appears as a ribbon-pocketed wanderer, trapped for decades in Faerie’s borderlands while searching for Danielle de Grey. His fixation on finding her provides crucial direction toward the nexus and exposes the long-term consequences of being lost in Faerie.
Poe

A brownie-like common Folk ally whose folded-up door serves as Emily’s bone “key” for travel through borderland routes. He provides medicinal cakes, intelligence about Wendell’s realm, and tangible support that proves the common fae are indispensable to the larger conflict.
Snowbell

A named fox-like fuchszwerg who first appears as a debt-bound threat near St. Liesl and later becomes an insistent guide in Faerie. His knowledge of short roads and court dangers enables Emily and Ariadne to reach the queen’s castle in time.
Orga

Wendell’s powerful faerie cat whose return becomes Emily’s last-resort plan to save him. Orga’s ability to purge the poison and her role in navigating and fighting during the castle escape make her pivotal to Wendell’s survival.
Wendell's stepmother (the queen of Where the Trees Have Eyes)

The usurping ruler of Wendell’s realm who sends assassins and bargains for hunters to track him across worlds. Her court’s predatory power, and her attempt to manipulate Emily into helping eliminate Wendell, anchors the primary antagonistic force.
Razkarden

The ancient leader of the throne-loyal guardians who pursues Wendell into the mortal world in the aftermath of the castle escape. His confrontation with Wendell showcases the scale of royal power and the dangers circling any attempt to reclaim the throne.
Callum Thomas

A mortal living at the queen’s court who recognizes Emily’s deception and steers her deeper into the castle’s social hazards. His connection to the queen’s family places him at the hinge between mortal vulnerability and faerie politics.
Lord Taran

The queen’s brother, a powerful faerie noble whose actions indirectly shape Emily’s escape route from the castle and complicate the loyalties within the usurper’s family. His ambiguous help suggests internal fractures in the queen’s court.
Taran's husband

A referenced spouse whose possible influence is raised when Wendell considers why Lord Taran might have aided Emily. Though off-page, he matters as part of the political calculus around Taran’s choices.
Julia Haas

The St. Liesl guesthouse owner whose hospitality and practical folklore knowledge (offerings, ribbons, and local dangers) keep Emily’s party functioning in a hostile region. She becomes a key bridge between local custom and the expedition’s survival.
Roland Haas

A local guide connected to Julia Haas who leads Emily and Rose along Danielle de Grey’s ribbon-marked route. His ribbon code and mountain knowledge bring the group to the valley where the most dangerous clues and attacks concentrate.
Elsa Haas

Julia Haas’s daughter who warns the visitors about offering etiquette, including what will offend the local Folk. Her cautions highlight how thin the line is between safety and escalation in St. Liesl.
Astrid Haas

A village girl who befriends Ariadne and later warns the group of impending expulsion after the violence escalates. She also keeps watch with Rose at the Grünesauge, marking the villagers’ shifting role from wary hosts to active participants.
Eberhard Fromm

A St. Liesl villager whose encounter with Danielle de Grey becomes part of the local evidence that time is distorted around the nexus. He is later injured when Shadow, magically augmented, bites him during a faun attack, raising mortal consequences for the group’s choices.
Agnes

An elderly villager who helps organize a lantern-bearing group to disrupt a faun attack near the church. Her actions show the community’s defensive practices and the risks villagers take when the Folk become too bold.
Agnes's husband

A member of the village rescue party who joins Agnes during the confrontation with the fauns. He represents the practical, communal response that briefly keeps the situation from becoming worse.
Peter Wagener

A local driver and source of village context who helps the newcomers move through St. Liesl’s geography and social rules. His comments about nightly danger and offerings underscore how normalized faerie threats are in the region.
Dr. Hensley

The Cambridge museum curator whose presence becomes relevant when Emily and Wendell fight sheerie inside the Museum of Dryadology and Ethnofolklore. Her forced retreat marks the moment the academic world collides openly with faerie violence.
Professor Walters

A Cambridge faculty member briefly encountered during the group’s rushed departure planning. Her name later becomes the identity Emily improvises while infiltrating the queen’s castle, making her a small but functional anchor for Emily’s deception.
Lilja

Emily’s friend from Ljosland who remains an off-page support, receiving letters and later sending a warning and an inherited compass. Her connection provides Emily with tools and emotional context beyond Wendell’s orbit.
Margret

Lilja’s wife and Emily’s friend, referenced in Emily’s letters and in the delivery of Lilja’s compass. Her presence emphasizes the relationships Emily withholds from even as Faerie forces her into greater honesty elsewhere.
The Snow King

A powerful fae lord in Ljosland referenced as a danger if Emily’s travel and deception are discovered. Though off-page, he frames the wider political peril surrounding inter-realm movement.
The elder huntsmen

Cloud-born Irish Folk who can track Wendell across worlds and attack with relentless pursuit. Their arrival turns the search into a desperate flight and exposes how far Wendell’s stepmother’s reach extends.
Grey sheerie

Trooping faerie assassins who attack Wendell during his Cambridge lecture and regenerate unless drowned. Their assault forces Emily and Wendell into open magical conflict and triggers the urgent escape from Cambridge.
The queen's guardians

The queen’s monstrous sentries—seen as owl-like beings with spiderish limbs—who watch, pursue, and attempt to seize intruders near the castle and beyond. Their pursuit culminates in a direct confrontation that requires Wendell to invoke the Veil.
The fuchszwerge

Fox-like trooping Folk haunting the fae-touched valley near St. Liesl, responsible for predatory attacks and for the debt Emily calls in to travel through faerie doors. Their presence ties local geography to the broader borderland network.
The fauns

Horned Folk associated with the Grünesauge and the nexus, feared by villagers and connected to the artefacts (foot, tooth, horn) that draw paths together. They become a major physical threat during the search and later appear as part of the coalition gathering for Wendell’s return.
The brownie (Grünesauge keeper)

An unnamed brownie associated with the nexus region who ultimately seals the nexus door after the guardians’ pursuit. This act blocks immediate access to Wendell’s realm and forces a strategic pause before the final return.
The winter Folk (small door-guardian)

A tiny seasonal faerie who violently defends a minor door in the mountains, highlighting how even small thresholds in the region can be guarded and dangerous. The encounter foreshadows larger hostile forces closing in.
Deara

A frog-skinned faerie beast that seizes Ariadne during the trek through Wendell’s realm. Its retreat in fear of Emily’s cloak shows that Emily’s protections carry real authority within Faerie.
The trolls

A small family group sent by Poe who joins the coalition in Greece, agreeing to ally with Wendell in exchange for freedom to roam his realm. Their inclusion signals the widening, multi-species alliance forming around Wendell’s return.
The cook

An unnamed cook at the rented Greek house who serves breakfast as Wendell and Emily prepare to reenter Faerie. This brief role helps establish the mundane calm before the final crossing.

Themes

1) Mapping as a bid for control in a world built to unmake certainty. Emily’s scholarship is not just career or curiosity; it is a survival strategy. The mummified faerie foot that “might slip away” (Ch. 1) and later stands on the stairs, orienting itself like a compass needle (Ch. 15), turns research into an unsettling parody of method: evidence moves, paths rewrite themselves, and even her meticulous journaling frays as Faerie steals memory (Ch. 21). Against that entropy, Emily’s mapbook becomes an ethical anchor—an insistence that knowledge can be shared, not hoarded by courts or swallowed by fog.

2) The porous boundary between academia and lived danger. The novel repeatedly punctures the fantasy of scholarly distance. Farris Rose begins as an institutional threat—accusations of falsified fieldwork (Ch. 2)—only to be physically mauled by fuchszwerge (Ch. 8), then painfully “healed” into uncanny scars by Wendell (Ch. 9). Cambridge’s petty politics and tenure comforts (Ch. 1) are revealed as thin protections when sheerie assassins enter a lecture hall (Ch. 2). Even Rose’s eventual mentorship offer (Ch. 15) reframes academia as a community of risk and responsibility, not merely reputation.

3) Love as consent under unequal power. Emily and Wendell’s romance is charged by questions of sovereignty, coercion, and what can be truly known. Rose’s warning—can you ever “know” him? (Ch. 7)—echoes through Wendell’s time-magic (Ch. 3), his ruthless killing of the huntsmen (Ch. 11), and the queen’s attempt to “collect” Emily as a mortal possession (Ch. 22). Emily’s choice to kiss Wendell in the borderlands (Ch. 13) and later accept his proposal while he is unconscious (Ch. 16) are deliberately uncomfortable moments: affection and agency must be renegotiated in a world where glamour and command are ordinary tools.

4) The politics of the “common” Folk: undervalued lives, decisive power. The book quietly displaces courtly grandeur with the competence of lesser beings. Poe’s folded door-key and healing cakes (Ch. 12–13), the fox faeries’ owed debt (Ch. 9, 12), and even trolls bargaining for freedom (Ch. 25) show networks of mutual obligation that outmaneuver aristocratic schemes. Wendell’s condescension toward “common” fae (Ch. 5) softens by the end, as he admits their contributions and asks Emily to guard him against becoming like other rulers (Ch. 24).

5) Time as trauma and captivity. Eichorn’s decades of wandering (Ch. 9) and de Grey’s age-flickering appearances (Ch. 10, 15) portray Faerie not as escapism but as dislocation—grief stretched into eternity. Wendell’s body manifests the cost of power and poison as “bird shadows” migrating toward his heart (Ch. 11), making time not merely strange but lethal. The closing movement toward the nexus (Ch. 25) therefore feels less like a triumphal quest than a decision to enter instability with eyes open—armed with maps, alliances, and chosen commitments.