Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales is the third book in the series, following Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries and Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands. At the start of the series, Emily is a quiet, prickly dryadologist (expert in Faeries) who thinks she has trouble expressing her emotions. Wendell is a playful, but sometimes irresponsible Faerie prince, faking academic credentials to work as a dryadologist at Cambridge. Over the course of the series, Emily and Wendell fall in love and grow as characters. While Emily discovers new reserves of heroism within her, Wendell transforms into a responsible, true leader of his people. Emily and Wendell live in a world that corresponds to the early-20th-century real world, except that in the series, Faeries or magical creatures are real. Dryadology is a valid and popular discipline, and scholars often go to inordinate lengths, risking their safety, to get close to their fascinating but capricious subjects. Co-existing with real-world locations such as Ireland and Scandinavia, Faerie realms can usually be accessed through doors and portals.

In the first book, Emily arrives in the remote Ljoslandic village of Hrafnsvik to research the Hidden Ones, the mysterious local faeries about whom little is known in academic circles. The stories about the Hidden Ones will comprise the last chapter in the encyclopedia of faeries Emily is writing. However, Emily’s project is far from straightforward: The villagers are unwilling to share their secrets with the taciturn Emily, the stories of the Hidden Folk are filled with horror and foreboding, and Emily’s academic rival Wendell Bambleby arrives from Cambridge to stir things up. However, as Emily learns the truth that Wendell is an exiled prince of Faerie, his throne usurped by his stepmother, she begins to fall for him. Wendell and Emily make friends with local couple Lilja and Margret and delve deeper into the mysteries of the Hidden Ones, realizing the faeries often torment the villagers. Emily traces the Faerie’s extreme mistreatment of mortals to the fact that their ruler, the Hidden King, has been imprisoned in a tree, causing his land to freeze and decay. Emily cleaves the tree and frees the Hidden King. In an unexpected turn of events, the king seizes Emily so he can marry her. Wendell and the villagers rescue Emily from the wintry king’s court. As the book ends, Wendell proposes marriage to Emily, Emily finishes her encyclopedia, and she resolves to help Wendell recover his throne.

In Book 2, set roughly a year after the end of the previous novel, Emily has yet to accept Wendell’s proposal. While busy working on a book that maps the various doors between the faerie realms, she is joined by Ariadne, her niece, now a student at Cambridge. Wendell is still pretending to be a professor. Meanwhile, Emily’s research leads her to investigate the mysterious disappearance of two scholars during the early 1860s. The scholars may be lost in a strange region known as the Otherlands. As Emily and Wendell travel to Ireland where a nexus of faerie doors may lead to the Otherlands, it becomes clear that Wendell has been secretly poisoned by his stepmother. To cure Wendell, Emily must bring back his cat, Orga, from Silva Lupi. Emily discovers a door to the kingdom in the nexus, through which she and Ariadne arrive in the fairy realm. After courting much danger, Emily and Ariadne return to Ireland with Orga, who heals Wendell with her powerful magic. Since the nexus door to Silva Lupi has been sealed shut by magic, Emily and Wendell bid goodbye to their friends and travel to Greece to look for a door so Wendell can return to his kingdom and reclaim his throne. Emily takes a sabbatical from Cambridge and accepts Wendell’s proposal of marriage.