This did not work for me. Even putting aside the terrible autism rep, the detached, emotionless writing style of the field journal format and the downright glacial pacing were the opposite of engaging for me. I can see how this could maybe be more appealing on a cold winter night with a mug of hot cocoa and absolutely nothing else going on, but it’s 90 degrees and sunny in Mamdani’s city where I am, so I have a lot of fun things currently competing for my attention (free zipline today!) and am unable to give this book the proper seasonal consideration.

This is also the kind of cozy fantasy where “cozy” is defined as having zero stakes and people are just, idk, existing and doing regular shit in a small town — the fantasy equivalent of a Hallmark holiday romcom where the heroine arrives in Bumfuck, Nowhere on a girlboss big city mission but instead mingles with the locals and learns about flannels and humility and the spirit of community or whatever. The titular faerie encyclopedia is barely involved, and primarily exists offscreen as a plot mechanic for her to arrive at this new location. Emily is bafflingly under-prepared and under-researched for a long stay in the wilderness considering she is supposed to be an experienced field scholar, so a lot of the story is her just clumsily stumbling around offending the townsfolk and trying not to starve, and then somehow getting handed a frankly absurd romantic subplot at the end. (Like, I’m so glad he somehow found the time to fall in love with her despite the parade of women coming in and out of his bed throughout the book.) I was constantly oscillating between utter boredom and irritation with her bumbling state of affairs. Girl literally would’ve died multiple times if not for the men consistently coming to her rescue.

I personally found Sylvie Cathrall’s Sunken Archive series a much more successful example of fantasy light academia with a romantic subplot, also written in a unique format (letters) and featuring neurodivergent characters (OCD, autism, and anxiety). I found it a much kinder and more well-rounded exploration of what it is like to seek love and career success in academia as someone who sees the world a little differently, perhaps because the author herself identifies as autistic and living with OCD. Heather Fawcett, in comparison, does not, and has noted that she did not write Emily as an intentionally autistic character, instead modeling her after the "socially inept genius” archetype 😬

Reading this felt like one long extended yawn, so I probably won’t be pursuing the rest of the series — I’ll tack on an extra star for the fae elements mostly concentrated to the last 25% to be extra generous, since they were the only mildly interesting thing about this book for me.

An unexpected departure from the usual tropes in dark academia--the Incandescent instead follows a teacher in a magical school, and her misadventures. Teaching is an even more challenging job when you've got to worry about your students summoning demons, and magical duals. Overall, I enjoyed the fresh perspectives in the Incandescent but the pacing felt a little uneven. I loved the first 40% and the last 20% of the book, but the middle section fell very flat, and seemed very unresolved. There were also romantic elements that didn't quite work for me, also for pacing/flow reasons, without spoiling too much. There's large chunks of info-dumping and I genuinely enjoyed the tangents but this could also be really unappealing depending on your personal tastes. Unexpected moments of humor worked surprisingly well. Definitely worth a read if you want something with an older protagonist and a new spin on the magical school novel.