I liked this final installment more than the second book and slightly less than the first one, I think. Or maybe I liked it nearly as much, except that I’m still so nostalgic for the first book’s specific cozy fantasy vibe and I kept waiting for it to be recreated, but—much like was the case with the second installment—it’s just not there. The stakes are too high (life or death, even, at one point), the balance of fairy tale darkness and whimsy skews all too often toward the former, and the whole vibe is more “save the kingdom” than “settle into a new home while also exploring it all the time, for science.” And hey, none of that is bad! Plus, all the events stem very logically from previous ones, and really, it would probably make very little sense to have this book be all “Emily and Wendell settle into life in Faerie.” I just miss that cozy vibe.

Anyway, Emily and Wendell do spend some time settling into life in Faerie, and the lower-stakes moments were, for the most part, my favorite. I do wish there was more depth to all the faerie courtiers, because they are presented as just this nearly uniform mass of weirdly dressed spectators. I would have preferred to see more examples of the fae being alien and weird and practicing green and orange morality that goes ever so slightly beyond the boundaries of human comprehension. Give me new, different flavors of weird! Even just glimpses of them! But alas, most of that was supplied by the characters I’d already known, though at least I can’t complain about the quality of those familiar flavors. It was pretty interesting to see Wendell shed all remaining pretense of humanity and lean into his fairy prince/king persona. I also liked seeing this explicitly addressed in both Emily’s inner musings and her conversations with a friend—the impact this has on their relationship, what sort of worries she experiences because of it, how they’re quelled. I’ve also come to really like Lord Taran, reluctantly benevolent monster that he is. Pretty much every scene he was in was a highlight.

Predictably, I really enjoyed the focus on stories as more of less laws for the Fae. I sort of wanted to see even more done with it, or rather, for the characters to choose a more fluid, proactive approach to using a story to solve the central plot problem, twisting the narrative from within, so to speak. But I also understand that this kind of approach would require different characters. Emily isn’t, after all, a writer—she’s a scholar who wants to document things exactly as they work, and she stays true to herself all through the story. Which is something I appreciate, because she’s really a great character whose development is logical and consistent. And I did enjoy how she eventually handled the challenge.

It was a great touch to see the big problem from the first book essentially become the solution here in the last—it really pulled the whole story together. And I liked seeing the villain get reformed rather than disposed of, just as much as I liked the implication of that happy state of things *not* lasting ever after potentially.

All in all, this was a pretty satisfying conclusion to the story. Seeing some of the characters from Ljosland again was a welcome surprise, the Faerie was a darkly magical place, Shadow is the best doggo, and Orga is the terriblest cat. Whatever Heather Fawcett writes next, I’m definitely game to check it out.