Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands characters

Appears from the start

A Cambridge dryadologist, now the author of the first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries and a scholar of established reputation, which has improved her standing at the university without making academic politics any easier for her. She remains rigorous, blunt and far more fluent in the rules of the Folk than in those of her own species. The book is again written as her field journal. She begins it with a marriage proposal from a faerie king outstanding and unanswered, and with a research problem she has not admitted is personal.

Appears from the start

Emily's colleague at Cambridge and, as of the previous book, openly what she long suspected: an exiled faerie king, driven out of his own realm by his stepmother. Charming, indolent, beautifully dressed and disinclined to take his own danger seriously, he continues teaching and continues pressing the proposal Emily has not answered. Being cut off from his own realm is a worse problem for him than he lets on.

Appears from the start

Emily's dog, an enormous black hound, older now and no less devoted, who accompanies her out of Cambridge again.

First appears in chapter 2

Emily's niece, newly arrived to work as her assistant. Young, enthusiastic, determined to become a dryadologist herself, and a great deal more socially fluent than her aunt, she is undeterred by Emily's manner and inclined to treat obvious danger as an academic opportunity.

First appears in chapter 2

The faerie queen who holds Wendell's kingdom, having driven him out of it, and who has gone on sending people after him in the mortal world since. She is known quantity rather than mystery at the start of this book: she wants him dead, and she has both the reach and the patience to keep trying.

First appears in chapter 3

The small faerie Emily befriended in Hrafnsvik, who has attached himself to her and followed her back to Cambridge. He is out of his native country and disinclined to leave her household regardless.

First appears in chapter 5

A senior dryadologist of considerable reputation and rigid views, long retired from fieldwork. He is sceptical of Emily's conclusions, disapproving of her methods, and openly distrustful of Wendell Bambleby for reasons he is not initially willing to spell out.

First appears in chapter 5

A celebrated dryadologist of an earlier generation who vanished decades ago in the course of her research into the doors between the mortal world and the realms of the Folk. Her reputation was formidable and her disappearance never explained. Her surviving papers, and the map she was said to have made, are the starting point for Emily's search.