Penny Smith’s Reviews > Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands > Status Update

This very book is Emily’s special interest, one she often gets very hyperfixated on and puts of eating and sleeping to record in detail.

The confrontation with the faerie queen is very autistically relatable because Emily is very good at reading the folk, as she claims, because they’re very prideful and predictable. But she is not so good at reading or interacting with people. So when she walked in the room and realized the queen was mortal, that was probably her worst nightmare lol

Emily grew up being obsessed with the fae and having her own parents, along with herself, not understand how she fits in with normal people. I think Emily takes comfort in the non bums because that’s how she’s always felt. But this book swings another home run by delving into her mind and showing us that, despite feeling like an outcast, she IS human. As different as she is, she deserves the title all the same.

Another reason why this series is great autism rep is because it thwarts the theory that may people believe autistic people don’t feel empathy. In reality, most autistic people simply have a hard time reconciling how their emotional mind and their logical mind fit together. But the emotions are still there, begging to be embraced.

The idea that an autistic woman, in all her strange rigidity, quirkiness, and obsessive special interest, presents more of a danger to the faerie queen than an actual faerie prince is so amazing