The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire

Title: The Brightest Fell
Author: Seanan McGuire
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: October Daye # 11

Hardcover, 368 Pages
Publication: September 5, 2017 by DAW

Source: I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for a honest review.

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For once, everything in October “Toby” Daye’s life seems to be going right. There have been no murders or declarations of war for her to deal with, and apart from the looming specter of her Fetch planning her bachelorette party, she’s had no real problems for days. Maybe things are getting better.

Maybe not.

Because suddenly Toby’s mother, Amandine the Liar, appears on her doorstep and demands that Toby find her missing sister, August. But August has been missing for over a hundred years and there are no leads to follow. And Toby really doesn’t owe her mother any favors.

Then Amandine starts taking hostages, and refusal ceases to be an option.

The synopsis of the 11th book in the October Daye series doesn’t leave a lot to be desired. Amandine, October’s mother shows up to her house to force her to look for her sister August who has been missing for over a century and to make sure she complies she takes Tybalt and Jazz as collateral. October ends up teaming up with her nemesis and stepfather Simon; and thus begins the search.

The theme of missing children seems to be always prevalent in the October Daye series and I wonder if McGuire has run out of ideas? It’s either missing children, drug, politics or war. I would really like to see something different for a change. 

This is the first time we actually see Amandine and she’s a despicable character as I imagined. I hated her and how she treated October. She constantly contradicted herself treating like October isn’t her daughter yet expects October to respect and treat her like a mother. Nope. And she comes into October's house making unreasonable demands and takes her people! And then there’s Simon. We met Simon in one of the previous book but didn’t really get to know him. We finally learn more about Simon and why he did the things he did. He was a pleasant surprise. I feel like I initially misjudged him and actually enjoyed Simon and October’s interaction. However, the ending was not pleasant for Simon. And finally, readers will meet August, October’s sister. I didn’t recall she had a sister. Nor did I like her. She’s a typical spoiled and entitled pure-blood and I could care less about her and thought she was better staying lost.

In my opinion the plot was weak and did nothing to move the series forward. But I did enjoyed everything but the beginning (Amandine taking hostages) and the end (Bratty August making demands to find Simon and the outcome with Jazz and Tybalt). I’m not sure where McGuire is taking this series in this new arc, but so far it’s not so good. The series is about to go onto it’s 12th novel and it clearly shows. The overall story-line is getting a bit stale and the books are overflowing with recapping. Again, we are too far into the series to be recapping every single detail for every character. If McGuire took out the recapping the book would be significantly shorter. I hope she fixes this issue.