The Brightest Fell, Seanan McGuire, 2017. Rating: 3.5/5

In this installment of McGuire’s brilliant urban fantasy series, October Daye–changeling, blood-magic worker, knight, and official hero of Faerie—finds herself forced on a quest to find her half-sister. At stake? The sanity—and lives—of those she loves.

Amandine, Toby’s powerful (and sociopathic) mother, orders Toby to locate August, who has been missing for a century or so. As collateral, Amandine kidnaps Toby’s fiance, the King of Cats, and her friend Jazz, imprisoning them in their animal forms until Toby completes her near-impossible task.

The only one who can help with Toby’s search? August’s father, Simon, who happens to be Toby’s arch enemy. Along with her squire, Quentin, Toby and Simon travel deep into Faerie to find and bring Autumn home and restore what Toby holds dear.

The Brightest Fell explores Toby’s life-long issues with her mother and enables us to see the evil Simon in a different, poignant light. The latter is arguably the best part of the book.

We return to locations that Toby visited in previous adventures. Discover haunting loose ends of other quests. Confront dark, old memories. While it is neat to revisit past story lines, here it feels a little repetitive mostly because the quest itself doesn’t seem particularly challenging. The powerful sea witch, the Luidaeg, is the one who ends up solving most of the problems.

I’m conflicted with The Brightest Fell.

McGuire’s world-building is so imaginatively detailed that picking up any book in the series is like taking a vacation to an exotic locale with characters who are old, familiar friends. It’s that good. I’ve been an avid fan of the series from the first book, Rosemary and Rue. And I flew enjoyably through this title in a couple days. The writing is great. The suspense is there. When I finished, however, I was left feeling…sad. Like nothing—plot, characters—had progressed or developed. Like I came full circle back to the start of the book with everyone, me and the characters, left a little jaded. It’s still a good read. It’s still great to be able to slide comfortably into a fantasy world that seems just next door to ours. I just wanted a little more.