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A review by caedocyon
The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire
3.0
I was watching the number of pages left, so I wasn't expecting The Brightest Fell to end in such a dark place. (The last 60 pp are a novella I haven't read yet.) And then it was 1:50am and I couldn't sleep. Take that as a warning.
I like when McGuire shows the dark, harsh side of faerie, something closer to the spirit of almost every folktale she draws on. The harshness of faerie is talked up in the other books in the series, but in practice most of the bad stuff is counteracted by the end of the book, or maybe the one after. I suspect a lot of what happened in this book is also going to be Fixed at some point (except), but meanwhile we are left with lots of consequences and everyone is worse off at the end of the book than they were at the start.
This summer I experienced a violent event, and it's made me think a lot about violence in fiction and how trauma is or isn't represented. I didn't find The Brightest Fell's take as (personally?) compelling as that of He Says He Is An Experimental Theologian*, but it's certainly something that McGuire is thinking about in this book.
On a technical level, I loved that this is one of the books where lots of dangling threads from earlier stories get picked up, and there's some great character and relationship development (though May and Jazz, as always, feel like an afterthought). On the other hand, it's a little over-written. I realize that we needed something substantially happy and fun at the beginning to set off against the rest of the book, but the bachelorette party dragged on and on. (a. I don't care about the Toby/Tybalt relationship, b. Toby just exclaims over how embarrassed she is, repeatedly, for approximately 700 pages.) There were other points where I had to take a moment to goggle at how many different metaphors and similes could be packed into a single paragraph. I want to give it 4 stars for the plot, but the writing drags it down to a solid 3.
* So yes, part of the reason I've been posting less on GR is that I spent a couple weeks in August/September blazing through about 1,000 pages of [b:Welcome to Night Vale|23129410|Welcome to Night Vale (Night Vale, #1)|Joseph Fink|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447774088s/23129410.jpg|42677282]/[b:His Dark Materials|18116|His Dark Materials (His Dark Materials #1-3)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442329494s/18116.jpg|1943518] crossover fic. I highly, highly recommend it.
ETA: went back and finished the novella a few days later.
TALK ABOUT NOTHING HAVING ANY CONSEQUENCES EVER!
I like when McGuire shows the dark, harsh side of faerie, something closer to the spirit of almost every folktale she draws on. The harshness of faerie is talked up in the other books in the series, but in practice most of the bad stuff is counteracted by the end of the book, or maybe the one after. I suspect a lot of what happened in this book is also going to be Fixed at some point (except
Spoiler
Amandine, who is finally revealed to be a real piece of work, whewThis summer I experienced a violent event, and it's made me think a lot about violence in fiction and how trauma is or isn't represented. I didn't find The Brightest Fell's take as (personally?) compelling as that of He Says He Is An Experimental Theologian*, but it's certainly something that McGuire is thinking about in this book.
On a technical level, I loved that this is one of the books where lots of dangling threads from earlier stories get picked up, and there's some great character and relationship development (though May and Jazz, as always, feel like an afterthought). On the other hand, it's a little over-written. I realize that we needed something substantially happy and fun at the beginning to set off against the rest of the book, but the bachelorette party dragged on and on. (a. I don't care about the Toby/Tybalt relationship, b. Toby just exclaims over how embarrassed she is, repeatedly, for approximately 700 pages.) There were other points where I had to take a moment to goggle at how many different metaphors and similes could be packed into a single paragraph. I want to give it 4 stars for the plot, but the writing drags it down to a solid 3.
* So yes, part of the reason I've been posting less on GR is that I spent a couple weeks in August/September blazing through about 1,000 pages of [b:Welcome to Night Vale|23129410|Welcome to Night Vale (Night Vale, #1)|Joseph Fink|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447774088s/23129410.jpg|42677282]/[b:His Dark Materials|18116|His Dark Materials (His Dark Materials #1-3)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442329494s/18116.jpg|1943518] crossover fic. I highly, highly recommend it.
ETA: went back and finished the novella a few days later.
Spoiler
TALK ABOUT A FIX-IT!TALK ABOUT NOTHING HAVING ANY CONSEQUENCES EVER!