Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1) by Callie Hart Series: Fae & Alchemy #1
Published by Forever on June 4, 2024
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Romantasy
Pages: 624 •Format: E-Book •Source: Kindle Unlimited
Goodreads
Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember.
But a secret is like a knot.
Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone.
When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently reopens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares…but it turns out they’re real, and Saeris has landed herself right in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed.
The first of her kind to tread the frozen mountains of Yvelia in over a thousand years, Saeris mistakenly binds herself to Kingfisher, a handsome Fae warrior, who has secrets and nefarious agendas of his own. He will use her Alchemist’s magic to protect his people, no matter what it costs him… or her.
Death has a name.
It is Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate.
His past is murky.
His attitude stinks.
And he’s the only way Saeris is going to make it home.
It’s an amazing feeling when you go into a book with high expectations from all of the hype, and they end up being 100% met. That was my experience with Quicksilver, the book that had the romantasy community in a chokehold in 2024. I was eager but also a little dubious considering the recent boom in romantasy titles (it feels like the general population just discovered ACOTAR in the past year or two and I’m like the real ones pre-ordered it ten years ago XD) and with an extreme surge in popularity and mainstream attention can definitely spur many lackluster copycats (remember when dystopian was EVERYWHERE after Hunger Games? Or the fifty thousand Twilight rip-offs? Pepperidge farm remembers). As much as I adored Quicksilver (it was my top read of 2024), I can’t deny though that it definitely, totally, completely felt inspired by ACOMAF.
Starting off with the positive: Quicksilver gripped me from the get-go with an action packed intro. Saeris is a twenty-something girl living in poverty in a world where the sun never sets, water is scarce, and the heat is unrelenting. She works in a forge but has covertly learned how to fight and steal (of course, as pretty much all romantasy heroines do) and is the main provider for her little brother (who is weaponized incompetence personified, holy smokes, the way Saeris talks about providing for/protecting him made me think he was 6, not 20 >.<) She ends up stealing the golden glove of one of the palace guards which kicks off a chain reaction for the rest of this portal fantasy, which has Saeris unintentionally leaving the mortal realm and ending up in a world of Fae. Come to find out, Saeris is an alchemist, and can control the magical substance quicksilver, which allows for opening portals to travel across realms. Therefore, she’s basically forced to stay at the Winter Court until she can figure out how to control the quicksilver again to help the Fae form talismans so that non-alchemists can travel via the quicksilver without going insane, and learn to communicate with the quicksilver herself as well.
Saeris’s role as an alchemist was one of the stand out elements of the story for me. It felt fairly unique that her power was basically to be a smith and that her magic was manifested in such a specific way. It sort of reminded me of the Fabrikators in Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse. Watching her work in forges and run experiments rather than always be “training” for battle like in many romantasies (although she does some of that too and is of course a skilled warrior *eye roll*) was refreshing. I also loved loved loved her little fox companion she finds living in an abandoned forge who spends his days with her as she tries and fails to master the quicksilver’s secrets.
There was a really fleshed out set of secondary characters in this novel which is always the mark of a good series for me. Obviously, we have to chat about Kingfisher, the love interest. Of course he’s the biggest, baddest warrior, always in black/dark colors, can control shadows, has a tragic backstory and masks his pain with sarcasm, etc. Yes, it’s been overdone but it does work, and he did have an additional interesting element of slowly going insane from the quicksilver that was living inside of him. His and Saeris’ love story was definitely a hate-to-love slow burn and I think it was done well; the animosity was tangible at first and I don’t think the shift to them tolerating each other was made too soon.
However, the real start of the show in the supporting cast was Carrion. OMG, he was hilarious. At first I was seriously questioning what purpose his character was going to serve later in the novel when it seems he had ran his course as an initial, petty antagonist but he added the perfect amount of levity, humor, and sass to the story while also fitting in seamlessly and not feeling like the token “funny” character. Also, as much as Saeris begrudged him (he was pretty insufferable to her at times, especially given their history) I liked how she at times did lean on him as the only other person from the mortal realm who was out of his depth too. Ren and Lorreth were real gems too and I can see them playing a bigger role in future books.
The ending was a LOT. There was SO MUCH action packed in, and honestly some of it was #horrifying (the creature in the labryinth, iykyk, I did not need that sort of Aragog-adjacent horror). I also didn’t like the implication that a certain character had been abused but then that was just sort of brushed aside? IDK it seemed in poor taste and just for shock value to me. There were some interesting reveals for SURE, but also some massive cliffhangers (which I honestly don’t love my books to end on). I heard that book 2 was already supposed to be released back when it was an indie title, but not that it’s been picked up by a trad pub it’s TBD, so we’ll see.
One bone I do have to pick with this book though, as much as I loved it, is that in some ways it reaaaaaallly felt like reskinned ACOMAF fanfic. And I am not saying that as a knock! The fanfic to trad pub pipeline is STRONG right now. I just found myself raising my eyebrows at some of the similarities (View Spoiler ». However, I did think the Fae’s origins were one of the more unique takes in the book View Spoiler »
Overall: While it leans on some very popular tropes for the romantasy genre, Quicksilver still snagged my attention and brought a fun chemistry and addictive story to the table, slotting into the spot of my fave read of 2024.
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