DNF Review – Quicksilver (Fae and Alchemy, Book 1) by Callie Hart (2/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
Length: 615 pages
Publisher: Forever
Release Date: September 10, 2024
ASIN: B0DDKHNVWF
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Fae and Alchemy series
Source: Borrowed ebook from Kindle Unlimited
Rating: 2/5 stars
“Do not touch the sword. Do not turn the key. Do not open the gate.
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. In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn’t much a girl wouldn’t do for a glass of water. 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 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.
Be careful of the deals you make, dear child. The devil is in the details… “
Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Fae and Alchemy series. I borrowed this on ebook through Kindle Unlimited.
Thoughts: I didn’t finish this, which means I would usually give it 3 stars, but after writing the review, I just couldn’t go that high. I did get about 60% of the way through the story, but was really struggling with it. I disliked all of the characters in here. I thought the world-building was weak and the story was poorly paced; I just was not a fan.
The story follows Saeris a poor but fierce woman who steals a gauntlet (we will never understand why) and gets caught for that. She finds herself under threat of death in the castle when she is strangely able to melt the metal under her feet and ends up in a Fae realm. In the Fae realm she finds out that her ability to work with metal makes her a rare alchemist. The ruler of the Fae realm plans to hold her captive until she figures out who to awaken the Quicksilver that allows the Fae to travel through portals between worlds.
I hated the characters in this book with a vengeance. I kept forgetting Saeris was supposed to be in her 20’s because she acted like a horny teenager. She was overly angry, not too bright, and had the worst comebacks (they felt flat and made you feel like “oh poor girl, who wrote your dialogue”). The main love interest here is Kingfisher (aka Fisher), who was supposed to be a bad ass enemy-to-lovers type. He was an asshole (but of course he has excuses, so that is okay) and Saeris finds him super sexy right from the get go. She complains about him but is always hot for him, which felt very yucky to me.
The way the “romance” is handled is sloppy and again gave me a bit of the yucks. Saeris pretty much throws herself at Fisher at one point (with an ulterior motive) and they both really get into it. However, the characters are so immature and this was so sudden that it made me feel squeamish…like I was reading about two kids making out. There was no tension, there was no getting to know each other, and this was totally not something I was in to.
There is an odd section of the book where Saeris strikes a deal with Fisher for him to rescue her brother. Fisher comes back with a guy Saeris slept with. Another yuck moment, like “OMG, was Saeris sleeping with her brother”? However, this is explained further on in the story.
The world-building is thin here. We are thrown into an alternate fey world that seems fairly generic. I did like the addition of alchemy, which we finally got into around 45-50% in. However, somehow, the author managed to make even alchemy feel really boring with repetitive scenes of Saeris failing at various experiments.
The pacing is all over the place, and the whole thing feels sloppy and unfinished. I kept trying to push through on this one, but I just did not enjoy it. So, I gave up. Sorry to the people who recommended this to me, but this is just not for me. It felt like poorly done dark fae romantasy fan fic.
I have been having more DNFs than normal lately. Not sure if I just don’t have the patience for these books or if my tastes are shifting. I know I don’t have the patience for adult romantasy that feels like badly done YA fantasy fanfic (with more explicit sex scenes of course).
My Summary (2/5): Overall I did not like this. I appreciate the alchemy that was brought into the world, but the rest of the world feels so generic. My main beef was the characters here; they were all mean, immature, and kind of stupid. The dialogue between them feels forced and awkward. The pacing was all over the place, with the beginning fairly fast-paced and the middle super slow. I really wanted to like this but really struggled to pick it up and read it. Unless you are super hard up for a dark romantasy fae read I would look elsewhere.
