Desert dystopia, war-waging fae courts, hordes of the undead, metal-crafting and a dark, snippy otherworldly savior, Callie Hart incorporates a lot of appealing elements from all-across the fantasy genre and melts them together into the romantasy epic Quicksilver. Featuring a strong-willed and resourceful FMC cast into a magical multi-dimensional and vast world, there's a lot to like in Quicksilver and the intertwined fates of its main characters paired with steamy scenes feel directly catered to what most romantasy readers are looking for. Unfortunately despite being full of ambition, demonstrated through its overarching plot, the actual execution of its various fantasy elements doesn't feel connected and at times, the rules of magic and world-building to be quite wild and unhinged. With less than graceful transitions between its fantasy and romance scenes and near incoherent magic rules towards the end of the story, Quicksilver was unfortunately a miss and an overhyped booktok influencer pick for me. 

Depending on how you look at it, Quicksilver can either feel like a nod to many popular fantasy books that came before it, or a manic combination of everything trendy thrown together haphazardly. Taking the romance element out of the equation temporarily, the fantasy-filled story of Quicksilver has lot of things going for it. The FMC Saeris is akin to Aladdin, struggling to survive with her brother Hayden in a desert-set dystopian city. Drawing ire from the Queen, Saeris then finds herself transported to another world of the fae, sharply transitioning into a dark academia style story as she discover the extent of her metal-manipulation related powers along with her dangerous and dark savior Kingfisher. As the story progresses, Saeris and Kingfisher move to the frontlines of inter-kingdom battlefront and the dangerous land nearby that's full of undead "feeders". 

Even in my brief, spoiler-free summary, it's impossible to notice where Callie Hart likely drew many of her literary inspirations from. The dystopian colony feels like a callback to the 2010's era where dystopian YA's were everywhere while the dark academia and magic setting is very on-brand at the moment. The undead/evil entity kingdom Saeris finds herself against are the cursed fae that are essentially vampires (with Saeris and Kingfisher's own romance echoing familiar areas loosely connected to Twilight) and for good measure, there's even a shifting labyrinth that is clearly inspired by the Maze Runner. There's lower magical beings, magical swords and relics, vampires, healers, witches, Quicksilver has so much going on. While on one-hand the story certainly will have something for everyone, these elements don't feel like they're properly connected to each other, the story constantly shifting between these inspirations every hundred pages or so. Each section on their own is quite good, but the overall story feels messy. As the story's intensity and stakes start to stack up, the world-building becomes increasingly incoherent, with new magic rules, oaths, or beings unveiled on the fly with zero prior setup (the book doesn't even try to explain all of Kingfisher's random magical powers that seem specific to him and no other fae). While most of these are utilized to explain and justify many of the unexpected plot twists in the back-half of the story, the execution causes the developments to feel utterly chaotic rather than surprising (I'm still not quite sold on the concept of fae being cursed to be vampires and only some being cured of the curse and being described as another type of being...). 

While the fantasy side of the romantasy genre has quite a lot going on, the romance side is far more straight-forward and successful. I generally liked the chemistry between the two characters and the spicy scenes were varied and well-done, but I often found myself baffled at the lack of transitions between the romance and fantasy-based chapters. While I haven't read many romantasy novels to compare to (which will be changing soon!), for me Quicksilver often ping-ponged between sex scenes or eye-undressing moments expected for the genre, then have almost no trace of it for multiple chapters. The first sixty pages of the book largely felt like a standard fantasy adventure novel, then without warning it's like a lightbulb went off and Hart remembered it's supposed to be a romantasy book, laying it on thick and abruptly. Additionally, despite how much is going on in the story, the novel somehow still feels quite slow and repetitive. There are brief moments of the book that are exciting and quite compelling, particularly the action and combat scenes at the start in the desert city and near the end of the book. I've read a lot of classic fantasy adventure epics back in the day and at times, Quicksilver reminded me of those favorite reads. Unfortunately they are few and far between surrounded by so much lackluster fluff that neither enhances the romance, nor expands the workings of its world. This story really needs far better development of its multiple fantasy elements or a more consistent romance to justify its unnecessarily long 600 page count. 

Another subjective issue I had with Quicksilver is its main character Saeris. Confident, strong-willed, stubborn, and rough around the edges, you can tell that Hart was shooting to make Saeris a feisty female lead meant to go toe-to-toe with the brooding and edgy Kingfisher. While there are moments where Saeris's character gets it right, she spends the rest of the book complaining, grimacing, and throwing child-like tantrums at every new development she encounters. When the story is taking place in the initial desert dystopian city, her character is mildly irritating but at least has moments for her street-smart skills to shine and to justify her cockiness. Once Saeris ends up in the land of the Fae however, it's an endless cycle of bickering with Kingfisher and co. and making a fool of herself through the various rules and customs of the fae. The first few times are fine, but this repetition gets old really quickly and Saeris's narration largely comes off like a moody and volatile child. It's actually quite baffling why Hart wrote the plot and Saeris/Kingfisher's dynamic in this way as it exacerbates the gap in physical age, maturity, both magical and physical power, and their places in the fae society. From the get-go Kingfisher feels considerably more experienced, wise and proficient at everything and Saeris's constant outbursts make the romantic interest from his side seemingly unlikely at best, creepily interested in a teenager (18+ ofc) at worst. The book addresses this by making them pre-destined by fate as per the expected and tired norm for the genre, but it's still weak explanation and there's very few opportunities for Kingfisher to actually fall in love with Saeris from a narrative standpoint. 

While there's a lot of good elements included in Quicksilver, the overall execution and story is all over the place and incredibly inconsistent. At first I thought perhaps I was the problem, being a male reader less than experienced with the romantasy genre, being more familiar with standard fantasy or contemporary romance reads. However, it seems other reviewers or other female readers seem to have similar opinions of the novel's notable drawbacks so perhaps my opinion is valid. And that's quite a shame since I fully believe Quicksilver had a great story had it focused on a few chosen fantasy elements rather than its throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach. The last 100 pages in particular have such wild plot twists and connections that truly stretch what's believable (Carrion and Madra in particular), not to mention the villains having completely improbably alliances or a complete lack of compelling motivation (merely wanting pure power is fine for a kids book but this is certainly not that). I think if subsequent books focus more on Saeris and Kingfisher's growing relationship or more of the fantasy action that was quite good in places, this can be an excellent series. Unfortunately I probably won't be sticking around to find out, though I will be picking up Fourth Wing soon to see if my bafflement at Quicksilver is mostly limited to this book or the bigger romantasy genre as a whole.