SUMMARY

Do not touch the sword. Do not turn the key. Do not open the gate.

In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn’t much a girl wouldn’t do for a glass of water.

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 re-opens 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 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.

Image and Summary from Goodreads.

REVIEW

I have seen so many people read Quicksilver and it was actually a book club pick for January however I never had a chance to read then. I figured it was finally time to give it a read however I decided to listen to this as an audiobook just so I could listen to it while at work as well as helping to accomplish a bookish goal of the year which was to listen to more audiobooks.

This was a fairly slow listen for me as initially it was a little hard for me to get into and a little slow in some places. It might have been a little hard to get into as I was listening to it as an audiobook. I really liked the dual voiced POV in this audiobook, some characters sounded a little alike on the male voice however it was still ok to distinguish who was speaking.

The middle of the book was a little bit of a struggle to get through and I can see why some people have said that they DNF’ed reading Quicksilver. The middle just felt so boring to read with the pacing of the story

There was a lot of world building in this with the different realms as well as different locations inside realms, that was a little hard to understand as I didn’t get to see a map of the world to help me visualise where places are located. Most of the time I just visualised it as the next town over from where we were initially hahaha.

Quicksilver had quite a few different creatures primarily Saeris as a human as she enters the Fae realm but inside that realm, there is also obviously Fae, mention of gods that the fae look up to, vampires that the fae are at war with as well as magic and witches.

There was some good character development for both the two main characters – Saeris and Kingfisher but there was also some good development for Carrion – that was some twist towards the end. The characters that were mainly mentioned though I grew to love like Renfis, Lorreth as well as Everlayne. There were some characters that I hated like Danya just for her sounding like an entitled brat when Saeris had repaired her sword and the quicksilver had claimed Lorreth even though it technically wasn’t Danya’s sword to begin with. I also loved Onyx the little fox and I hope nothing happens to him in future books in this series.

In some parts it was a little predictable but it could be because it’s kind of similar to other romantasy novels with the same tropes of a slow burn enemies to lovers romance.

The ending though felt a little rushed on how much story actually happened as it covered a lot in that last 2 hours or so of the audiobook. There was some terrifying creature that I shuddered to think about when it was mentioned and then Saeris having to fish something out of its throat. The ending though had a big twist and I didn’t see that coming.

With the second book in the series – Brimstone coming out later in the year, I most likely will be reading it as I do really want to know what happens next in the series. I have to know what happens next.

All in all I gave this a 4/5 star ️⭐️ rating.