évieane's Reviews > Quicksilver

“For those who live their nightmares, so that others may have their dreams.”

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ━ 2.2-2.4 ☆ ━ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦
ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ╰┈➤˗ˏˋㅤmight contain spoilers ❗

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ This served me as the biggest lesson to never trust booktok or people ever again, because I was genuinely excited for this book; I really thought I was about to find my second 5-star read of the year and I was looking forward to starting this book after how much it's been praised again and again everywhere around me. I was wrong; because what was this even supposed to be? I might be slightly overreacting, this was not such an awful book, it was pretty ok (as it can also be seen from my rating), but I guess my expectations were a bit too high, and I was, therefore, left rather disappointed.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ "Quiksilver" is the typical romantasy book that you will find around lately; a lot of very popular tropes, a lot cliches that are unfortunately not suitably adapted to the book's characters and action and a really dark MMC who wants to be morally grey.
ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ The story of the book follows Saeris a thief with a noble heart who is struggling to survive together with her brother in the city of Zilvaren, whose heartless queen rules without mercy or compassion. Once forced to be brought in front of the said queen to be judged, Saeris finds the true depths of the queen's malice, but fate has other plans for her and when a mysterious, dark and brooding man saves her just in time, she finds herself in the middle of the political intrigues of an unknown kingdom. Of course, the brooding man is none other than Kingfisher who, despite his very unfortunate and horrible name, is the most beautiful man Saeris has ever laid her eyes on. Oh, did I say man? My apologies, I meant to say male because, as you probably already guessed, he is fae. From here starts the whole adventure of loyalty, misunderstood heroes and brave companions, all revolving around the funny, even though a bit childish at times, banter between our main characters. Spice could not be missed from such a recipe of a story, even though I, at least, would have appreciated it way more if 80% out of it was indeed missed. But it is all leading towards the very ending of the book where the FMC might find herself in a very different, very new, and very intriguing position.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ I will just proceed with my analysis below without wasting any more time.


ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ -ˋˏ ༻ world-building, writing and action ༺ ˎˊ-

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ The world-building in this novel is really excellent, and it is probably the only aspect of it that I found completely satisfactory. There are hardly any extraneous details, and the world is intriguingly and fairly well-constructed, revealing more and more information to you as the reader as the novel goes on. It really did seem a little unique, which was exactly what I needed to keep me intrigued.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍On the other hand, I genuinely have nothing to say about the writing. It is not bad, it is not good either. It was basic, a touch bland, and sometimes even a little fanfiction-ish. It had no business having such long chapters in the first half of the book.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ There is not much to say about the action in the book either. The action was pretty captivating, a bit slow at times, and gave the appearance that it was focused on insignificant issues, but overall, it was very adequate and even entertaining at moments.


ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ -ˋˏ ༻ characters ༺ ˎˊ-

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ I refuse to believe these characters' ages vary between the range of 24 and 1800. These people acted like teenagers more than once and it was becoming so hard for me to remember that they are adults in so many instances.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ❀ Saeris - I want to make this very clear, I do not like this character. I do not think there is something specific wrong with her, but I just couldn't, for the love of God, appreciate her as a main character. I am not sure if it was due to the manner in which she was presented in the book, but she was so uninteresting, and it was so hard to relate to her through the novel. She does not evolve in any special way; she, somehow, already possesses every attribute that may make every single person she meets fall for her, and she just does not elicit empathy.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ❀ Kingfisher - Apart from having one of the worst names ever given to a MMC, there isn't really much to say about him either. He is the dark, brooding, and misunderstood, yet absolutely noble hero who suffered time and time again for the good of his people. He is, by far, way more intriguing as a character than Saeris, but once you really try to go deeper into his character, you do not really find much apart from the sexual/funny banter and his constant willingness to sacrifice for everything and everyone around him. There was way more potential behind this character.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ❧ I really need writers to stop promoting everything as enemies to lovers and slow-burn; because these two tropes lasted for about 20 pages after the characters met and that simply does not fulfil the requirements for any of these elements. This was very insta-love(lust?) and despite having about 500 pages of these characters together, I could not feel any real chemistry or genuine feelings between them by the end of this book. There was real potential for this romance, but unfortunately it got buried under unnecessary tropes. Not to mention that the ending opens the possibility towards a really...strange..thing.

ㅤㅤ ❀ Ren, Lorreth, Everlayne - They were genuinely really fun side characters. I loved them to be honest. Not much to say about them, but I loved them.

ㅤㅤ ❀ Carrion - thank you for your service, king!!! This book would have genuinely been so much worse without his jokes and funny banters with...well, everyone.


ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ -ˋˏ ༻ ending and conclusions ༺ ˎˊ-

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ Now, I am not sure what could be said about the ending of this book so it could perfectly encompass what I truly felt about it, but I will try to describe it using a question:is there any plot left for the rest of the books in this series, because why did so many different events have to be compressed into such a short span of pages? The ending seemed rushed, and there were so many disclosures and events happening at once that I became overwhelmed. Not to add that the finale, due to how it was constructed, fails to ignite your interest in reading the rest of the series. There may have been many fewer details supplied in this ending, which could have been left for the second book and piqued the reader's interest significantly.

ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ I don't think there is much to say as a conclusion for this book. It was not a bad novel, but it was really far from being the amazing piece of literature so many people advertised it as. If you want a quite entertaining, slightly long book that will give you some of the most popular book tropes right now, then absolutely go for this. But do not go into it expecting too much, because I made that mistake, and now, I am left slightly disappointed.
ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ I will be reading the second book as well, but it would be solely due to my curiosity regarding the plot and its direction. Apart from that, this is not really a read that piqued my interest.



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ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ᯓ ✿ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍pre-reading ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ⪼ ㅤ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ yes, it is finally time 🙌🏻 i don't even need to mention how many amazing things I've heard about this, so needless to say, I am so excited!!!