A review by kittykels
Quicksilver by Callie Hart

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.25

I'm tempted to give this book 4 stars simply for the enjoyment I had while reading it, but there were some things that continued to bother me.

I had issues from page 1 with some of the writing:

I'd stood silently in the street while my mother's throat had been split wide open, spilling jets of hot, peasant blood into the sunbaked sand.

"Jets of hot, peasant blood" is just not how I imagine anyone thinks of their mother's death. And I do not consider this a spoiler cause it's literally the first page. 

There was some other weird phrasing and also a few typos, but nothing I couldn't get past to enjoy the story. 

Another distraction for me was how obvious some of the inspiration was. Some things felt very ACOTAR, some felt very Harry Potter, and some felt very "I picked these juicy elements from other popular romantasy books and put them all into one story." I don't necessarily have an issue with this because I mean, obviously a bunch of us like these elements and go feral trying to hunt books down to scratch the itch. 

HOWEVER, I think in this case a little more subtlety was needed. More finesse of weaving tropes and other inspirations into a new and compelling story. 

I obviously didn't dislike this book and I think overall it was pretty good, at least in terms of enjoyment. But this is a criticism I feel towards books often and I think it's a fair one. 

I'd like authors to spend a little more time perfecting their craft and creating truly enthralling stories and less time regurgitating tropes that sell. If they aren't careful, the things we enjoy reading will lose their appeal entirely. 
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