Quicksilver (The Fae & Alchemy Series Book 1) by Callie Hart - Paperback

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Callie Hart

Quicksilver (The Fae & Alchemy Series Book 1)Paperback

Name: Quicksilver (The Fae & Alchemy Series Book 1)
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.8 (4264 reviews)
Author: Callie Hart
ISBN: 9798326971456

Callie Hart

(Author)

4.8

4,264 ratings

From USA TODAY Bestselling Author Callie Hart comes a brand new, highly addicting enemies-to-lovers Romantasy with razor-sharp banter, heart-stopping action, and blistering hot romance that you won’t be able to put down!

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 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 herself 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...

N.B. Quicksilver contains depictions of graphic violence/adult situations and is therefore recommended for readers 17+. For a full list of tropes and TWs, please visit the author's website at www.calliehart.com.

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ISBN-13

979-8326971456

Print length

622 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Independently published

Publication date

June 02, 2024

Dimensions

6 x 1.41 x 9 inches

Item weight

1.81 pounds

Popular Highlights in this book

For those who live their nightmares so that others may have their dreams.
Highlighted by 1,101 Kindle readers
I'm in love with you, Saeris Fane, he whispered quietly into my hair. And I'm already half-mad, anyway. What's a little complicated thrown into the mix?
Highlighted by 732 Kindle readers

Product details

ASIN :

B0D69MHHC9

File size :

3108 KB

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Editorial reviews

"Best Romantasy Book I've Read This Year!

This book was everything!" Eryn Marie - An Amazon Customer

"This book sucks you in from the first page to the last." RS - An Amazon Customer

"Hands down one of the best books I have read EVER. This book pulled me in from the very first page. I had no idea Callie Hart was even thinking about writing a book like this, but I am so glad she blessed us with this story." Brittany Duncan - An Amazon Customer

"Within a few pages, I was hooked, and within a few chapters, I knew that I was reading something really special. It's fun, exciting, romantic and unpredictable, and it's a fave for 2024." AJ from The Escapist Book Blog

"A suspenseful, spellbinding, can't put it down, masterfully done, dark romantasy.

This book was phenomenal." JESS M - An Amazon Customer

"A truly gripping fantasy story that digs into you and won't let go without remorse!" Voracious Reviews

"Callie Hart weaves a magical new world of fae, vampires, gods, and alchemy while making you absolutely fall in love with an amazing cast of characters." Maddy P - An Amazon Customer

"Callie has constructed a beautifully unique and engrossing fantasy that has jumped to the top of my favorite reads of the year. This woman can do no wrong in my eyes and I can't wait to see what happens next." Aundi.Living.That.Book.Life

"I read because of the author, I stayed because of Saeris and Fisher and I became obsessed because of the storytelling. I don't just want more of them all I demand more. This takes the top spot of my favourite books of the year." Anne Milne - An Amazon Customer

"If there were Oscars given for books, Callie Hart would win all the awards!! She has created an epic novel with Quicksilver." Kayreader - An Amazon Customer

Sample

THE CLIMB

“Y’know, there’s really no need for all this violence.”

It was common knowledge in Zilvaren City that to lie to a guardian meant death. I knew this in a first-hand, painful way that most other Zilvarens did not. Almost a year ago to the day, I’d watched one of the queen’s men clad in beaten golden armor gut my neighbor for lying about his age. And before that, and far worse, 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.

As the handsome guardian’s hand closed around my neck now, his beautifully engraved gauntlet reflecting the glare of the twin suns overhead like a golden mirror, it was a miracle I didn’t crack open and yield my secrets like a piece of overripe fruit. His metal-tipped fingers gouged deeper into the hollow of my throat. “Name. Age. Ward. Spit it out. Low-tier citizens aren’t permitted in the Hub,” he snarled.

Like most cities, Zilvaren, the Great and Shining Banner of the North, was fashioned after the shape of a wheel. Around the city's outer limits, the different spokes—walls designed to keep people contained in their wards—towered fifty meters high above the shanti towns and overflowing sewers.

The guardian gave me an impatient shake. “Answer quick, girl, or I’ll have you dispatched through the fifth gate of hell directly.”

I groped loosely at his gauntlet, nowhere near strong enough to break his grip, and smirked, rolling my eyes up toward the bone-white sky. “How am I s’posed to tell you…anything if I…can’t…fucking…breathe?”

The guardian’s dark eyes simmered with rage. If anything, the pressure he applied to my windpipe intensified. “You have any idea how hot it is down in the palace cells during reckoning, thief? No water? No clean air? The reek of rotting corpses is enough to make the high executioner vomit. You’ll be dead within three hours, mark my words.”

The palace cells were a sobering thought. I’d been caught stealing once before and had been sent down there for a grand total of eight minutes. Eight minutes had been enough. During reckoning, when the suns, Balea and Min, were at their closest and the afternoon air shivered with heat, being trapped below ground in the festering sore that passed as a prison beneath the immortal queen’s palace would not be fun. And besides, I was badly needed above ground. If I didn’t make it back to the forge before dusk, the deal I’d spent hours brokering last night would fall through. No deal meant no water. No water meant the people I cared about would suffer.

Much as it irked me, I submitted. “Lissa Fossick. Twenty-four. Single.” I winked at him, and the bastard squeezed harder. Dark hair and blue eyes weren’t common in the Silver City; he would remember me. The age I’d given him was real, as was my pathetic romantic status, but the name I’d provided wasn't. My real name? No way I was handing that over without a fight. This bastard would shit himself if he realized he had the Saeris Fane in his grasp.

“Ward?” the guardian demanded.

Gods alive. So insistent. He was about to wish he’d never asked. “The Third.”

“The Thi—” The guardian shoved me down onto the blistering sand, and super-heated particles scorched the back of my throat as I accidentally breathed them in. I sucked my next breath in through the sleeve of my shirt, but filtering out the sand that way only did so much; a couple of grains always worked their way through the fabric. The guardian staggered back. “Residents of Third Ward are quarantined. Punishment for leaving the ward is—is—”

There was no punishment for leaving the Third; no one had ever done it before. Those unlucky enough to find themselves scraping out a living in the dirty back alleys and stinking side streets of my home usually died before they could even think about escape.

Standing over me, the guardian’s anger shifted into something closer to fear. It was then that I noticed the small plague bag hanging from his belt and realized that he, like thousands of others in Zilvaren, was a Believer. With a panicked lurch, he raised his foot and brought the sole of his boot crashing down onto my side. Pain stole my breath as he brought up his boot to kick me again. This was far from my first beating. I could take a shit-kicking as well as the next downtrodden scammer, but I didn’t have time to accommodate Madra’s fanatical followers this afternoon. I had somewhere to be, and I was running out of time.

With a quick twist and a forward lunge, I grabbed the guardian just below his knee—one of the only places he was unprotected by his heavy golden armor. The tears came in quick and hot. Believable. I gave a solid performance, but then again, I’d had a lot of practice. “Please, Brother! Don’t send me back there. I’ll die if you do. My whole family has the rattles.” I coughed for effect—a dry hack that sounded nothing like the wet, congested cough of the almost dead. But the guardian had probably never even seen someone with the rattles before. He stared down at the point where my hand closed around the material of his pants, mouth gaping open in horror.

A second later, the tip of his sword punctured my shirt, right between my breasts. A little weight on the hilt of his weapon and I’d be just another dead thief bleeding out on the streets of Zilvaren. I figured he'd do it—but then I watched as he processed the situation and realized what he’d have to do next if he killed me. The dead were left to rot in the streets of the other wards, but things were different in the tree-lined, leafy walkways of the Hub. Zilvaren’s well-heeled elite might not have been able to keep the sands borne on the hot westerly winds out, but they wouldn’t tolerate a diseased plague rat rudely decaying on one of their streets. If this guardian killed me, he’d have to dispose of my body right away. And from the look on his face, that hazardous task was one he didn’t wish to undertake. See, if I was from the Third, then I was far more dangerous than any normal, run-of-the-mill everyday pickpocket. No, I was contagious.

The guardian ripped the gauntlet and glove from his hand—the hand he’d used to half-choke me—and dropped them to the sand. The burnished metal released a sustained hum as it hit the ground. It sang in my ears, and just like that, all of my plans went up smoke. I’d been caught lifting a tiny scrap of twisted iron from a market stall. I’d weighed the odds and considered the risk worth it, knowing the small ingot would earn me a tidy profit. But this? So much precious metal, tossed to the ground like it meant nothing? This, I couldn’t resist.

I moved with a speed the guardian wasn’t expecting. In a lithe, explosive maneuver, I sprawled forward and grabbed the gauntlet, targeting the larger of the two pieces of metal. The glove was stunning, skillfully made by a true master. The tiny circlets of gold looped together to form a chainmail was notoriously impenetrable by blade or magic. But the weight of the gauntlet, the solid amount of gold that comprised the piece of armor—it was unimaginable that I’d ever hold that amount of gold in my hands again.

Callie Hart

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Callie Hart is a USA Today bestselling author of dark romance novels. She is an obsessive romantic who loves throwing a dark twist into her stories. Her characters are imperfect, flawed individuals who dictate when she eats, sleeps and breathes. She loves to travel and often pens her books when she's on the road, drawing inspiration from her surroundings.

Reviews

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5

4,264 global ratings

Amanda

Best book I've read all year

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2024

Verified Purchase

AAAAAAHHH this book is definitely gonna be at the tippy top of my Top Reads of 2024 list!

Typically, I'm in a mad dash to get a book read but I tried to take my time with this one, to savor it...and yet still finished it in less than 2 days because.... BECAUSE.

Let me start off by giving comparisons...things that people will resonate with or recognize in order to sway them into reading this masterpiece:

ACOTAR meets A Crown of Oaths and Curses meets FBAA.

Also, imagine a story that seems to take inspiration from The Sword and the Stone and Rumpelstiltskin.

And then make it Dystopian...with Fae.

😅 Am I losing you?

I hope not!

But these were all things that popped into my head, at one point or another...and I wanted to encourage all of these little thoughts in my head because I knew within 50 pages of reading this, that I'd be running here to write a long blubbering review.

So let's take all of my ramblings so far and convert it to a tropes list:

Fated mates
Reluctant allies
Forced proximity
Fae x human
Dystopian
Magic system
Found family
Chosen one
Tortured hero
Shadow daddy
Slow burn but not...about halfway through 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Now, let's talk about the plotline.

I won't go into much detail but, as I previously mentioned, this is a dystopian tale. You'll find a well described political system rife with corruption and greed.

Our FMC, Saeris, has been forged in those fires, through her pain and suffering . Right from the start, she emerges as a strong heroine that you will automatically find yourself invested in.

I truly loved everything about her. She was not only relatable but drew a lot of my empathy.

But, returning to the plotline: (I'm getting sidetracked)

I was amazed by how many twists and turns kept coming. Especially in the last 1/3 of the book. I think my jaw dropped to the floor at least a few times. I definitely had a lot of preconceived expectations that were quickly dashed and loved that! I much prefer being shocked and awed by not knowing the outcome of a story.

Kingfisher... he's my new book boyfriend 🫠

Nothing is hotter than a tortured soul with a dirty mouth. 🥵

He was undeniably naughty and even though he tried to be snarky and hateful...well 😏 that just added to his flavor.

And did I mention SHADOW DADDY? 🫠

One more thing I'd like to mention before dipping out.

The found family aspect. A lot of people love this trope and I'm happy to say, this is done very well here. I loved so many of the side characters. They really elevated the story and made it quite the epic read.

Especially Onyx 🥰

Ok! That's it! That's all you're getting from me 🤣👋

READ THE BOOK!!!! AAAAAAHHH!!!

Bria Kendrick

Absolutely INCREDIBLE!!!

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2024

Verified Purchase

I didn't know what to expect out of this book, I just knew on tik tok people were going crazy over it and I needed to find out for myself what this was all about and if it was something I would enjoy....

It was EVERYTHING and MORE!

I won't go into the books details, you'll just have to find out for yourself because I went in only knowing just a few details about the first few chapters and thats it, I loved that for the rest of it I went in blind.

This has become one of my favorite reads of the year! Honestly... I'd say maybe since I started reading again in 2020. There have been a lot of books and a lot of series I've enjoyed, but when I tell you I am going hunting for the physical copy of this book as soon as I am able to get it... you bet your ass I will be snatching this book and heading to the checkout ASAP! Same with the second book when it comes out! And seriously can't wait!

I fell in love with all the characters, every single one. And one of the questions I had when I started reading was, will Kingfisher find his way in my top 10 book boyfriends? Um YES he absolutely did! Where is he ranked? Thats a good question I haven't even begun to actually rank them into a spot but he is high on the list for sure!

This is a book you HAVE TO READ!! If your reading the reviews before starting the book, let this be the last review you see before you open it up and start it. If your looking for a sign.. then here it is. GET THE BOOK!

Amazon Customer

Wow, just wow

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2024

Verified Purchase

I was on the hunt for some spicy romance, even though I'm currently in a romantasy read-a-thon, and stumbled across this author. Then I found Quicksilver. One of the best fantasy romance novels I've ever read. It's original, well written and has spice! The story grabs you from page 1 and keeps you enthralled throughout, which is no small feat with over 600 pages!

Fisher...ugh omg he's everything. I adore him. He breaks your heart sometimes though. Saeris was SO refreshing. She was a real likable strong female lead with faults and character growth. The supporting characters were all so well written, too. You really felt the camaraderie between the wolves. And that twist at the end...omg, I did NOT see that coming at all! It's so rare that an author can actually surprise me with a twist in a romantasy book. Usually you can see them coming from a mile away.

Hart made the enemies to lovers trope enjoyable. I can't stand FMCs who have no depth and hate the MMC just for the sake of being able to claim that trope. This is NOT one of those books. I can't recommend this read enough. My only regret is that I was about 60% through the book before I realized it just came out, and it will be months before another installment. I guess that just means I'll have to re-read this in October. I'm not even a little upset about that bc THIS BOOK IS SO FRICKIN GOOD!

11 people found this helpful

Priya

ROMANTASY OF THE YEAR!

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

Holy moly… this has been by far my favorite read of the year. Quicksilver has my heart and soul and now Callie Hart has all of my money as I needed the ebook and two different physical copies for my shelf! This is a portal fantasy book with a blend of different magic systems (alchemy and fae), a slow burn/great payout romance, a more realistic version of a badass FMC, a grumpy but lovable MMC, political intrigue, an amazing cast of side characters, and some pretty crazy antagonists…. It’s sooo addictive and I’m so happy I stumbled upon this book. The writing, the world building, the characters, THE BANTER, the twists and turns that have you at the edge of your seat… Highly, highly recommend as your next romantasy read!💕

Stars: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ x ♾️ Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Michele

An amazing debut into fantasy romance

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

This is my first book by Callie Hart and, as it turns out, this is her first book in the fantasy romance genre. It couldn’t be a more perfect time for her to be a “new to me” author.

I was absolutely blown away by her debut into fantasy romance and am anxiously awaiting the next book. The world building, the plot and the delicious slow burn/enemies -to-lovers romance completely held me captive for all 600 plus pages. Kingfishers’ character was flawlessly executed; he held the perfect amount of darkness that bled into a delicious possessiveness over Saeris. The banter between him and Saeris was some of the best that I’ve read. Their interactions were perfectly paced and the plot was so interesting that I didn’t mind the times that they were apart.

Lastly, but most importantly, the quality of writing deserves mentioning. I’m a reader that needs good writing in a book and Quicksilver held up to my standards. So many sentences had me pausing so that I could absorb what I just read only for me to quickly reread them a third and a fourth time because they were crafty so perfectly.

I give this one all the ⭐️. It should be a staple in all fantasy romance readers’ libraries.

5 people found this helpful

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