Romantasy

Normally I start reviews with a brief recap and overall impressions before getting into my general thoughts and impressions, but you have to be living under a rock to be unfamiliar with Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series’ first novel Fourth Wing. Also, quite a few of my book friends have been dying for me to read this series and to hear my thoughts on it. Having heard very mixed receptions and reviews for the series (Iron Flame in particular being the most polarizing) and being a fairly inexperienced romantasy reader, I went in preparing myself to be disappointed. While I did find myself agreeing with many of the common criticisms highlighted in other far more detailed reviews for the book, I was actually pleasantly surprised by the ambition and generally great plotting of the story (apart from when the story goes a bit astray at the two thirds mark). If there’s one thing that’s consistent in Fourth Wing, its the entertainment value and accessibility of the story for all sorts of readers, romance and fantasy alike. An early note I had written down said “Sure I can critique and nitpick the book and call out its lack of details and world-building,…

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…