#forging silver into stars

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

Happy weekend 🤍

[halfhissandwich]

Hi I physically cannot wait for Carving Shadows Into Gold so I drew Tycho and Jax

I love them. Cutie pies.

[babysfirstwantedposter]

tycho: i know you think my judgement’s clouded because i like jax a little bit

jake, holding tycho’s notepad: you doodled your wedding invitation

tycho: no, that’s our joint tombstone 

jake: my mistake

[itachi86]

“What would you do, if the king were to show up on your doorstep?” “Faint from shock.” “Callyn.” “I would! What would you do?” “The king has shown up on my doorstep.”

-Forging Silver into Stars

[unhingedhyacinth]

Harper and Rhen from A Curse So Dark And Lonely (Brigid Kemmerer) forever will remain my favourite enemies to lovers couple.

[just0nemorepage]

Forging Silver into Stars || Brigid Kemmerer || Forging Silver into Stars #1 || 560 pages Top 3 Genres: Fantasy / Young Adult / Romance

Synopsis: When nineteen-year-old Tycho, the King's Courier, arrives in the remote village of Briarlock, he hopes to escape the demands of his new life in the royal court, where magic reigns for the first time in ages. He doesn't expect to fall for a handsome blacksmith with a bruised heart.

After years of cruelty in his father's forge, Jax never dared to dream of a better life -- until a magic-wielding young lord shows him an enticing alternative. But when rumors of a rebellion reach Briarlock, Jax wonders who he can trust -- and if he'll even survive.

Jax's best friend, Callyn, doesn't trust anyone -- especially not a handsome stranger with magic, which killed her parents years ago. When another royal emissary arrives, seeing a co-conspirator, Callyn finds herself embroiled in a plot that could lead them all to ruin. . .

As tensions flare throughout the kingdom, it won't be long before everyone must choose a side.

War is brewing. Passions are building. And magic may doom -- or save -- them all . . .

Publication Date: June 2022. / Average Rating: 4.15. / Number of Ratings: ~7670.

[theinquisitxor]

THIS is the type of portal fantasy I desire!

[wakingupnexttoyou]

I always do this to myself 😂 starting YET ANOTHER unfinished series.

[sophie0fthehollow]

i think that the way i liked grey better than rhen has me dead after reading forging silver into stars. Am i still inlove with grey? yea but god has rhen pushed through. i’m now inlove with both brothers again 🤭🤭. anyways #tycho supremacy!

[neverlearnedtoread]

Forging Silver Into Stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐; its genuinely really great to see an author get better and more subtle with their writing and characterization over time

Oh?? 👌😉😏

one of kemmerer's greatest strengths is the robustness of her worldbuilding - not only does emberfall feel distinct from karis luran, in culture and in setting, this alternate universe intersects with the 'real world' without losing its believability. i respect an author with the complexity to write about characters from another world with their own prejudices interacting with characters from the 'real world' without tripping over their own setting

lgbt romance that's sweet, heartfelt, not shortchanged, OR overplayed! in fact i did like all the romances in this story and the range they displayed. i have my favourites but they were all both distinct and at least passably interesting to me

women who get to be complex! i will forever mourn what lia mara could have been (viciously politically savvy with a moral core, usually a male character's archetype from fiction ive consumed) but i did like her interactions with the more cynical callyn

'side character gets a POV in the spinoff' book! i don't feel like it was a cash grab or because the author was too afraid to write something new, the plot AND the narrative voice was distinct from the original trilogy without feeling too removed from its events.

No.. ❌🤢🤮

another character from the original series continues on his era of becoming more annoying since bk1. grey...your character was way more fun when you didn't have as much responsibility. i liked you as an antagonising force / source of tension for tycho in his book but your bullheadedness is really not fun on its own merit. i definitely dont miss the days you were a POV character!

lots of travelling; not something i hate, personally, but it may feel a bit time-consuming to go back and forth like a pingpong ball. the travelling aspect feels enough a part of the narrative for me not to get frustrated by it, but given that only ONE character moves from place to place, while the other two stay in a relatively non-important setting for the most part, it might feel quite jarring to switch POVs

This is a spinoff from a trilogy (Cursebreaker Trilogy by Brigid Kemmerer, starting with A Curse So Dark and Lonely) - pretty unavoidable spoilers for the ending of that trilogy up ahead!

Summary: Some years have passed since Grey was crowned King of Emberfall and married Lia Mara, the Queen of Syhl Shallow. They now live in the Crystal Palace, trying to keep the peace with a populace that despises their king-by-marriage for his magic as much as they despair at their queen for her nonviolent diplomacy. Grey's young friend Tycho has been promoted to King's Courier, ferrying messages both public and secret between the royals to ferret out any rumblings of unrest before it can boil over. On one of his usual trips back and forth between the two kingdoms, he stops by a sleepy little village called Briarlock and meets two locals, Callyn and Jax. Syhl Shallow natives, they have different perspectives on how things have changed since King Grey and Queen Lia Mara took their thrones, and are suspicious and charmed in turns by the young lord in their midst.

Concept: 💭💭💭 I have decidedly mixed feelings about the Cursebreaker Trilogy - like a rollercoaster it took me up (bk1), then downnnn (bk2), then rolled flat (bk3)! So I was pretty cautious about reading this spinoff. Tycho was relatively interesting in the original trilogy, but mostly in relation to Grey, and I...did not leave the original trilogy loving Grey as a character. He got boring when they gave him responsibility.

Execution: 💥💥💥 I don't think what Kemmerer wants to explore with this fantasy world (fantasy politics through a modernist moral lens) is ever going to be what I want to explore, but I can appreciate that she's getting better at showcasing the conflict she wants to build in her stories. Having only non-royal POVs in this story really helped make the story feel more real to me - when you're not one of the big movers and shakers (even Tycho, for all his proximity to power, feels the limit of his influence when they strip him of his rings and Grey refuses to listen to his counsel), you're gonna feel resentment for the Big Guys making the choices. They're the ones holding your lives in their hands, and for all their best intentions, they may not treat you well all the time! I definitely felt like this was her best book I've read yet, because Kemmerer wasn't just telling me the conflict and how it was gonna go - she was able to show it to me through the character's actions and situations.

Personal Enjoyment: ❤❤❤❤ I will be honest, I skimmed Callyn's AND to a lesser extent Jax's POV until the end because I just really wanted to read about Rhen from an outside POV that wasn't Harper's. I would apologise but I promised myself when I started writing these book reviews not to say sorry for stuff I don't regret, and me picking favourites regardless of rational thought falls firmly under that. I did truly come to enjoy the final conflict AND tycho's POV for its own merit, tycho's personality in particular was really fun to see in action, but the middle section where callyn is living her 'maybe-this-shady-guy-isnt-manipulating-me' denial era didn't ever get easy to read.

Favourite Moment: Any Rhen moment but especially that part with him being gentle and sweet with Harper when Tycho first tells him about the tournament idea. Tycho's description of their relationship being quiet and sweet was SO CUTE in general - the idea that Tycho finds Rhen pretty difficult to be around at first, but admits you'd have to be blind not to see he's besotted with Harper - I sigh every time

Favourite Character: I'm a Rhen apologist through and through but Tycho actually went over so well with me in this book. That bit when he rounds on Grey to berate him for not thinking shit through and running off without a plan? SAY IT LOUDERRRRR. I have truly enjoyed seeing Kemmerer grow as a writer and write Tycho with this level of nuance - his eventual realisation that he gets along well with Rhen, despite their history, his cautious but earnest courtship with Jax, even his ever-shifting relationship with the Syhl Shallow royal family both in public and private settings, all of it felt like it fit together and informed Tycho's characterization as a whole without conflicting with any other part of it.

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

Last day of the year calls for my top 10 of 2022 ✨

[ginerva-mollyweasley]

“i’m not taking anything you don’t want to give”

JAX → my top 50 fictional characters [27/50]

[booksandfantasies]

I finished rereading Forging Silver into Stars and I think it's official, this book has cemented a place as one of my all time favorite books. I simply cannot describe how much joy this book brings me!

[itachi86]

“Jax,” Tycho says, and a spark of dark intrigue slides into his voice. “How is Jax?” I bite at the edge of my lip, chagrined. “Well, it’s been several days since he last yelled at the King’s Courier, so …” “So perhaps I’m due?”

-Forging Silver into Stars

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: Forging Silver into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer

Series: Forging Silver into Stars #1Author: Brigid KemmererPublisher: Bloomsbury YAReleased: June 7, 2022Received: Own Have you ever read a single book by an author and decided then and there that you would grab all their books when given a chance? That’s what happened to me with Brigid Kemmerer. I’m kind of behind on the game here since I have only read Defy the Night. However, she just started…

[halfhissandwich]

I’ll stop drawing them as Jax and Tycho when they stop reminding me of Jax and Tycho