Reading Time: 4 minutes

Spoiler-Free Review

If you’re a fan of character-driven dark fantasy set during wartime with espionage and lots of trauma and a love story, try Alchemised.

Click here for content warnings (question 3 of the author’s Q&A).

What’s Alchemised about?

Helena Marino is a prisoner whose records say she was a minor healer in the now-dead Resistance during the war. Except her memories appear locked up in fugue states in her mind, and the High Necromancer wants to know what she’s hiding. He sends her to the most ruthless necromancer to uncover her secrets – and she’s prepared to do anything to protect the last secrets of the Resistance.

Please, note, friends: this is not a romance.

Back in 2023, Manacled was baby’s first fanfiction. I had never been a fanfiction girlie in the past, but the reviews were raving. So as someone who likes to say I’ve read something of everything, I knew I had to try it. My best friend and I buckled in and let the roller coaster take us. And what a ride it was.

(If you’re a normie, or maybe a family member who lovingly supports my blog, you might be asking, what’s fanfiction? I explain it here. You might also seem to recall I recently read another former-Dramione-fanfiction-turned-published-novel, and you’d be correct, that review is here.)

So basically, Alchemised was one of my most anticipated reads this year. I prepared for two eventualities. Either I’d love it as I loved Manacled, or I wouldn’t love it but I’d be happy anyway to support SenLinYu with a purchase (or two) to compensate her for the gift that was Manacled.

Whew. It was heavy, but it delivered for me. It’s not without critique, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

What I Liked

SenLinYu modelled this story after a triptych. A triptych is artwork with three panels, with the middle panel giving the context to the left and right panels. And that’s how Alchemised unfolds. Part 1, following Helena as she navigates a post-war world as a prisoner with altered memories, part 2 which shows us the past, and part 3 which brings us to a close.

Something this story does well is actually show the slow, arduous process that can take two people from absolute hatred to love. (Important note: this is not a romance, it’s a dark fantasy). These characters don’t fall in love so much as get taken by it, against their will, all while acknowledging their personal weaknesses that allow it to happen at all. This created the emotional depth of the story.

This story also takes place away from the big battles and action. It focuses more on Helena’s world, first as a prisoner, then in the flashbacks as a healer. As someone who struggles with war stories that glorify the front line, this was a welcome look at the inside of war. It’s cynical. It’s dark. And it makes obvious the folly of believing your side divinely ordained to win.

In part 1 when Helena is a prisoner in a necromancer’s house, the house itself is a reflection of her internal world. It’s dark and scary and confusing, and so is her mind. Death is everywhere, not just in what she remembers about the fate of her friends, but also the literal corpses that the necromancers use as servants. It created an atmosphere of unreality. And as she’s a prisoner, we get the slow, escalating violations against her person.

Every time you think this story can’t get more traumatizing, it does. (Read the content warnings).

The Fanfiction of it All

Of course, because I’ve read the fic, I have additional thoughts on the story’s conversion from fanfiction to original novel.

One thing I have to say is that this novel can be info-dumpy, and this is the reason I couldn’t give it a true 5-star reading. It had to make up for the worldbuilding that the fanfiction didn’t have to do, and it does so inelegantly, in my opinion. There are many blocks of text conveying important information that I struggled to remember as the story went on. For a story that’s literally 1,000 pages, this information still felt shoe-horned in.

The other thing that we have to bear in mind is that fanfiction is usually read serially. Fanfiction authors release a chapter at a time, usually over a course of months or even years, and so readers are often consuming each installment for the “moments” they produce, versus how that chapter informs the whole story. Since this book is nearly a 1-to-1 conversion with many scenes still almost wholly intact, I can see how some readers might find this format drawn-out.

However, I found that I didn’t mind this so much here. Part 2 of this story (the past) unfolds over the course of two years, and you feel it the way the main character does. The slow dread of the Resistance’s impending doom, Helena’s escalating obligations to everyone but herself, the repetitiveness of her grim life, the development of the key relationship at the heart of the story – all of this was, I think, enhanced by the slow way it unfolded. By the end of part 2, I felt like I could really feel what Helena’s mindscape was like.

My last note on this section: it was hard for me to separate this story from the Harry Potter world at its foundation. Yes, names and descriptions were different and it used a different magic system, but it felt a lot like redecorating. It may feel a little different, but you know you’re in the same room.

Should you read Alchemised?

If you were a Manacled girl, then yes, this is probably already on your radar. But you don’t need to read Manacled first, and actually, you probably shouldn’t if you haven’t already done so. I say that because so many of the scenes are directly from the original fic, so the reading experience is overall similar between the two.

It’s dark fantasy, not dark romance. That is an incredibly important distinction. While there is a love story here, I repeat, it’s not a romance. I discuss the difference between romance and love stories here.

So that said: I recommend it to anyone who would enjoy a wartime love story between two people with little choice in their place in the war. I doubly recommend it if you would like a fantasy war setting that take place away from the front lines, following a path of healers and field clinics and espionage.

If slow, dark, gory plots would send you straight to a grippy-sock vacation, perhaps revisit this another time.