Alchemised is the debut fantasy novel by SenLinYu... dark fantasy, horror and gothic romance... follows the life of a former alchemist, Helena Marino, as she recovers her memories of a civil war... a reimagining of SenLinYu's popular fan fiction Manacled... reimagine the Harry Potter series in a dark alternative universe, with a romance between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. Or so wiki says. It stood out to me as not having a cover looking like AI generated slop - not that I oppose AI covers, but there is a terrible similarity to them all.It is unique as the only book anyone has ever asked me about while I was reading it at W/S; the first asked me why I was reading it, which rather surprised me; but I learnt in the conversation about the fanfic past. And to the second, who asked if it was any good, I could honestly reply that up to about page 800 it was pretty good; pages 800-900 drag somewhat; then it recovers a bit until the ending goes all soppy and mushy.
Ranking notes: I find it ever harder to slot new books into my increasingly unreliable ranked list. This one gains because I genuinely enjoyed reading it. But it lacks the beauty of, say, Pavane. It also has nothing to say that isn't banal. And its a doorstop. I doubt I would re-read it (I have re-read most of the books in my "worth reading" section, which is where I placed this). Oh, and I think she tries too hard for the "horror" element in places; the flesh-eating for example is crude.
Real spoilers ahead, so don't read on if you're going to read it.
The story opens with Our Heroine pulled out of "stasis", with her memories missing in important respects; an apparently uninteresting medic from the losing side of the necromantic war. She has a bad time, and is assigned for interrogation by KF. Part two then goes back to the war a few years ago, and her experiences therein; her gradually developing role as "handler" for the "evil" KF who gradually falls for her and vice versa; in part three she regains her memories and the evil necromancers are defeated and so on.
So it begins with mystery, and some interesting "alchemy", and a nice moody atmosphere and tension. This is the best bit. Flipping to part two gives us a different perspective, and we begin to see that the vaunted "resistance" isn't quite as noble as we were lead to think (though why they are called "the resistance", when they start off as the govt, I don't know). Various tropes - outsiders getting their chance at education but being looked down upon by the hereditary insiders - are well deployed. Eventually it all turns into a teenage love story of the "oh, Artagel" sort and her failure to handle the culmination of that well is the duff patch around pages 800-900. But knowing that in advance would I think vitiate from about half way through; fortunately I didn't. I did begin to think that the way she and KF were able to meet up regularly without anyone tracking them was really Not Very Plausible At All, but unless you're really concentrating that takes a while to seep through. The scheme by which Cetus does his stuff rather flowed by me and I didn't quite understand whether she thought she had explained it but failed, or was deliberately being vague, but never mind. The bits with Ivy - first, her implausible ability to infiltrate, and then her implausible ability to steal the phylactery - grated somewhat. And in the end the "international community" (ffs) trying to bury the past all seemed far too much like a rather naive smearing of current ideas onto a different world. Was she trying to make a point? I hope not.
The two central characters are clearly the most important things in the world to each other, just like in teen romance. But the megadeaths all around them don't seem to produce much more than generic sadness in Our Heroes. Would it not perhaps have been better for the world if KF had simply died, thereby weakening the evil necromantic side? The excuse given is that he was also killing the bad people, so perhaps not; but I think a more honest book would have examined this more carefully.
Character notes: Our Heroine is really a bit wet, and allows everyone to push her around. The resistance assigns her tedious arduous supporting roles, and she just accepts this. Characters with no formal authority give her commands which she accepts. She is not an analogue of Hermione Granger. Her relationship with Luc is... odd. She is devoted to him, but apparently - it gradually and I think implausibly emerges - not at all in a romantic way. I think it would be natural - given her background - that she would be; there should be tension there, between her and him, and then a tension in her relation to KF.
