Alchemised by SenLinYu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Summary from GoodReads
In this riveting dark fantasy debut, a woman with missing memories fights to survive a war-torn world of necromancy and alchemy—and the man tasked with unearthing the deepest secrets of her past.
“What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours? The war is over. Holdfast is dead. The Eternal Flame extinguished. There’s no one left for you to save.”
Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner—of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed.
In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive.
According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture, making her enemies wonder: Is she truly as insignificant as she appears, or are her lost memories hiding some vital piece of the Resistance’s final gambit?
To uncover the memories buried deep within her mind, Helena is sent to the High Reeve, one of the most powerful and ruthless necromancers in this new world. Trapped on his crumbling estate, Helena’s fight—to protect her lost history and to preserve the last remaining shreds of her former self—is just beginning. For her prison and captor have secrets of their own . . . secrets Helena must unearth, whatever the cost.
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REVIEW
This book contains a whole list of TW. A few of them include, and are not limited to: blood, death, gore, war, torture, and rape. Please proceed with caution.
Helena Marino, once a gifted healer now a prisoner of the new regime of Paladia, filled with corrupt magical families and their necromancers who commanded the undead soldiers who led them to win the war. But she is missing her memories of months leading up to her capture and so she is given to the top and most trusted soldiers of the new regime, the High Reeve. Living as a prisoner and tortured for the secrets she may be hiding does not stop her from slowly unspooling the maze of her own mind and he connection to the High Reeve.
I'll be honest. I had read Manacled and that book gutted me so I had a point of reference and knew what would happen by the end of the book. But I never expected this monster of a book to pull me in and question human morality when faced with absolute death and destruction. The world is known as Paladia. There was a ruling family, gifted with the power of pyromancy and fire and below them socially are the Guild families, which strive for more power. Helena comes as a sponsored student to the Institute, which is the higher education system all gifted magicians strive to be and develop their own affinities to metal, healing and magic in general.
The book is also separated in three parts, going from present to the past, and we see how Helena becomes entangled to the Resistance and what choices she has to make, sometimes at the cost of her own sanity. Needless to say this is a character-driven book, but the worldbuilding does not fall behind. I was surprised they allowed the authors to keep it in one single book, and I couldn't be happier for that. Kaine Ferron is also a tragic character who carries trauma and is a victim of the war and its consequences.
You can not consider this story a romance. It is a tragedy and a brutal reminder of what happens in war, but with a love story that slowly develops like a small bud trying to survive an ashen world. And the epilogue lingers with you long after the book ends.
This is one of the best books of the year.
About the author:
SenLinYu grew up in the Pacific Northwest and studied classical liberal arts and culture. They started writing in the Notes app of their phone during their baby’s nap time. Their collected online works have garnered over twenty million individual downloads and have been translated into twenty-three languages. They live in Portland with their family. ALCHEMISED is their first novel.
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