Cards on the table, I didn’t like Manacled very much.
I thought it was too edgy to really take seriously. That Draco was far too competent and Hermione too much of a pushover. A lot of characters were supposed to be smart, but weren’t written that way. The big moral dilemma with the Order was forced, and it stopped making sense if you thought about it too hard. A lot of characters suffered from the au being so far removed from canon that they no longer feel even remotely like their canon counterparts. And the ending felt like the result of writing yourself into a corner.
Alchemised fixes some of those issues.
What’s going on?
Helena Marino has been trapped in stasis for over a year, held prisoner by the Undying, an army of necromancers that she and the rest of the Eternal Flame had been at war with for years. When she’s taken out of stasis, it’s discovered that she’s missing almost two years of memories, buried in her mind through alchemy, and, because of the chance that she’s still protecting secrets for the thoroughly defeated Resistance, the leader of the Undying sends her off with the High Reeve, Kaine Ferron, his strongest soldier, who possesses the ability to read minds, in hopes that he’ll be able to force something out of her.
Helena has no idea what, or who, she could be trying to protect in her locked-up memories, but she’s willing to die if it means keeping whatever it is secret.
There was no use in a healer when everyone was dead.
She wouldn’t be a traitor. Whatever she’d hidden in her mind, she wouldn’t let the Undying discover it. Surviving didn’t matter. She’d kill herself before they learned anything from her.
The novel is told in three parts, the first being Helena’s time with Ferron on his family’s estate, trying both to figure out what she’s forgotten, and how to keep it from being found, the second being a flashback to during the war, and the third being the fallout of her regaining her memories.
The “Romance”
I think it’s unfair to go into this book treating it solely as a romance.
Because for a decent portion of it, it’s not. The first part of the book leans much harder on dark fantasy, and honestly, horror. Almost nothing that happens between Helena and Ferron can be read as romantic, or even as romanticizing, and it’s not until well into the second part that we (and the characters) are given a break from that.
One of the biggest critiques I’ve seen about both Alchemised and Manacled is that they’re unpleasant to read, and I cannot stress enough that that is the point.
And that there is nothing wrong with that being the point.
There is a love story in here, but you have to get through a significant amount of gore, death, medical and body horror, and just about every other unpleasantness you can think of to get to it.
Which, if you, like me, are mostly here for that, is a good thing. Because Alchemised is at its best when we’re in Helena’s head, watching her slowly build up to her breaking point, and the romance plot line is… not as strong.
They fall for each other because they’re both completely alone outside each other (or at least think they are. No one in this book is mentally okay). It’s codependency, not a cute love story. There were multiple points where I desperately wanted them apart because, frankly, it would have been the only way they could actually recover. But then we wouldn’t have a plot, would we?
This is a horror story before anything else. And maybe a tragedy, depending on how you view the situation they end in. If you’re looking for fluffy romance, go somewhere else.
“Is this not enough? There are, undoubtedly, still unexplored depths to the potential misery between us. Shall we endeavor to achieve all of it?
The High Reeve
You know the critique of “redeemed through love” that points out that if something happens to the love interest, what’s stopping the redeemed “bad boy” from going on another rampage? That’s Ferron’s whole deal.
“If you die, I will kill every single one of them.”
When the story starts, he’s the terrifying attack dog of the Undying, whom Helena can’t do anything to protect herself from, and as we continue through the main plot and flashbacks, this image of him is slowly unraveled as we find out his motivations.
And what parts of his situation are Helena’s fault.
Not a person, but a weapon.
Well, Helena would be sure to treat him as one.
And this is one area where I think Alchemised is worse off than Manacled. Because, while neither really focuses on their time at school together, the fact that you, the reader, already know Draco Malfoy as a character adds a level of fear to the early chapters that’s not really doable with a brand new character. There’s no question of how the snotty rich kid became the most efficient killer in the war, when that’s all we know him as.
The Fanfiction of it All
I recently reviewed Rose in Chains by Julie Soto, and in that review, I didn’t mention The Auction at all, beyond saying that I think the book stands fine without it, because there are enough changes to both the plot and the general world building to let it be its own thing.
Alchemised, on the other hand, has a lot fewer changes.
The ones that are there are improvements; big ethical arguments being caused by religion works a lot better than vaguely defined “light and dark magic”, and Harry’s refusal to kill Death Eaters in Manacled has been replaced with a more… interesting philosophical argument.
“The journey, all the suffering, it’s what we need. How else can we be purified?
That’s why it’s better for all of us to die true to what we believe than to live on by betraying and corrupting ourselves.”
There is also the simple fact that original characters aren’t going to feel like they’ve been warped to suit a plot in the same way preexisting ones will. One of my biggest problems with Manacled was that by the time you get to the end, no one’s even recognizable. Which makes it depressing, sure, but also means that the ending works better with the original characters of the novel.
“Too Dark”
Well, is it?
Technically, no. You can read and write whatever you want. And, as gory as Alchemised gets, it has significantly fewer sexual (consensual or otherwise) scenes than Manacled, presumably for the purposes of not being published solely as erotica.
Dismemberment and cannibalism are fine; smut is the end of the world. You know the drill.
Beyond that, I suppose the answer is going to depend a bit on whether or not you think the characters are meant to be read as mentally stable, reliable narrators or not.
In case it wasn’t clear earlier, my answer to that is that they are anything but.
By the time we reach the third part of the novel, where most of the scenes I’ve seen people insisting are romanticizing rape, possessiveness, and controlling behavior are, both characters have been pushed well past their limits, with only each other to rely on. So it’s not really a surprise that their views on relationships aren’t healthy anymore.
And sure, it’s fiction, and you can argue that it didn’t have to be written that way.
But also, it’s fiction. It’s not supposed to be teaching you life lessons.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that fantasies are not literal.
The appeal of the “obsessive villain boyfriend” is not that you literally want to date someone who will go on a killing spree for you. It’s the fantasy of someone willing to prioritize you over everything else.
And both Alchemised and Manacled are not subtle about that being the fantasy at the root of the story.
In both stories, it’s stressed over and over how much Helena and Hermione are being taken for granted by their respective resistances, with Draco/Ferron being the one person who sees them as anything other than a stressed-out healer with no real idea of what’s going on in the war.
“You are not replaceable. You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people.”
^That quote is the point. The murder is set dressing.
Final Thoughts
If you liked Manacled, you’ll like this book.
If your main complaint about Manacled was that characters were OOC, but you liked the overall story, then you’ll probably like this since no one’s tied to a separate story.
If you like actual dark romance, you’ll probably like this, though it’s worth pointing just how far in you’ll be before there’s any amount of pay off to that.
And if you say you like dark romances, but your definition of the genre is two characters with zero power dynamics, who talk to each other with “therapy speak”, and are modern Pokemon villain levels of morally gray then… Why are you here? Go find a genre you actually like.
Alchemised is what it says on the tin. Or I suppose in the included content warning. It’s fine if that’s not for you, but that’s not really a failing on the book’s part.
