Alchemised by SenLinYu Published by Del Rey on September 23, 2025
Genres: Dark/Gothic Romance
Pages: 1030
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld
Length: 36 hrs 14 min
Source: Chirp
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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.
Horrible! I wish I remembered where I first heard about it so I could yell at someone.
Sometimes you really need to pay attention to the warning at the beginning of the book! Trigger warnings on this review too.
I don’t remember where I heard about this story but it does have 4.36 stars on Goodreads. It appears it started as fanfic of something called Manacled. I saw this was on sale a few weeks ago and a quick check showed it so highly rated so I not only picked up a copy, I decided to get the discounted audiobook as well. After wasting 10 hours of my life that I will never get back (it is a 36 hour story), I decided to just cut my losses and walk away.
The story follows Helena, who was a member of the Order of the Eternal Flame (the Regency), whose team lost the war to the Guild (rich assholes who wanted a bigger piece of the power). Necromancy and vivimancy being to top magics to possess. Helena wasn’t slaughtered along with the heads of the revolutionaries. She was tossed into a sensory deprivation tank, but not sedated first like the rest of the prisoners. Then 14 months later, when pulling out the dead prisoners, they find Helena still alive and mostly sane. They also find during a magical physical that someone turned Helena’s brain into a booby-trapped puzzle. Now they want to know what secrets she is holding and send her to the High Reeve so he can dig in her brain and get all the information.
Helena remembers Ferrin from school but they were never friends, more like competitors who struggled for the top rank each year. (Helena being the poor, unwanted but talented scholarship kid.) Digging into Helena’s brain keeps causing her to have seizures which would leave her unconscious for days so obviously this kept Helena as his prisoner for months on end. This lead to endless pages of Helena wandering the halls of his home or the grounds. Endlessly! So many pages dedicated to her wandering around. It also gave her plenty of time to remember Luc, the royal prince who was her friend. Even though her memories were locked away in this brain puzzle, she had no problem digging these memories out.
The High Necromancer wanted Helena’s memories at first because he feared they hadn’t crushed the rebellion completely but secondly, he seemed certain that Helena was the rumored vivimancor who could put someone’s consciousness into another body. This guy was visibly rotting and obviously he wanted to put himself into a new, healthy body. View Spoiler »
TRIGGER WARNING!!!
Where it got too dark for me is the fact that the Guild has come up with a Handmaid’s Tale-like plan to create more magic users by breeding all the prisoners. Helena reads about a party-wide push for children but then overhears the truth at a house party where the men are joking about taking turns and even torturing the women tied down so they can be bred, puppy mill style. Most former friends and compatriots of Helena’s. Helena was glad she was sterilized by her group, who feared Helena’s magic, until she finds out the physician who keeps checking on her has been secretly healing her sterilization and now wants Ferrin to get her pregnant. They both have powerful magic so their kid should be super powerful View Spoiler » And if Ferrin can’t do it, Helena will be put with the other women and have her rapists hand picked to make a decently magical baby. This becomes priority even over finding out what is in Helena’s brain, because they can always rip her brain apart later. She doesn’t need to be mentally there to pop out some good babies for the Guild. This all leads to essentially Ferrin raping Helena. While he doesn’t tie her down and they both silently agree that his doing it is better than her being sent to the tower for a group assault, it is no less rape. He might have been disgusted with himself and vomiting afterwards, but it didn’t make it any more acceptable or palatable.
I don’t understand the popularity of this story or the one that this was modeled against, but I found this to be horribly slow and boring and the whole forced breeding was distasteful. After I decided not to waste another 26 hours to finish this nightmare, I read a few of the negative reviews and pat myself on the back for making the right decision.
I am really sorry that not only have I spent the money on a digital copy AND an audiobook copy, but if I had a physical copy, I could have the great pleasure of setting it on fire.
Save yourself and stay away.
I hate when I start to read books that aren’t what I think and disturb me. It’s safe to say I do and think the same thing you do.