My last read of 2025 was arguably one of the most traumatic reads of my year. Dark romance lovers, you’re going to want to pick this up if you haven’t already. This book has content warnings on the author’s website, but if you’re someone who is into reading some pretty dark things, then this might be for you. Many of you might be thinking, Nathalie, isn’t this book one that was re-written from a very popular fanfiction? The answer is yes, and now having read both of them, I feel that the story takes on a life of its own that is separate from the original source material. With morally grey characters and a fascinating alchemy and metal magic system, I think there is something about this story that readers will gravitate toward.
The summary of this story is centered around Helena, a woman who has lost her memories, but also trapped within her own mind. She’s a prisoner of the current ruling class, and all of her friends who were part of the Resistance are now dead. However, she’s being held because her memory loss might be the key to identifying important information the Resistance held, but how is an insignificant healer like Helena involved? To discover the reason for her treachery, she’s sent to the High Reeve, purported to be one of the most powerful necromancers in Paladia. However, her captor and the prison she remains captive within hold devastating secrets, and Helena is determined to find out what they are.
When I tell you that this book had me in a chokehold from the beginning, I am not joking, and I knew what I was getting into. I read the original source material and found it just as dark and triggering. My goal in reading this was to find out how different the stories were from each other, and how the worldbuilding and plot might develop. The magic system was something I was especially curious about, and the metal usage with alchemy gave me a Sanderson adjacent vibe, but layered with necromancy, vivimancy, and others that I won’t mention. The book is a brick in size at 1,000 pages, but I do feel like SenLinYu was trying to pack in all of the worldbuilding that she needed to in order to make this book work. The mythology in particular fascinated me, and it was an aspect I would have loved to get more information about. Helena’s country as well, because despite being set in Paladia, there were a lot of references to other places that characters were from, but not enough background for us to get attached to them.
I’m sure most of you are wondering about the romantic aspect of the characters. Naturally there’s elements of enemies to lovers, power imbalances, and more, but the thing that might be the most triggering for people would be the abuse situations. This is where the story really leans into The Handmaid’s Tale with forced pregnancy for the female prisoners of war. I really can’t get into more without spoiling certain parts of the story, so I won’t say much more on it, but this was an aspect of the story that I felt might have needed more development.
Character-wise, this story was complex, particularly with so much going on and Helena not being as a reliable of a narrator as we might want due to her trauma. There is an aspect of abuse that I cannot speak on as a reviewer, but it did feel as though the lines of morality were blurred in this book. While this makes sense for a dark romance, I encourage every reader to approach this book with their own experiences in mind.
Now, back to Helena. As part of the resistance she is strong, even if she’s a bit secretive in shouldering the weight of what others are putting onto her. Despite the trauma, I hoped that she could rekindle a bit of even a shadow of herself, but even in the end, I don’t feel like we got there. Same thing for the High Reeve. Very complex and battling with himself about a great deal of things I cannot talk about, but I’m not sure if there was enough resolution to work through a lot of the trauma that happens within this book.
With all that said, I would recommend this to readers who are devoted lovers of dark romance. I would also encourage any readers to look up the content warnings. There are a lot of them, and if you’re not in the headspace for this book, it may not be for you. There were some grammatical errors that I noticed in the book that really bugged me, but overall, it was a fast paced read for me that I finished over the course of two days. I am looking forward to seeing what SenLinYu will write next.
Alchemised is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up Alchemised? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.
