In recent days, bookish pockets of TikTok and Instagram have been talking about one thing only. “I’ve been looking forward to this day more than I look forward to my wedding day,” says one creator, holding up to the camera a copy of the 1,040-page novel that was Penguin’s most pre-ordered debut of the year and has already netted a potentially record-breaking seven-figure film rights deal.
How does a first-time novelist get out of the starting blocks quite like that? The thing is, the author behind the doorstopper dark fantasy novel, Alchemised, is no unknown debut: SenLinYu, 34, started off writing Harry Potter fanfiction that blew up online during the pandemic, racking up more than 20m downloads. Her Draco and Hermione (“Dramione”) fanfic, heavily inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale, has now been rewritten – with third-party IP necessarily removed – and published traditionally as Alchemised. But if you didn’t know about Alchemised’s origins, you would be unlikely to clock them: even squinting, it’s hard to see any trace of Harry Potter in the revamped version, set in a different world and magic system.
At the beginning of Alchemised, published last Tuesday, we meet Helena Marino, a prisoner of war held captive on the dilapidated estate of Kaine Ferron, a former classmate who is tasked with scouring her mind for lost memories. Set in a world of necromancy and alchemy, the three-part novel traces the twisty, obsessive relationship between the pair, while exploring war trauma and picking at the borders of good and evil. And its billing as “dark” fantasy is no understatement: Sen’s website lists 12 content warnings, extending to human experimentation, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism and necrophilia.
I was never wanting to write a relationship that was supposed to be aspirational
While Alchemised is often lumped in with romantasy in media coverage, Sen, who goes by they/them pronouns, has “never really thought of it as a romantasy”, or a romance. They don’t read much romance, because the genre tends towards idealised stories. “I was never wanting to write a relationship that was supposed to be aspirational.” Getting people to stop calling Alchemised a romantasy “has been a bit like playing Whac-A-Mole”. However, they do see it as a love story.
The conflation of fantasy subgenres has parallels with the narrow cultural view of fanfiction, often exclusively associated with smut. People “tend to take the most scandalous, the most salacious thing about it and then run with that”, or they will see it as “really derisible”, accusing fanfiction writers of not having original ideas, says Sen. The author notes that Greek retellings – books such as Circe, The Silence of the Girls and The Song of Achilles – which have become so popular in recent years aren’t criticised for being unoriginal, despite relying on the same principle as fanfiction. “The inconsistency is funny to me.”
“Whenever it’s something that women or LGBTQ+ people tend to do a lot,” there is more criticism, says Sen. “Men do fantasy football, and no one is like, ‘Oh your little imaginary players, that’s so cute that you do that’ – it’s treated seriously, people talk about it in the office.”
While Sen had always been drawn to fantasy, they grew up in a conservative, “very religious” family in the Pacific Northwest of the US, and the genre “was looked upon with scepticism”. While they could read books that were written by Christian authors – The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings – other strands of fantasy were “not really something that we had at our house”.
They put off writing seriously, believing they needed more life experience, but by their late 20s, after having two kids, they realised they could “die waiting for more perspective”. They began writing Manacled in the notes app on their phone, during their baby’s nap time. Fanfiction appealed as a form because they could post pseudonymously (they’ve retained the SenLinYu pen name for Alchemised), yet there was a level of accountability: “If I say I’m going to update on Thursdays or something, I as a people pleaser – as a perfectionist, as a child who always had to do my assignments a week early because I’d be so stressed about missing a deadline – I will finish this, because I said that I was going to post a chapter.”
Sen began rewriting Manacled around Christmas 2022, and as they were finishing up, they were approached by a literary agency. Stripping away the Harry Potter and overt Handmaid’s Tale references was not “in any way pleasant”, or something they would ever want to do again. “I would rather be shot,” Sen told their Tumblr followers last year. They described the process as taking two 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzles and “having to use both to build a new puzzle that somehow makes sense. Do not recommend. I also had to scrap and build from scratch a entirely new healing and medicine system and it was literally traumatic.”
War is a major theme of the book, a plot line partly inspired by Sen’s family story. Their “traditionalist” upbringing meant they heard “very specific narratives” about the second world war and US contributions. While they grew up in a circle that was “very, very white”, they are half Japanese, and their “mother’s mother and all of her extended family were interned during world war two because they were Japanese”. Sen wanted to probe those parts of history that are “omitted from the narrative” in order to create neat binaries of “these are the good guys, these are the bad guys”.
Sen was influenced by feminist history, including Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War, an oral history of Soviet women during the second world war, and Katrine Kielos’s Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? “There had been so many women in the Resistance” – the movement protagonist Helena is part of – Sen writes. “Not many in combat, but everywhere else; they’d staffed the hospital, gone to the front lines as field medics and dragged the wounded bodies to safety, operated the radios and relayed messages, washed and repaired the clothes and uniforms, and cooked the meals. All the ordinary tasks that never ended.”
Many in Sen’s fanbase were “very excited” for Manacled to be turned into a traditionally published work. Speaking ahead of Alchemised’s release, the author said they felt like “a champagne bottle about to pop”. Now, fans are busy digesting the rollercoaster love story, with many sharing their reactions on TikTok. One popular format involves the creator showing a smiling shot of them holding the book and saying “this is me before reading Alchemised”, before switching to “after” footage of them sobbing. “I feel a loss that I’ve never felt before,” says one creator. “I don’t know how I’m going to move on from this.”
Alchemised is published by Penguin (£25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
