\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n recent days, bookish pockets of TikTok and Instagram have been talking about one thing only. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking forward to this day more than I look forward to my wedding day,\u201d says one creator, holding up to the camera a copy of the 1,040-page novel that was Penguin\u2019s most pre-ordered debut of the year and has already netted a potentially record-breaking seven-figure film rights deal.<\/p>\n How does a first-time novelist get out of the starting blocks quite like that<\/em>? 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 (\u201cDramione\u201d) fanfic, heavily inspired by The Handmaid\u2019s Tale, has now been rewritten \u2013 with third-party IP necessarily removed \u2013 and published traditionally as Alchemised. But if you didn\u2019t know about Alchemised\u2019s origins, you would be unlikely to clock them: even squinting, it\u2019s hard to see any trace of Harry Potter in the revamped version, set in a different world and magic system.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cdark\u201d fantasy is no understatement: Sen\u2019s website lists 12 content warnings, extending to human experimentation, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism and necrophilia.<\/p>\n I was never wanting to write a relationship that was supposed to be aspirational<\/p>\n While Alchemised is often lumped in with romantasy in media coverage, Sen, who goes by they\/them pronouns, has \u201cnever really thought of it as a romantasy\u201d, or a romance. They don\u2019t read much romance, because the genre tends towards idealised stories. \u201cI was never wanting to write a relationship that was supposed to be aspirational.\u201d Getting people to stop calling Alchemised a romantasy \u201chas been a bit like playing Whac-A-Mole\u201d. However, they do see it as a love story.<\/p>\n The conflation of fantasy subgenres has parallels with the narrow cultural view of fanfiction, often exclusively associated with smut. People \u201ctend to take the most scandalous, the most salacious thing about it and then run with that\u201d, or they will see it as \u201creally derisible\u201d, accusing fanfiction writers of not having original ideas, says Sen. The author notes that Greek retellings \u2013 books such as Circe, The Silence of the Girls and The Song of Achilles \u2013 which have become so popular in recent years aren\u2019t criticised for being unoriginal, despite relying on the same principle as fanfiction. \u201cThe inconsistency is funny to me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever it\u2019s something that women or LGBTQ+ people tend to do a lot,\u201d there is more criticism, says Sen. \u201cMen do fantasy football, and no one is like, \u2018Oh your little imaginary players, that\u2019s so cute that you do that\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s treated seriously, people talk about it in the office.\u201d<\/p>\n While Sen had always been drawn to fantasy, they grew up in a conservative, \u201cvery religious\u201d family in the Pacific Northwest of the US, and the genre \u201cwas looked upon with scepticism\u201d. While they could read books that were written by Christian authors \u2013 The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings \u2013 other strands of fantasy were \u201cnot really something that we had at our house\u201d.<\/p>\n They put off writing seriously, believing they needed more life experience, but by their late 20s, after having two kids, they realised they could \u201cdie waiting for more perspective\u201d. They began writing Manacled in the notes app on their phone, during their baby\u2019s nap time. Fanfiction appealed as a form because they could post pseudonymously (they\u2019ve retained the SenLinYu pen name for Alchemised), yet there was a level of accountability: \u201cIf I say I\u2019m going to update on Thursdays or something, I as a people pleaser \u2013 as a perfectionist, as a child who always had to do my assignments a week early because I\u2019d be so stressed about missing a deadline \u2013 I will finish this, because I said that I was going to post a chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s Tale references was not \u201cin any way pleasant\u201d, or something they would ever want to do again. \u201cI would rather be shot,\u201d Sen told their Tumblr followers last year. They described the process as taking two 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzles and \u201chaving 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.\u201d<\/p>\n War is a major theme of the book, a plot line partly inspired by Sen\u2019s family story. Their \u201ctraditionalist\u201d upbringing meant they heard \u201cvery specific narratives\u201d about the second world war and US contributions. While they grew up in a circle that was \u201cvery, very white\u201d, they are half Japanese, and their \u201cmother\u2019s mother and all of her extended family were interned during world war two because they were Japanese\u201d. Sen wanted to probe those parts of history that are \u201comitted from the narrative\u201d in order to create neat binaries of \u201cthese are the good guys, these are the bad guys\u201d.<\/p>\n Sen was influenced by feminist history, including Svetlana Alexievich\u2019s The Unwomanly Face of War, an oral history of Soviet women during the second world war, and Katrine Kielos\u2019s Who Cooked Adam Smith\u2019s Dinner? \u201cThere had been so many women in the Resistance\u201d \u2013 the movement protagonist Helena is part of \u2013 Sen writes. \u201cNot many in combat, but everywhere else; they\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Many in Sen\u2019s fanbase were \u201cvery excited\u201d for Manacled to be turned into a traditionally published work. Speaking ahead of Alchemised\u2019s release, the author said they felt like \u201ca champagne bottle about to pop\u201d. 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 \u201cthis is me before reading Alchemised\u201d, before switching to \u201cafter\u201d footage of them sobbing. \u201cI feel a loss that I\u2019ve never felt before,\u201d says one creator. \u201cI don\u2019t know how I\u2019m going to move on from this.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/em>Alchemised is published by Penguin (\u00a325). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In recent days, bookish pockets of TikTok and Instagram have been talking about one thing only. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking forward to this day more than I look forward to my wedding day,\u201d says one creator, holding up to the camera a copy of the 1,040-page novel that was Penguin\u2019s most pre-ordered debut of the year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[2157,14994,1001,696,14992,1189,1171,14993,14995,9192],"class_list":{"0":"post-24706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-app","9":"tag-bestseller","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-deal","12":"tag-fanfiction","13":"tag-fantasy","14":"tag-film","15":"tag-notes","16":"tag-sevenfigure","17":"tag-written"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}