This post is a bit of a hybrid one in that it features both writing and music and it's more reminiscent of what is usually on my music blog This Metal Road. Despite finishing the novel, I'm not fully ready or willing to leave the world of Alchemised behind and it appears that there are others who feel the same way. After reading the book, I was delighted to discover music inspired by Alchemised on Bandcamp and some of these tracks are featured throughout this post. All of the music in this post is by Mr Pianoful. The tracks are painfully beautiful and I feel they capture the morose sadness and grief of the Alchemised world well. I hope as you read this post you will listen to the tracks as they appear and linger within the music as you read the text.
This book first caught my attention because of its gorgeous cover art and extraordinarily large size. Clocking in at over a thousand pages long I often used to heft this bulky tome onto my lap at bookshops and idly look at it when it was first published in 2025. I was heavily drawn to the gothic cover art of the book but reluctant to read it due to being part of the romantic fantasy or “romantasy” subgenre which is a subgenre of fantasy and romance (“Romatic fantasy,” 2026).
The “romantasy” subgenre exploded online a few years ago thanks to TikTok’s BookTok. Its impact has been so immense on the reading public that it now affects what types of books bookshops stock and feature. Romantic fantasy has always been a presence within popular culture with Wikipedia listing The Twilight Saga, The Little Mermaid and Edward Scissorhands as being notable examples of the subgenre in popular fiction and film (“Romatic fantasy,” 2026). However, I feel “romantasy” only really gained momentum fairly recently, specifically with the publication of books such as A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Mass.
I have been a fantasy and high fantasy genre reader from way back in the day. I used to be one of those fantasy readers who made a point to re-read J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings at least once a year and I even tried my hand at the interesting yet excruciatingly under-edited fourteen book series The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Times series was so long that the author passed away before he could complete it and the final two books in the series were written by Brandon Sanderson. I got to book seven in the series before the sheer weight and volume of the prose defeated me. How I wished Robert Jordan might have been considered an editor. It would have made his series so much more accessible if he didn’t bury his readers in so much prose. I swear I don’t think The Wheel of Time needed fourteen volumes to tell its tale. I was so sad I couldn’t finish the series that I spent some time online reading blogs that lamented the same things I did about the series. It was comforting to read about the pain of others who, like myself, wanted to continue The Wheel of Time but just couldn’t find the will to do so.
So it was with curiosity that I watched the explosion of online interest in a subgenre of fantasy that was made more real by the fact that these books began to pop up in bricks and mortar stores. I wondered what this “romantasy” subgenre was and why the popular books and authors within the subgenre rapidly gained cultish followings. Having now read some of the books myself, I strongly suspect the popularity of the subgenre might have something to do with the level of “spice” in some of these novels. Spice is a polite way of saying smut. Some of these books tend to lurch from one graphic sex scene to the next with narratives often spun around problematic treatment regarding consent, genderization, the limited agency of women, the idea of women as property to be possessed, misogyny and power dynamics.
For these reasons I stayed away from the popular books and authors within this subgenre until I finally succumbed to the hype and read A Court of Thorns and Roses series, the Throne of Glass series and the Crescent City series, all by Sarah J. Maas. Overall, the books were fairly good to read, the world building was sufficient and honestly after reading so many books in the different series, I found myself often skimming past the “spicy” scenes in the books because after a while, you can only describe characters engaging in intercourse in so many ways before it becomes monotonous. I was more interested in the romance between the characters and the narratives within the various books because I actually did become invested in the characters and the overarching storylines of these novels.
However, after reading at least of the two defining series within the "romantasy" subgenre I feel the concerns people have about some of the more popular books within this subgenre are valid. Many of the most popular texts within the “romantasy” subgenre are problematic, especially if they are read without an understanding of patriarchy, feminism and consent. It's surprising to me that some popular titles within the subgenre have a Young Adult classification. I think by and large, most of the books in this subgenre where spice is an important element within the texts should have an eighteen plus classification. Not only for the overly sexualised content but also for the problematic way sex in some of these books interacts with questionable framing regarding gender, consent, patriarchy and power. Young minds are impressionable and we as a society should be more judicious about what we expose teenagers to especially if the material is consumed without a suitable intellectual framework around it. You need to arm impressionable readers with intellectual defence before you expose them to graphic texts. They shouldn’t just stumble into it.
Thus, when I first saw SenLinYu’s Alchemised in a city bookshop I was reluctant to read it given how conflicted the “romantasy” subgenre does make me feel. But since seeing the book in the bookshop I have found myself often drawn to it. The main problem is I do like a good romance novel, gothic imagery and I am a fantasy genre reader so this book was sort of triangulating me. When I found out I could borrow it from my local library, I gave in and put myself down in the queue to borrow it. My library has the breathtakingly beautiful first edition copy published by Penguin Random House UK with sprayed edges. It’s magnificent looking. I kind of fell in love with the book just by looking at it.
Cover Art of Alchemised by SendLinYu. Photo credit HammieRiffs.
Sprayed edges of the Penguin Random House UK first edition (2025). I wish this copy was mine but alas, the library wants it back. Photo credit HammieRiffs.
I appreciate how SenLinYu restrained the spice level of Alchemised to a reasonable level and instead directed a lot of energy and intent towards world building. I found the world and the magic system SenLinYu created to be quite remarkable in its believability. It was nice to see a magic system not influenced by Tolkien though I do understand that the origin of the novel was fanfiction published on Archive of Our Own that leaned heavily into the worlds of Harry Potter and A Handmaid’s Tale (“Alchemised,” 2026).
The same problematic aspects regarding genderization, patriarchy, power dynamics and obsessive love is present in Alchemised but the story is also good. The book also seeks to address the issues of rape. Rather than egregiously categorising rape as something that could be related to passion and love, the book doesn’t shy away from how society sometimes deals with issue of rape and how vulnerable women individually and collectively are to rape in war situations. The book also touches on issues of racism, colonialism and it was also quite fascinating to read how SenLinYu dealt with what could be seen as Stockholm Syndrome when the main female lead grows emotionally close to the person holding her captive. It’s quite a fearless book in how many areas it seeks to delve into.
The story and the characters are complex and to the author’s credit the characters all live within shades of grey. There is very little clear cut morality because within a civil war situation morality can be a luxury that can’t be afforded. It can sometimes boil down to one bad choice versus another bad choice. SenLinYu asks us how we can judge the characters when they are faced with these dreadful choices while also gently prodding us to do just that. By creating horrific scenarios within the narrative the author covertly nudges us to judge the characters, to assess them. Did the characters make the right decisions? Can we understand and empathise with the choices that were made? What would we have done in this situation? What choices would we have made?
When you try to imagine some of the worst systems humans invented and forced others to live by such as slavery in Africa between 1300 to 1900 or the extermination camps of the Nazi regime, you wonder how did people survive? Despite a system built to crush you, to pulverise your body and soul into submission or oblivion, people still found ways to hang onto their humanity, to nurture love and hope. In many ways, this is what Alchemised explores. How does the good within humanity survive in the face of utter inhumanity?
Someone online said that when they really get into a novel, an emptiness opens up once the book is read and they miss the characters. A hole is left where the characters and the world they lived in once were. This is how I felt after reading Alchemised. It’s strange to feel this way given the world of Alchemised is so traumatised, traumatic and ghoulish but the two protagonists in the story are so poignant in their suffering and their love for each other that it creates a wellspring of beauty resting within this terribly dark and threatening landscape. When you enjoy the interspersing of light and dark as much as I do, this contrast between the characters and the world they inhabit makes the narrative of Alchemised addictive to read.
Alchemised has not lessened my overall doubtful feelings about the "romantasy" subgenre but to completely condemn the subgenre for its problematic aspects would be to ignore the fact that it sits within a broader pop cultural framework that often promotes sexism, racism, misogyny, patriarchy and inequality. The "romantasy" subgenre is an outgrowth of what already exists within our popular culture. It reflects what is there as opposed to challenging it the way some texts do such as Han Kang's The Vegetarian. One of the most difficult and uncomfortable novels I've read to date, The Vegetarian is a text that should be read alongside the more popular books in the "romantasy" subgenre. One of the most impactful narrative elements of The Vegetarian is the voiceless nature of the main character. Her story is told and framed by others and this is such a simple yet condemning tool used by the author to make a statement about women, autonomy and agency.
It’s nice to know that there are books that I can read within the “romantasy” subgenre that don’t leave me feeling too compromised. On one hand it’s great that women are not shamed for enjoying the spice of “romantasy” and there are indeed well crafted characters and storylines to be had within the subgenre. But the questionable aspects of the subgenre and its impact on readers shouldn’t be overlooked either. For me, Alchemised is almost more than its subgenre because its story and what it examines moves beyond the world of either fantasy or romance. It looks steadily into the deeply uncomfortable truths about our society, our humanity, our cynicism and our corruption while also showing us our fragility, our tenderness and our capacity for hope and endurance in the face of great suffering.
References
Alchemised. (2026, November 11). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemised
Romantic fantasy. (2026, November 11). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_fantasy
