Alchemised

You do not open a book when you start Alchemised: you are entering into a contract with the dark. The air is filled with the metallic smell of fear and loss from the moment the healer Helona Marino opens her eyes and finds herself as a prisoner in an endless, black stasis tank. Paladia collapses to the evil High Necromancer, and her whole Resistance movement, the Eternal Flame, has been reduced to ashes, while Helena herself is a ghost who has lost a year of memory. It is an immediately emotionally engaging story that plunges you into a brutal dystopia where consciousness is a cage, and the most magical thing is the ability to manipulate life and death. The terrifying question is not who Helena is, but what she is. Her thoughts appear to have been unexplainably changed and her abilities are useless. Take heed, it is not a soft beginning but a fierce plunge. How far will you lose yourself before you know the truth?

Nevertheless, this gloomy world is sliced very sharp. The story's scope is impressive, an epic journey through the psychological trauma of war and survival. The best aspect of Alchemised is its unwillingness to make hard things soft. The difference between the divine alchemy, the corrupted vivimancy and necromancy are intricate and disorienting, with the key element of lumithium. Helena is a curious character, not a hero of physical strength, but the one who wants to endure the intolerable. Her emotional release and endless internal monologue make the world feel more human, as otherwise it may appear rather clinical. It is a slow, morally exhausted relationship that develops between two main characters, formed in harsh conditions and reciprocal manipulations and it makes a unique, unhealthy, and very gripping tension. One cannot help turning the pages and getting sucked into the darkness. This book is an unquestioned giant of storytelling and emotive depth.

But even the most ambitious works may be crippled by complexity. My primary criticism is directed at characters other than Helena and her captor. The novel is overpopulated with supporting characters, old friends of the Resistance, lieutenants of the Undying, but in most instances the author does not develop them and makes them only a place in the novel. Their names and the small backgrounds are brought up and quickly swept under the carpet in hundreds of pages, so that one can hardly feel any personal attachment or stake in their fate. Once they are reintroduced, they are much less emotionally powerful since the background of their significance was not always established. This is a missed chance for the supporting cast, who are so worried about the effects of war and loss. The emotional stakes are reduced to nearly the very personal Helena's torture, when Paladia's greater tragedy warrants a sturdier, fully-formed company of characters to support the burden of its immense political dimensions.

I give Alchemised a rating of 4 out of 5 stars. This is an epic, intense, and unforgettable experience that is best suited for a certain type of fantasy reader. If you are looking for a story that is psychologically heavy, morally complex, and uncompromisingly dark, you have to pick this up. It is for those who enjoy sprawling, multi-layered world-building where magic and power are intrinsically tied to institutional horror and abuse. Crucially, the book gives readers a reward for valuing the slow, agonising burn of a complicated, twisted dynamic over a fast-paced plot or traditional romance tropes. It takes patience and a strong stomach, but the reward is an extremely immersive experience that gets under your skin. If you go into this novel ready to wade through a marathon of emotional difficulty and if you have an appreciation of masterful world-building that raises the stakes of a dark fantasy world, then you have a novel that's easy to recommend to others, a high-quality epic worth a place on your shelf.