She might win the throne. She might destroy an empire. Either way, it begins with …
5 Sterne
I thought The Raven Scholar was refreshing and original.
It has some familiar tropes (the unappreciated, hypercompetent loner; multiple factions competing in a deadly tournament), but does a great job of avoiding cliches and subverting expectations.
There were a couple of places I was annoyed by the narration seeming to jump between character-limited and omniscient, but this is a minor quibble.
Despite apparently being the opener of a trilogy, it does a good job of telling a complete story and wrapping up the first phase of events.
In this riveting dark fantasy debut, a woman with missing memories fights to survive a …
Impressive Fanfic, Bloated Novel
3 Sterne
Alchemised is an impressive work of fan fiction, a dark fantasy wartime romance shipping the characters of Hermione (Helena Marino) and Draco (Kaine Ferron) from Harry Potter in a world that uses the magic system (or close enough) of Fullmetal Alchemist, with necromancy and elements of The Handmaid's Tale stirred in for horror and a sprinkling of softcore erotica for horn.
If that premise doesn't sound like anything you're remotely interested in, don't pick up this book. The story is told in a little over 1,000 pages (32+ hours for the audiobook), so it's not a light investment of your time; and as much as I wanted to be able to recommend Alchemised to all (adult) fantasy readers when I started the book, by the end I felt that I could only ever recommend the book to fans of Harry Potter and Fullmetal Alchemist who are powerfully intrigued …
Alchemised is an impressive work of fan fiction, a dark fantasy wartime romance shipping the characters of Hermione (Helena Marino) and Draco (Kaine Ferron) from Harry Potter in a world that uses the magic system (or close enough) of Fullmetal Alchemist, with necromancy and elements of The Handmaid's Tale stirred in for horror and a sprinkling of softcore erotica for horn.
If that premise doesn't sound like anything you're remotely interested in, don't pick up this book. The story is told in a little over 1,000 pages (32+ hours for the audiobook), so it's not a light investment of your time; and as much as I wanted to be able to recommend Alchemised to all (adult) fantasy readers when I started the book, by the end I felt that I could only ever recommend the book to fans of Harry Potter and Fullmetal Alchemist who are powerfully intrigued by the idea of a melding of those two fantasy worlds.
For those people, Alchemised may indeed scratch an itch. I think SenLinYu did a great job of creatively joining those two universes to create an entirely new universe that is interesting in its own right. I appreciated the horrific descriptions of war, and especially the wartime application of the world's magic systems. (Don't take that the wrong way: I'm no fan of war—quite the opposite, in fact; and I appreciate that Alchemised depicts war as a horror in a way that few of the fantasy novels I've read ever do.) I had fun identifying all the little elements of the various IPs SenLinYu worked into her story. I also enjoyed the erotica, even if it was a bit vanilla for my taste.
The problem is the length of this book. Part II, especially, drags on for much longer than needed to get to where we needed to be by Part III. I know Alchemised was originally self-published on AO3, and if it had stayed there I maybe could have forgiven the bloat. A young, talented, but inexperienced writer indulging in a story they've probably had in their head for many years—I get it. But the book wasn't self-published, and Penguin really should have insisted that an editor help the author trim some of the fat off this book. Someone to interject when the characters repeat the same phrases 100 times. Someone to insist that we get to the fucking monkey.
It's unfortunate that didn't happen; or, if the book did go through an editor and they did some trimming, it's unfortunate they didn't cut more out of Alchemised. As it is, I just can't recommend that anyone other than real fans put as much time as it will take to get through this beast of a book.
He was sent to kill a pest. Instead, he found a monster.
Enter the …
5 Sterne
The Works of Vermin is delightfully weird, a writhing tapestry of characters and plotlines that twist around each other and double back as the author gradually reveals the design.
I didn't know what to expect after Leech, and this certainly doesn't have many superficial similarities, except maybe for a certain focus on the inhuman.
It is fantastical and deranged and byzantine and wonderful.
