I have never read Manacled, which, as far as I know, is no longer available online, but I do know that SenLinYu, an author who identifies as non-binary, wrote some 900000 words on their phone notes app during their baby’s naps through the Pandemic. Their version of the Dramione story was so successful that it was downloaded 20 million times and led to them rewriting that story in a whole new universe, with another magic system and different enough characters that it warranted being seen as an original novel and published by a traditional publisher. It broke records as a fantasy debut, it’s being hailed as the most successful debut in years, and it already has its own movie deal.

So, is the hype worth it?

That is a tricky question because, as with any piece of art, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The trouble is, Alchemised has to be one of the darkest books I have ever read, and there is very little in it I would consider ‘beautiful’. It’s also a monster of a book at 1000 pages (one of those times I’m grateful I buy most of my books on Kindle). When I first picked up the book, the opening scene was so horribly painful that I put it down and decided it wasn’t for me. Then, I gathered my courage and re-started, I read it in a weekend - almost swallowing it whole quickly, like you would a bitter pill. But why put yourself through it? Once started, I somehow felt compelled to keep reading, and I really would like to explore this question:

Why would we read books that cause us pain?

Part of the question I’ve come to is that we read books that captivate us, that keep us wondering what will happen next, that keep us clinging to a thread of hope for characters we end up caring deeply about. This definitely happened with this book for me, but there was more. I realised the author seems to be pushing the limits of a scenario of how much cruelty and how many atrocities are humans capable of committing in the name of a quest for power, greed, or protecting their own attachment to a dogma and, most terrifying, how cruel can humans be in the name of love?

I think it takes a lot of courage for a writer to throw themselves so deep into the bowels of human darkness. There is almost no glimmer of hope for these characters for 900 pages, until, at the very end, they find some light. And perhaps the main reason why I stuck with this book is that I feel we are traversing such a dark time in our history as a species and I’ve felt so hopeless so often over the past year or so that somehow I’ve both drawn a parallel between SenLinYu’s depiction of life and love during a war and the hopelessness of no end in sight, and the hope of still, somehow, seeing a way out.

Also, interestingly, after I put myself through the pain of contemplating all that darkness they depict - which closely mirrors real world conflicts happening in the world right now (and the indifference of those reading about that suffering but doing nothing to stop it) - I came on the other side with a sense of hope and agency, with the question of ‘what is in my power to do to make the world a little bit better?’. It seems you sometimes have to swim in a pit of hopelessness to put your own into perspective.

So, what is this book about? What did I like, not like, and what moral questions did it leave me with?

If you’re intending to read this book, beware that the rest of this article will contain spoilers.

The book is split into three parts, which focus on different time periods in the story. It follows an alchemist and healer, Helena Marino, in the aftermath of a devastating war in the city-state of Paladia, where her side, The Order of the Eternal Flame, lost, and the ‘bad guys’ led by the evil necromancer Morrough have won. Helena wakes up a prisoner, having been kept in stasis for over a year, and with a couple of years' worth of memories missing. She used to work in the Order’s war hospital and has clear memories of her childhood friendship with the Order’s hero and religious figure, Luc, who was killed in the war, but she cannot remember the last months of the war or how everyone died, and she was captured.

As the necromancer’s people discover Helena’s memories have been altered and suspect she is hiding an important secret, she is given as prisoner to the High Reeve, Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s right hand (and lead executioner). He is supposed to break her mind and find out the missing secret (which he attempts repeatedly), and do so in a way that doesn’t kill her before she reveals it. The first part of the book documents Ferron’s abuse of Helena as part of his mission to find her secret, interspersed with strange acts of ‘kindness’, but also with horrific acts such as Handmaid’s Tale-type ritualistic r**e with the purpose of having Helena produce an heir as a new suitable body for the immortal Necromancer’s soul. Even though this act was dictated by the High Necromancer, and it’s clear neither character is consenting, and also we find out in part two that there is a pre-existing relationship between the characters, none of this sweetens the horrific nature of such an act.

Can you hurt the person you love as a justification for protecting them?

Are such hurtful ‘protective’ choices we make in relationships for the other person, or in fact, are we protecting ourselves from the pain of seeing them suffer or losing them?

I find this one of the most compelling and difficult questions in this book. Interestingly, it’s something Helena herself asks late in the book after both of them have caused each other incalculable suffering with the intention of protecting each other. I’m still sitting with this question - not only when it comes to love relationships, but also parenting, friendships and any other meaningful relationship.

How do we love others as they need to be loved?

The magic system in this book relies on the idea of alchemy and the power of manipulating metals, but also fire and even human bodies and minds. Some forms of alchemy are honoured (like metal work) and some have been shunned, like ‘vivimancy’ (which is what Helena’s gift was) - the ability to manipulate another human’s body or even resurrect the dead. The now defeated “Order of the Eternal Flame” had been not just the ruling class of Paladia, but also the founders of the largest alchemy academy on the continent, promoters of knowledge and learning but also upholders of religious dogma that deemed certain forms of alchemy as ‘superior’ to others and emphasised a life built upon suffering and sacrifice in service of ‘purification of the soul’.

Of course, things are not as they seem, and in part 2 of the book, we discover that Kaine Ferron is more than the villain he seems in the first third of the book. There is a backstory to Helena and Kaine’s relationship that we get to explore, which is also fraught with heartbreak, against the backdrop of a ruthless war where she gets to use her ‘impure’ vivimancy gifts to heal the Flame’s soldiers. The hypocrisy of a regime that maligns certain talents (or people) while also ruthlessly using them to achieve its aims is not lost on the reader.

In part 3, Helena and Kaine get to search for an end to the conflict and a happy ending for their relationship, two outcomes that seem mutually exclusive. Now, I’m a sucker for happy endings, and I would have been devastated if this book didn’t have one. On the other hand, the fact that it did have one opened up some profound moral questions.

Kaine Ferron is, objectively, a mass murderer. There are so many moral questions here!

Does the fact that he himself is a victim - tortured and coerced in the most inhumane ways - justify his actions as a perpetrator against myriad people?

Does his obsessive love for Helena justify killing thousands of other nameless, faceless people in her name? Does the fact that he doesn’t enjoy killing make it less gruesome?

Does his love for Helena justify the horrible things he does to her in Part 1 of the book, under the pretence that they are being watched and she could not remember who he was, and for some reason (which remains unclear to me), he can’t just simply stay out of sight, tell her the truth and try to help her remember instead of taking her amnesia as a fact and playing the role of torturer that had been bestowed on him?

Can his love for her (and for his mother) excuse his inability to seemingly feel any shred of compassion for any other person apart from those two? What makes a villain? Does loving just two people to the extreme redeem someone from hurting the rest of humanity?

I confess I was deeply touched by the tragic romance unfolding through this book. The way these two characters fall in love in the first place is again rooted in trauma and a ‘lack of’ rather than any healthy attraction to a possible love match.

By the end, when Helena and Kaine finally get the dream of peace they have worked so hard for, their trauma doesn’t go away. And I did appreciate the author’s honesty in acknowledging that fact. The unhealthy dynamics in their relationship still need careful management. What I didn’t appreciate was how glossed over that fact seemed to be - more of an afterthought, bathed in the beautiful light of a new beginning, rather than a stark reality worth investigating closer. When the war outside is over, the one inside rages on.

Through this book, Helena’s friendships, in particular her friendship with Luc, are equally tragic. There is something idealised about this foreign girl being chosen by the country’s revered heir as his best friend, and then her inexplicable and almost obsessive devotion to him (somehow a sign of aberrant gratitude for ‘being given a chance’), which comes part and parcel with an unwillingness to tell him any hard truths, even when he’s making awful decisions because of his own deluded views. And she is not the only one of Luc’s friends who does that - protect him from truths that could save them all. So this begs other questions:

What is friendship about then?

If your best friends systematically lie to you, keep you in the dark, coddle you to save you from discomfort (or to preserve a collective narrative whose cracks are clearly showing) - is that still friendship?

If you are a human in power and there is nobody around you to tell you you are wrong, deluded, fighthing for a lost cause or needing to change your tactic and question your beliefs in service of the higher good - what kind of a leader are you? Is it a failure of leadership to not have any dissenting voices around?

This brings me to the more systemically relevant conundrums in this book. We are looking at a world where the ‘good guys’ are revealed not to be that good and pristine. The ‘good guys’ have built narratives around their own superiority and their ‘divine right to rule’ that end up blinding them to their own shortcomings and impairing their ability to keep growing and adapting.

Their original positive intentions (e.g. to build an alchemy academy and make this craft available to all) are perverted by rigid rules (e.g. certain alchemical talents are superior to others, or certain students can only study up to a certain level because their ‘work class’ background doesn’t justify more opportunities) or by religious dogma (e.g. waiting for a ‘higher power’ to intervene on your behalf if only you ‘earn’ that divine intervention through being exceedingly ‘good’, ‘pure’ and ‘self-sacrificing’ - even when that self-sacrifice becomes obtuse and self-defeating).

And the ‘bad guys’ have pretty decent justifications for the impulse of pushing back against the ‘good’ - they feel unseen, unvalued, unable to bridge the increasingly terrifying chasm between them and ‘the elites’ whom they come to despise. What starts as legitimate concerns and protest is then hijacked by a very charismatic, truly psychopathic (pure evil) figure who weaponises people’s fears and anger at those in power, leading to war and ultimately a regime of terror that hurts everyone and only benefits the narcissistic leader and their camarilla. Does this remind you of real life at all?

This, to me, opens up a final series of questions:

How can we, humans, use our power wisely? How can we build tolerance for having our most deeply held beliefs challenged without shutting down the other’s viewpoint, nor feeling like traitors for simply considering another perspective?

How can we keep listening to each other, even when we are on opposite sides of the ideological divide?

How can we look beyond our narrow spheres of interest - the people we love and care about, our community, our culture - and acknowledge the existance of other ways of being in the world, without feeling threatened by them?

How do we balance our individual concerns with broad societal concerns?

If you’ve read this far, I hope you already know what you feel like doing next - either jump into it or give it a pass. I’d rather not make a recommendation. This book is not an easy read. Unlike Strange the Dreamer, which I recommended wholeheartedly in my previous review, this book comes with a host of trigger warnings (do make sure to read them before you start!), it contains some very heavy material and will raise some very uncomfortable questions. If you are willing to have your mind challenged in this way, I do hope you read it (I don’t regret doing it!), and I’d love to hear your take on it. I for one am grateful for the reflections it sparked.

Why subscribe?

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives. I’ll write infrequently, when inspiration strikes me. It might be writing about writing. Writing about learning how to write. Writing about books I love (all fantasy here, the nerdy/academic stuff you can find on Alis’ substack). Writing about the unravelling that comes with doing someting for the very first time in your mid-life and relishing every moment of it, even the hard ones! Join me and let’s see where it leads us!

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So where do I start telling you what exactly this book has meant for me?

“Strange the Dreamer” is rated as YA and both main characters are very young - she 17, he 21. Perhaps that was what kept me away from it for a long time - I am drawn to books whose characters are mature and dealing with mid-life challenges, rather than coming-of-age stories. But Strange the Dreamer holds lead characters who are timeless. They deal with some of the most profound dilemmas of humanity and do so with maturity way beyond their years.

Laini Taylor’s writing is like honey. I cannot recall reading another book where every word seemed crafted to perfection, not a breath wasted, the narration flowing so smoothly that I found myself completely sucked into the story and picturing every detail with a vividness that I have rarely experienced - and that’s saying a lot given I’m a powerfully visual reader. And her metaphors, her punchlines! I found myself returning to passages for the sheer pleasure of re-reading a particularly delicious and shockingly creative play on words that made me not just see, but deeply feel what was happening. I felt I was reading with my soul.

It will be very hard to imagine what I’m trying to describe here unless you actually read it, but here’s a taste. Here’s one of my favourite lines in the book, which felt like the perfect summary of the state of the world:

“You think good people can’t hate?” she asked. “You think good people don’t kill?”[...}”Good people do all the things bad people do, Lazlo. It’s just that when they do them, they call it justice.”

And this is the kind of metaphor that made me stop and close my eyes, letting in swirl inside me for a while, just like when you let a piece of chocolate melt on your tongue, unrushed:

“Sometimes a moment is so remarkable that it carves out a space in time and spins there, while the world rushes on around it. This was one such.”

Have you lived moments so remarkable that they carved out a space in your time and spun there? I sure have, and this is one of the many moments when this book gave me pause, making me contemplate my life and my place in the universe.

And this:

“It might have been brief, but so much of a kiss - a first kiss especially - is the moment before your lips touch, and before your eyes close, when you’re filled with the sight of each other, and with the compulsion, the pull, and it’s like...it’s like...finding a book inside another book. A small treasure of a book hidden inside a big common one - like...spells printed on dragonfly wings, discovered tucked inside a cookery book, right between the recipes for cabbages and corn. That’s what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It’s a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane.”

I just wish everyone’s first kiss could be like that. I wish all our kids sought someone who could give them this kind of first kiss. It made me wonder how might a book such as this, where first love is portrayed like the most miraculous thing in the world (which it should be, but not always is), inspire young people to look for this kind of experience. To pause, to connect, to, as my beloved grandmother used to tell me when I was young “look for someone who truly deserves a piece of your heart”.

Lazlo strange is one of the most beautifully human characters I’ve encountered, without being ‘too good’ in that sweet, syrupy, perfectly beautiful way that makes male main characters a caricature insead of a man. He’s been traumatised but not hardened, his nose is crooked from having been broken by, of all things … a book of stories and he is obsessively pursuing his sole childhood dream: finding the long-lost city of Weep. Lazlo is a librarian and in his own way a scholar, but one who stubbornly believes in magic, paying attention to the little signs, the little nudges from the deeper world that are missed by everybody else.

It might be because I’ve read this book at a time in my life when my inner scholar is learning to befriend my inner dreamer, or perhaps because I’m a deep introvert who doesn’t mind spending loads of time alone reading, but there was something deep about Lazlo’s story that spoke to me. It might have been the image of him walking through the library reading, oblivious to the world around him, or that of the huge book of stories that fell down and broke his nose or perhaps this:

“He read while he walked. He read while he ate. The other librarians suspected he somehow read while he slept, or perhaps didn’t sleep at all.”

Lazlo Strange was my kind of guy. And then there is Sarai. A blue girl born out of tragedy, raised to hate and punish those who had stolen her life away and who, over years, discovered compassion for the perpetrators, who turned out to be victims just perhaps a bit more than they were villains.

If Sarai could turn into a substance people could take, one that held all the essence of the darkness she’d experienced and the hard long road to understanding, I really believe we could stop all the wars everywhere and instantly make the world a better place. But that, of course, is fantasy. To become Sarai we need our own big dose of suffering and even then, we need to be lucky enough (or wise enough, or loved enough) for that suffering to not harden us and turn us into weapons, but soften us and instead turn us into balms for other people’s wounds.

I hope by now I’ve convinced you to give this book a try, but if you’re still debating, here’s my final argument. Laini Taylor shared in an interview that she got tired of villains and heroes and wanted to write a book where every character was both. Honestly I’ve never read a book that managed to achieve that aspiration to the degree that this one has. In “Strange the Dreamer” every character, even the peripheral ones, is multi-layered.

The villains do good things and the good guys do horrible things. They love and fail, hate and crumble, rise and learn to love again. Lazlo and Sarai’s love story is an embodiment of this juxtaposition of trauma and innocence, all against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful fantasy cities in the world.

I’ve become a bit obsessed with Laini Taylor’s craft, so I subscribed to her Patreon and already learning many useful things that will hopefully make my own travail of birthing my book a bit less (or at least more usefully) painful. But more about that birthing process in the next post. In the meantime, please leave a comment here and tell me - did you read this book? If yes, what touched you most. What other fantasy books have rocked your world in the way this one has mine?

I’ve got a long pipeline of readings I’ve been dreaming of writing about, so stay tuned for more. And if you know other fantasy book nerds who might love to hang out here, send them this way!

Why subscribe?

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives. I’ll write infrequently, when inspiration strikes me. It might be writing about writing. Writing about learning how to write. Writing about books I love (all fantasy here, the nerdy/academic stuff you can find on Alis’ substack). Writing about the unravelling that comes with doing someting for the very first time in your mid-life and relishing every moment of it, even the hard ones! Join me and let’s see where it leads us!

Subscribe now

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Very few people have ever called me ‘Bianca’ over the years, but whenever one did, I felt they were talking to someone else. Someone dreamy, quirky, creative, wild, mystical, artistic. Someone I used to know very well as a child, but lost touch with as I grew up. Someone I might want to get to know again some time, when I have more space. Years went by and that time never came. Until now.

I kept ‘Bianca’ private for decades. As a child, she ruled my world. She saw magic everywhere, when nobody around me believed in it. She kept the child Alis company on those long days when she felt crushed under the weight of expectations, endless homework, endless pressure and competition to be, do and perform. When Alis got scolded by her arts teacher (who in hindsight was no artist) and told she could not paint (which she understood as ‘I’m not creative’) Bianca urged her not to believe it. When Alis learnt she was tone-deaf and could never sing, Bianca said, “Yes, but you can listen!”. Bianca nurtured Alis’ love of books and of writing (even when all she chose to write was non-fiction). She later kept grown-up Alis company when she had to make big decisions, reminding her to check-in with the heart, not just the head and steered her steps through life by helping her notice synchronicity, move forward with intention and speak her truth.

Bianca loved to get lost in books that held no ‘practical value’. Books that were neither academic writings nor profound works of non-fiction, nor ‘serious literature (mostly written by dead men). Bianca (both the child and the adult) loved reading fantasy and kept getting lost in magical worlds. She kept whispering in Alis’ ear: “Life is bigger than what you can touch with your eyes and measure with your measuring sticks!”.

Alis in turn squeezed Bianca’s hand in gratitude as her message gave her hope. She followed Bianca’s advice to keep a journal from the time they were very young, which they’ve both now nurtured for nearly 30 years and turned into the biggest gift my soul could ever hope for. The journal also helped Alis remember Bianca existed, and that was not small thing.

Alis let Bianca indulge in her fantasy readings, but not too much, because Alis discovered Bianca could easily waste a whole night lost in a book, and then how could Alis show up at work the next day? Plus, Alis loved reading too, but there are so many non-fiction books out there and so little time! So, something had to give, and novels fell away.

Alis kept Bianca alive, but barely, because she was busy with other things. She kept learning, building a research-based practice, growing a business, moving to the other end of the world, doing a PhD, raising a child, building another business, getting better at her craft by spending most of her reading time on the ‘useful’ stuff. Not much time left for fantasy trips.

There were places in life where Bianca and Alis intersected and helped each-other. Alis chose a career that had to do with their joint fascination with the human mind. How do humans grow? How do they transform? Alis craved cultivating more wisdom in her life, and so did Bianca, but their ways were different.

Alis stuck with what was proven and peer-reviewed, while Bianca loved getting lost down numinous rabbit holes, forever drawn to the mysterious, the fantastical, the intangible. Alis allowed Bianca to cultivate her passions out of the public eye.

Alis had a talent for explaining things logically, helping people unravel the mysteries of their own minds. She was good at asking sharp questions, noticing things, connecting the dots. But it was Bianca who sensed the undercurrents in a group workshop, who had deep intuitions about people’s emotions, needs and motivations, who guided Alis’ steps in her coaching, her facilitation, even her research. It was Bianca who had incredible premonitory dreams that changed Alis’ life, and it was she who allowed Alis’ to turn her knowledge into something vibrant and alive that might make a difference for people.

In the meantime, Bianca read extensively about the unconscious, magic and dreams! She dreamed vividly, journaled about her dreams, and ultimately trained as a dream facilitator with the most wonderful teacher - Robert Moss. She was rarely allowed to put that training into practice, other than for small groups of friends, for it felt risky for nerdy Alis to suddenly start drumming and facilitating dream circles. So, Bianca kept that work to herself. She didn’t complain when Alis didn’t give her credit for some of their joint breakthroughs - like the way she helped Alis intuitively sense the subtle patterns in an ocean of data she had gathered for her PhD and ultimately produce research that uncovered some intriguing puzzle pieces in her field. Or the way she turned 5 years of research into a whole suite of practices in a couple of hours of full-on stream on consciousness, which later turned into learning programs that serve hundreds of people worldwide.

Bianca was content (or perhaps resigned) to sit in the background and let Alis do her thing in the world. But then, in late 2024, something happened, and Bianca decided she’d had enough. As Alis slipped into a period of (near) burn-out, Bianca asked for her long-awaited due. She took charge, for the very first time. And she LOVED to make Alis squirm!

The only thing she allowed Alis to do for nearly two months was read fantasy books. She made her feel nauseous only looking at an academic paper but magically energised whenever she picked up a novel. And then Bianca went truly wild. She presented Alis with this outrageous, crazy, incomprehensibly reckless thought of actually writing a fantasy novel herself.

Alis fought tooth and nail against this insane idea. She tried to convince Bianca that she had work to do, clients to call, emails to send, courses to organise. In turn Bianca responded by making Alis so tired that she simply could not do any of the things on her to-do list. Synchronicity kicked in (that was not Bianca’s doing, or was it?). Work projects got postponed and Alis found herself with some time on her hands and no excuses left. Bianca pestered her with ideas for worldbuilding, magical characters, long-forgotten childhood dreams (literal dreams!) that could turn into a story.

But Alis would not let herself defeated so easily. She started doubting herself. A researcher works for years to be able to call themself one, so how many years does one have to toil to call themselves a writer? You need formal study! Alis said, and promptly enrolled in a writing course. You need to learnt the craft! she said, and bought 20 books about writing, most of which she’ll didn’t get to reading because Bianca kept throwing yet another fantasy novel under her nose, the lure irresistible.

Long story short, from their tug of war a first draft was born.

Some five hundred pages of scribbles that somehow, incredibly, are hoping to turn into a book. That book is still being born. A first draft is a dream and revision is a pain, as both Alis and Bianca would discover. But the important thing is, they are not at odds with each-other anymore. Alis still does her work, but is now open to making room for Bianca. I am both.

Doing something for the very first time is, I find, a very rare and precious gift in adulthood. I’m ten months into this process and relishing every part of it. The scary parts. The hard parts. I’m noticing myself bump against the edges of my own competence over and over again. But my childish enthusiasm for the endeavour keeps me going. And with it comes a desire to share the process with others. Afterall, when was the last time you did something for the very first time?

While Alis has her own playground on Substack, this is Bianca’s space. This is where my nerdiness and my dreaminess collide. I believe a creative journey is also an inner growth journey and this space will document both. Here you will read about my process of writing this book, with all its thrills and terrors.

Along the way, I will also invite you to share your own readings and explore your creative self. If you too have a part inside who loves magic, who dabbles in mystery, who yearns to walk between worlds, to marry the tangible and the intangible, the practical and the transcendent and, most of all, if you love stories and fantastical imaginal worlds, I hope to make this space to share, rest and learn from each-other’s forrays into the numinous.

Bianca also has a home on Instagram and TikTok (both of which I’ve avoided for years) where I’ll post things about my writing journey and the birthing of this book.

Why subscribe?

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives. I’ll write infrequently, when inspiration strikes me. It might be writing about writing. Writing about learning how to write. Writing about books I love (all fantasy here, the nerdy stuff you can find on Alis’ substack). Writing about the unravelling that comes with doing someting for the very first time in your mid-life and relishing every moment of it, even the hard ones! Join me and let’s see where it leads us!

Subscribe now

Stay up-to-date

Never miss an update—every new post is sent directly to your email inbox. For a spam-free, ad-free reading experience, plus audio and community features, get the Substack app.

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To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.