Alchemised is a tonally inconsistent mess, so why is it so popular? Easy. Because it’s a tonally inconsistent mess.
It’s hard to escape the mythos of Alchemised. It’s extremely popular in online book spaces, and is one of the handful of fanfics that were picked up by traditional publishing. It was original a Harry Potter fanfic based on a Draco-Hermione romance. The size of the book alone signals its popularity—over a thousand pages for a debut is nearly unheard of these days.
The book is split into three sections and the first is the most incoherent. This is not due to the main character’s amnesia. The incoherence—or maybe uncomfortable reading—is due to a visceral mismatch between the world building and the characters.
The world of Alchemised is gritty, adult, and hyperviolent with reanimated corpses, mutilation, and egregious crimes against humanity at every turn. The main characters' interactions follow the classic beats of an enemies to lovers romp. To say it felt jarring to read is a massive understatement.
“The second part of the book is undoubtedly the best.”
The problems with characterisation don’t begin and end with the main duo. Aurelia—Ferron's wife via arranged marriage—is a teenage perception of how a superficial person acts. She’s shallow and cruel and only cares about parties. She exists to show us that Helena is not like other girls. Stroud, an evil doctor with limited talents, has a visceral dislike for Helena. Her hatred is easily explained but she’s used for exposition in a way that feels incongruent. I spent most of the book waiting for a Stroud payoff that never happened.
Worst of all is Murrough. The Big Bad. The High Necromancer. The oh-so-evil villain. He appears in-person very early on which completely guts the character’s efficacy as a looming threat. Honestly he seems mostly on par with the other Bad Guys, then he disappears. He never feels intimidating. There’s no tension. No dread. Later he gets a convoluted backstory that fails to add anything other than length to the story.
The second part of the book is undoubtedly the best. When the writing stops attempting to hit character points and concerns itself with some world building it’s genuinely interesting. I’d argue the real climax of the book is an ill fated prison break in this section. It’s fast paced, tense, and engaging to read. While the world building was my favourite aspect, it’s riddled with plot holes. All I’ll say is bombs and plastic, and leave it at that.
Wait. No. I can’t leave out the puppy-pegasus. Probably the most blatant plot device, or should I say vehicle, of the whole thing. (Allow me an aside: seriously how was that supposed to work? There’s no way to even imagine Amaria as cool. Hippogriff stand-in much? Come on.)
I hate to pull this back to critiquing fanfic, but in my —albeit limited—experience with the form, writers often practice creating worlds much more than any other aspect. Characterisation is often the weakest element. These stories depend so heavily on character establishment from the source material and agreed fandom perceptions that they don’t do much, if any, character work. Without the character building from the original author to hold it up everything feels flat.
Unfortunately, with the background of the original characters, Alchemised feels silly. There are moments when I couldn’t help but see the original Harry Potter characters shine through. The lack of development and growth in Alchemised meant that everytime this happened I just started wondering how the author came to that conclusion about Malfoy.
“ ...there’s a certain kind of reader who knows that fantasy books can be bigger and better...”
The third section is a let down. Instead of a climax it peters out into a multi-stage happily ever after. If the main characters and their relationship had been well-formed and engaging that might have been ok. But after hundreds of pages of a relationship I never bought into or engaged with; the ending felt like it gave up on the world, the book’s only redeeming feature.
I wouldn’t recommend this, but I can see why it’s popular. I think there’s a certain kind of reader who knows that fantasy books can be bigger and better than the standard booktok affair. They want a wider world and to feel like they’re reading something gripping and mature. Often violence and horror are considered a shorthand for that. Enemies-to-lovers but make it adult without adding depth. That’s Alchemised. The language is easy to read. The characters follow well-trodden tropes. And the reader gets to feel like they’ve read something complex without putting in any effort.
If you read Alchemised and wanted to like it but the characters and relationships fell flat, that’s probably a sign it’s time you expanded your reading repertoire. You don’t need to choose between an interesting story, an engaging world, and complex characters. These elements should go hand-in-hand.
If you’re only starting to branch into the non-booktok realm, I’d recommend starting with something like The Magicians Guild or Priestess of the White by Trudi Canavan.
For anyone craving an elaborate world with great characters —and willing to put in a bit of work—then I always recommend The Daevebad Trilogy by Shannon Chakraborty, starting with The City of Brass.
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