Alchemised

Loved this book, really interesting concept and a mind bending story. Really enjoyed the narration would highly recommend it if you like something a bit different.

I hated it!
Honestly, you need a PHD in brain surgery to understand this book.

Hmm... This was a book in two halves for me. I nearly abandoned ship after a few chapters. I know it's listed as Dark Fantasy (and clearly if I'd researched more I'd have been prepared), but be warned the beginning in particular is quite graphic and pretty unpleasant. I think this should be made more clear!
The middle section which really dives into the fantasy world was super engaging and well worth the read.
It did feel like the story could have concluded in fewer chapters though, it began to get repetitive towards the end.

As a man of a certain age, I'm probably not the target audience for this book, but I like to read from different genres and challenge myself, especially when books are well reviewed by others.

I tend not to read the blurb because I like to read books as they were written and I probably should have taken the hint on the author's note at the start and jumped to the content notes at the end.

Towards the end of the first section, I was struggling. However, after reading a bit about how the book came into being in this form, things made more sense. I'm glad I kept going. This book tackles some dark but important themes in a compelling way.

I hope it's not inappropriate to include the content notes here.

Thank you for this book!

"Alchemised is a work of dark fantasy containing wartime violence, religious abuse, depictions of complex trauma, suicidal ideation, self-harm, human experimentation, medical torture, eugenics, cannibalism, sexual assault, rape, and allusions to necrophilia."