Suzi

I have not read Manacled, I do plan to but recency bias won and I read this pretty much as soon as it was released.

I think this is an important point because for those who have read Manacled and know where this story started, they already have a connection even though Alchemised is a complete rewrite. With Manacled, there is years of history behind the characters and I imagine this provides a lot more emotional resonance with people.

With me not reading it first, I did find a lack of emotional depth in the initial relationship between Helena and Kaine. Yes it's fairly slow burn between them as a whole, but once we get to the past timeline and they start interacting it felt as if we should already care when we weren't really shown much as to why.

I also think that given the length of this, it could have been split into a duology with a little more world building being fleshed out, especially early on.

All of that said I did really enjoy it and it's definitely worth a read but it is very dark and brutal so check out the content warnings.