Manacled: Review

I was a Harry Potter kid. It’s shocking, I know, but I grew up with midnight releases and binge reading, and even college couldn’t damper my spirits when the movies were the hottest releases in town. Surprisingly, with all that nerdiness, I never quite made it into the world of fanfiction – I actually was a jock in High School so the bookishness only went so far. ANYWAY – I recently learned about the hype around Dramione fanfic Manacled, and finally took the time to dive in. If Friend recommendations and some excellent fanart (see my insta post) gave me the push I needed AND THANK GOD, BECAUSE I’LL NEVER BE THE SAME. This book changed my brain chemistry, truly. 

Highlights:
Harry Potter is dead. The Order of the Phoenix is finished and Voldemort rules all. In an effort to bring new life to the magical community (literally), he orders a Handmaid’s Tale-esque repopulation effort, and Hermione Granger herself is assigned to Draco Malfoy. OOF. 

TW’s: rape, torture, mutilation, murder, self-harm

What I thought:
So, this book is dark. Really, really dark, and absolutely gorgeously written. SenLinYu brilliantly merges the events we know occurred during the first Harry Potter books with a new world that spirals absolutely out of control. She leaves us little breadcrumbs of what we know is cannon, but makes it fit to her new world, and she does it just brilliantly. 

This book is also long. It’s 370,515 words, making it twice as long as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it’s about 100 times more heartbreaking. The thing is, it’s heartbreaking in so many different ways. It starts in the present day, and just lets us imagine what happened to our favorite characters, which is bad enough, but then it gives us 38 chapters of flashbacks that are worse than our little minds could ever dream up. The relationship SenLinYi creates between Hermione and Draco is not only believable, but absolutely crushing in its realism. You’re talking about two characters who have been to hell and back, and are simply trying to make it out alive – AND ACTUALLY, they don’t even care if they make it out alive! The two are insufferable in their martyrdom… 

I’m not sure words will ever be enough to express what I thought about this book. Even here, I know I’m not even scratching the surface. All I can say is that it’s everything I could have ever wanted. It took my comfort story – the story that got me into reading and that shaped me into the reader that I am today – and morphed it into something new, and beautiful, and devastating. I encourage every single person who’s ever liked a Harry Potter story to read it. 

P.s. – Manacled is getting published! I don’t know how this all works, but the original fanfic is being rewritten, without the HP storyline, and published as Alchemised sometime next year. My advice to you – get a hold of the original copy before it’s too late. You will not regret it. 

P.p.s – don’t let the plotline scare you! There’s no smut for smut’s sake here, or violence for violence sake. Most of the darker stuff is closed-door, and IMO written tastefully. Have faith, you’ll be fine <33