The Fans Who Made Alchemised a Hit

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books.

When I tell people about the new novel I just finished, the first thing they ask is whether it’s sexy. The question is understandable: The book, SenLinYu’s Alchemised, is a romance novel adapted from the author’s own Harry Potter fan fiction, and both genres are known for featuring sex—leading to the common assumption that their readers are seeking explicit scenes. But Alchemised is not particularly erotic. Its source material, a story called “Manacled,” imagined Harry’s friend Hermione and his enemy Draco as lovers on opposite sides of a war, but both the fanfic and Alchemised are more about war than love. The core relationship is invisible for nearly a third of the novel’s 1,000-odd pages, and even