18th July 2025


Books


Author Profile


SenLinYu


Online fan-fiction sensation SenLinYu makes the move to traditional publishing as they confront the horrors of war in their debut novel. Katie Fraser reports


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Imprint Penguin Michael Joseph Publication 23rd September 2025 Formats HB (9780241714331, £25); EB (9781405969680, £13.99) Rights sold 20 territories, including the US (Del Rey) Editor Rebecca Hilsdon Agent Suzannah Ball, WME


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n the online corridors of fan-fiction website Archive of Our Own, SenLinYu is a name whispered in reverence. The author’s fan-fiction writings have been downloaded more than 20 million times


and translated by readers into 23 languages, but Sen is best known for Manacled. In the echelons of Dramione fan fiction (reimagined love stories about Harry Potter characters Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger) Manacled ranks among the highest. Sen has reimagined Manacled into their dark


fantasy debut Alchemised, which will likely be a titanic publication for both author and publisher Penguin Michael Joseph. When I speak to Sen, the pseudonym by which the author prefers to be referred, over video call, none of the expectation appears to have affected them. They are incredibly grounded, speaking with enthusiasm about the historical and literary references they have woven into the novel. “Alchemised was really a distillation of a lot of things that I had read throughout my life, and [the story] helped me synthesise them into this final form,” they say. Set in the land of Paladia, during and after a devastating war between the necromancers and


Books Author Profile


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