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★★★☆☆ The Handmaid’s Tale meets M*A*S*H.

Manacled

senlinyu

Some candid reactions as I read:

22%: "Make it stop. Please."
54%: "Once more unto the breach! Took a short break to read Bookshops & Bonedust, which was released yesterday. To my surprise, I feel some eagerness to return to Manacled after the somewhat flaccid plot of B&B."
67%: "To be fair, a lot is done right. The characters are well drawn and the plot, as far as I've gotten, is very good, intricate and well-thought-out".
100% (last night): Thank God that's over.
So, mixed reactions. This one is unusual for me. Usually I read fiction for enjoyment. If a book has a lot of stuff I like in it, that's a good book and gets all the stars. This is unlike most Goodreads reviewers. Judging from the reviews I read, most GR reviewers read books looking for things they don't like, then make a list and if there are lots of things they don't like, then no stars. (Or maybe that's just the way they write reviews.) If you've graded exams, then you will understand when I say I'm usually an adder, while most GR reviewers are subtracters.

Anyway, there's a LOT to like in SenLinYu's Manacled, but there's also a lot that's downright painful to get through. Thus I find myself doing the subtraction thing.

Manacled is Harry Potter fanfic. It's available free in all the popular formats from archiveofourown.org. The first thing you will notice on that page is "Archive Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Graphic Depictions Of Violence". Yeah, all of that. OK, fair enough. No one ambushed me. I went into it eyes open.

The story is told in three parts, four if you count the epilog. The first part, Chapters 1-25, is The Handmaid’s Tale part. The Order of the Phoenix has just lost the the battle of Hogwarts. Voldemort is alive -- Harry Potter and Ron Weasley are dead. Hermione is captured and put in solitary confinement for eighteen months. She wears bracelets that take away her magic and compel her to obey her designated master. She is taken out of her cell and given to Draco Malfoy to become the mother of his heir. He rapes her repeatedly, and also takes her to Voldemort repeatedly, who invades her mind, a terrifying and painful thing.

This is followed by the longest flashback I have ever encountered, 38 chapters entitled Flashback 1-38. These are the M*A*S*H part. It's the story of the war of the Order of the Phoenix against Voldemort. In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the war is short, because Harry, Ron, and Hermione find and destroy all Voldemort's Horcruxes and kill him. In Manacled, the war lasts years. Hermione becomes the Order's lead healer. All the people damaged by dark magic come to her ward, where it is her job to try to put them back together somehow, knowing that the war can't be won and that the leaders on her side won't do what has to be done to win. This is, if anything, even more traumatic than the imprisonment, rape, and abuse.

The so-called flashback is succeeded by an eleven chapter conclusion, Chapters 64-74, and an epilog, Epilog 1-3. These chapters succeed Chapter 25 in internal chronology. To avoid spoiling I will not say anything about the plot of chapters 64 and beyond.

As I wrote already, there's a lot to like about Manacled. It could be the best plotted novel I've ever read. The story is intricate, and it all fits together. Little things that occur in chapters 1-25 reappear with new significance in the Flashback. Hermione and Draco are excellent characters. They are different from J.K. Rowling's characters, but understandably so. Hermione is worn down by years of war and solitary imprisonment. Manacled's Draco is barely recognizable as the petty feckless toerag of the canon. He's powerful and strong. SenLinYu does a good job of showing us how he got there.

The great flaw of Manacled, in my opinion, is that SenLinYu shows no notion of economy. She lingers over every emotion -- wallows in the pain (mostly), sex (lots of that -- becomes tedious, actually), and joy (rare) of her characters. There is no sign of a notion that her reader's attention and emotional stamina are finite resources. Of course, we're all different, and I am not a fan of romance, so my tolerance is probably lower than average.

Manacled is the first fanfic I ever knowingly read. If this is the Best Fanfic Has To Offer, it may be the last.

Manacled on Archive of Our Own

Goodreads review
 

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