The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee BakerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
My god, this was beautiful.
The Scarlet Alchemist was such a beautiful book, with necromancy, alchemy, a bit of romance, and also the FMC, Zilan, beating the odds and becoming the Scarlet Alchemist, only for it to go to hell at the end, which was so much fun. It weirdly felt like an anime, until I saw that the author got inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist, and I could see it.
The way alchemy is used in this world is very interesting, along with the necromancy that Zilan uses to bring back people. When she does reveal that she brought her cousins back from the dead when they were young, I thought it was weird for a moment. I thought they were as normal as you and me, but when she revealed their skin tags that were on their necks....I was honestly shocked. That was one of the most perfect reveals that I wasn't expecting one bit.
The second reveal in the book was that Zilan herself had a soul tag. The Crown Prince, Li Hong, found it during their night together, and she freaked out about it. When she went to the Moon Alchemist to ask her about it, it was revealed that Zilan died when she was young, was run over by Emperess Wu Zeitan's horse carriage (oh yeah...I forgot to say that Emperess Wu was in this book...oops). She was shocked about it, but not shocked enough when she was kidnapped and taken to a room where the Moon and Paper Alchemists wanted to kill the Empress.
See, Empress Wu needed Alchemists to create gold so she could eat it as if it were chicken nuggies and she could live forever. But the Alchemists didn't want to be making gold anymore, so they had a plan, only for it to turn around and get everyone killed, because the Empress was a couple of steps ahead of them and poured their blood on the bandages that were supposed to come from her.
The plan was to feed Empress Wu's blood to the monsters that were in the dungeons. But sadly...that didn't work.
The Empress played UNO Reverse, and they fed their blood to the pearl monsters, and they attacked them.
It was a bloodbath, and the ending made me happy, but I was also a bit sad that Zilan didn't bring Li Hong back. But it was funny that she brought her cousin Yufei back in the Empress's body and let her rule. I cannot wait to read the next book in this series, it was SOO GOOD.
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