Oh my gosh, I can’t wait for the next book! Apparently it comes out in October this year so I’m excited it’s so soon! As you can tell, I enjoyed this very much. It was very reminiscent to me of The Book of the Ancestor Series by Mark Lawrence, Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang, and The Poppy Wars by R.F Kuang together. And that’s saying a lot because these are some of my most favorite books.

I love this type of magic system, called bindings in this universe, where you must tune in to the nature of the elements and use your willpower and faith in the outcome to produce a change in reality. This one also starts with an orphaned boy who doesn’t know of his family, yet is given a bound book that is said to hold his family secrets that he will only be able to open when “he is ready.” Ari works and lives in the under stage of a small theater, toiling to create all the sound effects for the plays he wishes to play the hero in. But soon, trouble brews, a binder comes to mentor Ari, and the boy is soon set on a winding and treacherous path which may be closer than he thinks or even wishes to starring him in the lead.

This is told as a frame story in which Ari is an adult storyteller, performing in inns with small bits of magic to enhance his tales. He meets a singer and begins to slowly tell her his story. Most of the book is this story of Ari’s beginnings, but we still get plenty of the present time as well and a plot taking place now. There’s also a few chapters from the singer.

I will admit this book was a very slow start for me, and I wondered how I would like it or if I would get into it enough, but then once it got going I was hooked. It has to set up the scene at first, so I would just suggest to give it time to get into Ari’s backstory once the frame story transitions. And the way it ended…I have so many theories, questions, apprehensions, and most of all- suspense, which seems like such a fitting place for Ari’s story to end after all. For now. ( )

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Somewhere around 3.5 stars. This book was mostly easy to stay engaged and interested in, though there were a few spots where it dragged on a bit and I started to lose interest. It does switch between two timelines - the current time and his history and how he got where he is now that he is telling to someone in the current time. Usually the transition isn't too bad but sometimes it can frustrating to make the switch and it felt a bit like two books in one. One of the things I struggled with was that knowing that this was the first of an epic fantasy series, the story wouldn't be completed in this book. Although things develop through the current time and there is a direction both timelines are going in, there wasn't a specific goal or issue that would be resolved. Overall it was mostly enjoyable. ( )

I really tried. ( )

Storytelling is an oral art form. The storyteller does not use a book, but stands within the story he/she is telling taking the audience into the landscape of the tale, creating images in the minds of the listener. The power of this oral retelling of often ancient stories is beyond what can be achieved by reading aloud and is what makes storytelling performances so special. The poor "oral storytelling tradition" in Fantasy has become like the whipping-boy of the literary world used to justify and defend pretty much everything except what it actually is. Fan-fiction, derivative works, e-books, any and all experimental fiction, it's all claimed to be the next step of the framed narrative (stories within stories).

Reading aloud is one thing, and a good thing it is (it certainly convinced me books were great as a child) but it's not quite storytelling and definitely isn't much of the oral tradition in Fantasy (compare the difference between Patrick Rothfuss’s efforts (“The Name of the Wind” and “The Wise Man’s Fear” and Virdi’s “The First Binding”).

The "thing" about the oral tradition in a framed narrative and its roots in folklore and myth is how changeable the stories were; what survives in collections is likely only a tiny amount of what ever existed. The moment you start codifying storytelling into recital - as Rothfuss did-, it's no longer the same beast at all.

John Clute in one of his SF reviews makes a good point about the difficulty of top quality getting published - and what of the vast delta of lesser works including Kvothe conceits masking the vital, quickening language that should sit at the top. No new Gene Wolfe, Jack Vance, Greg Egan, K. J. Parker, Stanislaw Lem, John Kessel, Peter Watts, Jeffrey Ford, Maureen F. McHugh, or any uncannily mimetic Russian sorcerers? Where are they all, obscured and buried in the mollifying clatter of polished SF type? Wider and more pacific the contemporary river flattens, and less the atavistic, primal streams emerge from beneath. So what do I know, I'm just one of so many readers. Maybe Clute is right on. In the competition for attention with the proliferation of alternatives sufficient popularity is all.

Is “The First Binding” an important novel SF-wise? How does one define a 'serious' or 'important' novel? As far as I'm concerned, a SF novel which is engaging, and genuinely enjoyed by its intended readership is important because it has touched their lives. Isn't that what storytelling is all about? Yet, writings which change lives in this way come in all genres, and adult and child, not just the 'literary' set. There is something valid and life-changing to be found in all works, from the most superficial to the most complicated; something moral, something interesting, something healing, something which causes us to question. We just have to open our eyes and look.

Great literature (be it SF or not) is immortal and impervious to anything but asteroid strike or catastrophic civilization collapse with loss of means to electricity or archaic printing.

If you want a terrible slow, boring as hell, with beautifying prose, stilted dialogue, where the past and future seem artificially intertwined look no further. This novel is for you.

2 stars.

NB: SF = Speculative Fiction.

Book Review SF = Speculative Fiction ( )