A disclaimer: I did not get far into this book at all. My usual rule is to not DNF a book before at least the 20% mark, but readers, I didn't even make it to 10% before I wanted to throw this thing out a window. So it is very possible that First Binding gets much better after a rocky start. Take my following review with a fair bit of salt.

The biggest issue I have with it is something that I doubt other readers will even notice: the 'rhythm' of the prose is off for me, like listening to a song that's just a little out of tune. I really wish I had the technical knowledge to be able to explain this, because it's an issue I run into a lot - often with books other readers enjoy, so I do think it's more a me-problem than a book-problem. But when you put a comma after 'but' and 'though' at the start of every sentence, my eye starts twitching, and I'm not a fan of first-person anyway, so The First Binding was already working at a disadvantage.

But this is just so pretentious. It's over 1000 pages on my Kindle, and I'm willing to bet that's because the entire thing is the main character loving the sound of his own voice way, way too much.

The worst sort of prison held the Three Tales Tavern.

An emptiness.

A stillness.

And that is always meant to be broken.

It hung like a cord gone taut, quivering and waiting to snap. It was the quiet of held breaths, wanting for a voice, but ready to bite at any that dare make noise. It was the soundlessness of men too tired to speak and with an ear to hear even less. And all the stillness of an audience waiting for the play to begin.


This opening reminds me, painfully, of the opening to the first draft of the first book I wrote at 13, which was an awful lot of purple prose about the fact that it was raining. I just Cannot. It's so...I'm blanking on coming up with anything other than pretentious again. I think it's largely because this is in first-person. You can get away with this kind of thing in third-person, I think, sometimes, if you're a good enough writer. But first-person? If you speak like this in first-person I already think your narrator is a jackass, and that's not a great way to begin our relationship.

It just gets worse and worse from there. The magic system is intriguingly different to anything I've seen before - it involves 'folding' the mind like origami, as best I can make out - but that can't trump describing the first female character you take notice of as having skin like cooked sugar. I really hope she turns out to be an ice-cold assassin or something, but she's introduced as a singer who strokes men's collars and bats her eyes and is The Most Beautiful and wow this is a very Straight Male book, isn't it?

None of the drink left a trail of foam and froth across her lips. It was like it refused to adhere.


I'm having flashbacks to Kvothe obsessing over Denna in Name of the Wind.

And the singer isn't even the first time we get these vibes; before she's introduced in chapter 2 (in a chapter titled A Dark and Wild Woman, which, how about NO) we get this;

"It's a silly thing--a woman was involved."

There always is--always.


And this

Her. How so many stories start.


I really hope I'm wrong, and this book subverts all my new expectations of it, but everything I read screamed 'dudebro book' and I am just not here for that.