Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me an advanced copy of this book to read and review.
Whilst this book has a great premise I did find it hard to keep reading. That is probably on me as I am not a big follower of extended prose.

I haven't read anything by RR Virdi before The First Binding before and I was blown away with the world and characters. I loved the world building and the way the characters interacted with each other and the world itself. I can't wait for the sequel.

I got about a 1/4 of the way through and it was just moving too slowly for me. I just wasn't ready to spend more time on the book but I will definitively get back to it at some point. Just be prepared for a lengthy read.

Did you like Name of the Wind but wanted to see more diversity? You can find it here, in a very similar main character and plot, but with Asian roots instead! I wish I could forget books that strongly influence others so that I could appreciate a work in its own right, but unfortunately I just kept holding Kvothe up against the action of this book.

That. Was. Amazing. The blurb didn’t prepare me for my epic journey with Ari. The framing narrative allows Virdi to tell many tales of myth, heroes, legends, monsters, and magic and sets up the world of Tremaine beautifully. The world building is very well done. The character development is flawlessly executed as well, in part because of the format of the book. We’re able to see how Ari became his present self through the narrative of his experiences and the past lives he has left behind. Virdi is so good at making us feel what Ari’s feeling and transporting us through the years and the spaces that he inhabits. I won’t lie. This book is thick at over 800 pages, but it’s a book that’s meant to be savored and experienced.

I really wanted to like this book, but I found myself comparing it (unfavorably) to some of the fantasy novels I imagine it drew inspiration from. The comparisons to The Name of the Wind are apt, as the set up is essentially the same, but it's missing that novel's expansive world. I am still interested in seeing where this series is heading, but this was a minor disappointment.

This is quality writing. The metaphors are realistic and visually interesting. The story is told in such a way that I saw what was happening rather then just following along. The cover is understated but mysterious. Overall a quality and engaging fantasy story.

This is a book that you really have to persist with in order to find the gem at the end. ...and is one that I'll have to try again with another time.

The First Binding was a lot of effort to read with very little reward. The first half of the book really dragged as there is very little happening at the beginning of Ari's journey. I appreciated the descriptive writing and multilayered storytelling, however, most of the time it weighed the book down. The shifts from past to present timelines were often abrupt. Virdi described even the most mundane actions in intense detail rather than focusing on moments that deserved the detail. This made the beautiful writing feel pretentious and boring rather than majestic or interesting. If I had been more invested in the characters or the story this likely wouldn't have bothered me. But I was never truly hooked by this story.

One of the main reasons I struggled to read this book is that I hated Ari as a main character. His arrogance was tedious and his motivations were flimsy. I also found the depiction of women really offputting. Eloine really only exists to be a love interest and she is super objectified throughout the entire book.

Actual rating 4.5/5 stars. This is the first instalment in the Tales of Tremaine series.

I feel I can accurately claim that if you enjoyed The Name of the Wind then you would also love this book. A similar narrative structure appeared, where the reader was introduced to the adult protagonist who then returned to his youth, in a series of lengthy tales, to reveal his life story up until the present moment.

Similarities also appeared in the plucky and hard-headed nature of these characters, who are resilient in the face of the many grievances they face and who prove themselves magically capable in pressurised situations. Due to this, the novel was as full of as much magic and wonder as it was grief and loss and both brought about strong emotional reactions, which further aided in my bonding with the characters who appeared.

Despite my love for the contents of this book, I did feel like a very lengthy read. I anticipated it would take some time, given the page-length, and some brainpower, given the high fantasy setting and magic system. Some portions were less personally interesting than others and I sometimes would set the book aside for days, or read only a handful of pages at a time, before becoming invested again. Once I reached a point in this character's life that appealed, however, I would fly through a hundred pages in a sitting without realising I had failed to move for hours at a time. The latter were more present than the former, hence my high star rating.

This novel was detailed and intricate but also gripping and action-packed, providing the best of the fantasy genre in one gigantic portion. I can't wait to find where this author takes us next!

I ended up DNF'ing this one 15% in. The premise was super interesting, but it takes way too long to get into the story and find out what the main plot is.

could not get into it, sorry. I could not finish it in time because of this and I didn't get any further than the first two chapters.

I really tried to get into this book and to read it but I found it very difficult. The writing style and the pace wasn’t working for me so I had to DNF it.

This book contained... so much unnecessary detail (in my opinion). Also, even with how much time they spent explaining the bindings and how to do them, I was still utterly confused as to how they worked. It's only been a few days since I finished listening to the audiobook, and I still feel like I remember nothing substantial from this novel. Every character was *slightly* annoying, and Ari's storytelling abilities aren't *that* great if they caused me to be bored by half of it.

However, I did still have some interest in the plot line. It just felt like it took too long to get from point A to point B. AND THIS WAS ONLY BOOK ONE! I am giving it the benefit of the doubt though, because this is one of my first looooooong fantasy reads, so I may be the only one who feels this way.

This book took me three months to read, and I still can't figure out why. Usually, I devour them in a week, maybe two. But I think there was something so special about the world R.R. Virdi created that I just didn't want to leave it. It had that spark that made it feel so real and alive that I knew every time I would close the book, I was close to it being over, and I just wanted to keep exploring.

It's a love letter to stories: to the art of storytelling, to the storytellers themselves. It's a story built on stories, with the plot weaving through different types as the tale goes along. None of which I'll give away in this review, trying to keep it spoiler free.

In short, if you want to add a whole world to your bookshelf, this is one you'll want to keep close.

I was really excited for this book because it sounded interesting. However, I could not get pass the beginning because it was very slow and nothing happened. I also was not engaged in the main character. Therefore, this novel had great potential, but was not executed well.

Did not finish book. Stopped at 25%.
I could not get into this book. The writing feels unedited and don't particularly enjoy the way women are portrayed. It just wasn't for me.

The First Binding is fundamentally and obviously invested in fantasy as a genre—fantasy’s beauty, its opening of possibility, its gifts of power and empowerment. Its use of magic and its love of storytelling are plain to see. But The First Binding hasn’t learned anything from the past ten or twenty years, within the genre or outside of it. It’s perfectly happy to replicate the same old ideas about a lonely, powerful man, unlovable because of the things that make him great, coping with the ordeal of being too special. It becomes frustrating at best—and alienating and mystifying at worst—to see The First Binding glorying in the beauty and possibility of fantasy while also taking some of the worst of the genre and reveling in that too.

"The First Binding" by R. R. Virdi is an epic fantasy novel about a storyteller called Ari. After arriving at a tavern and providing a memorable performance, Ari meets a mysterious young woman with whom he forms an instant connection. As they navigate politics and danger in a foreign land, Ari shares the most personal story of all: how he overcame adversity to become a legend and The Storyteller.

This story has all the elements required for epic fantasy: orphan child, early mentor, street urchins, selective magic school and a journey to prove oneself. The book is set against a stunning South Asian backdrop and weaving in captivating mythologies and cultural elements to create rich, unique worldbuilding. I think my favourite part of the book was actually the interlude chapters set in the nation of Etaynia where Ari must navigate dangerous political games, though I did enjoy the competitive kite flying chapters as well.

However, this was not an easy book to read. It is over 800 pages long and it had a very slow start. Virdi has an overly descriptive style and I wish I was exaggerating but the book spent 30 pages describing a bench in a tavern. There were pages and pages of unnecessary descriptions of banal items: candles, cutlery and benchtops. The story really only felt like it began to get moving at page 375, well over a third of the way through. I actually feel like the editors did this book a bit of a disservice by not paring it back much, much more.

Ari is supposed to be an expert storyteller but I didn't feel like the excellence of his storytelling was self-evident. Instead, there was a lot of reliance on audience reaction rather than having the stories shine in their own right. I also found the magic quite laborious. I understand that mastering the idea of folds took years and was very difficult, but the magic system took a long time to explain for something that did not inherently appear to be particularly complex. I also understand that Ari had gone through some things that perhaps made the magic much more difficult to execute in the earlier chapters however again, it seemed like there was a lot of time spent describing and not really that much magic to show for it which, as a reader, I found very frustrating. I also found the love interest quite cliched with a lot of batting eyelashes and a lot of male gaze. I think I could have forgiven quite a lot of these issues had the premise (rather than the setting) been more original.

There was some lovely worldbuilding in this book but you could have cut it in half without sacrificing the key parts of the story.

What seems like a direct rip-off of Name of the Wind, but a beautiful one. Incredible prose, well done Virdi.