Thoughts on The First Binding

I met Virdi at the World Fantasy Convention when it was held in New Orleans in 2022. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch online, and I consider him a friend. I’ll be discussing his work with him in September, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

All that said, I genuinely love this book. I’m not much of a fan of Epic Fantasy, for the most part—I generally don’t write or read it, but something about The Doors of Midnight captured my imagination even though it’s the first in a trilogy and it’s over 800 pages long. I’ve often told friends in conversation that the reason I rarely read SFF series is that they usually fail to capture my attention well enough for me to finish three volumes.

Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I’ve loved Jeffrey Ford’s Well Built City Trilogy since it came out. It’s surreal, Kafkaesque, literary, and gripping. And of course, there is the Wizard Knight duology by Gene Wolfe—our Melville, as LeGuin called him. Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (now with a fourth volume releasing in October) is an all-time favorite. It wasn’t until I dug into The First Binding that I realized what my problem with series fantasy often is: I am very tired of European-inspired Medieval Fantasy settings. That’s why I never got into A Song of Ice and Fire or the Kingkiller Chronicle.

It's also important that I take a moment to say that when I find myself unable to enjoy a book, a movie, a piece of music, that doesn’t mean that I see no value in them. I take great pains to separate the concept of quality from my own personal taste. When people go crazy for something I just can’t connect with, I usually wish I could. I wish I enjoyed The Name of the Wind as much as its legions of fans. It just doesn’t quite work for me.

The First Binding, though, felt like a breath of fresh air. It’s a story told by a mysterious storyteller well-versed in sorcery (binding) as he relates his origins to an equally mysterious sometime companion who approaches their relationship with her own set of ulterior motives. The setting is based on the Silk Road and the various lands through which it ran. Much of the setting is South Asian inspired, some of it is Spanish, and that’s just for starters. Without a great deal of historical context, I can’t identify every influence—but they still mean so much to me. The language, the culture, the way the characters speak to and care for one another—al of it combined to make me feel like I was entering not one, but two worlds separate from my own.

When I began the book, I wasn’t sure I’d be sticking all the way through the series, but now that the second volume is releasing, I absolutely have to see how things unfold—especially with the brutal cliffhanger we encounter at the end of the first book. So congratulations, Ronnie. You’ve hooked this grizzled old crank, and I know that when I crack that next volume, the story is in good hands.

You can find all the books I’ve mentioned right here through Barnes and Noble!