The First Binding

4.5

I'll review this, not as a lover of books, but as a lover of music. The main element of The First Binding is storytelling. There's our main narrator, our Storyteller, and all his stories ??? stories within stories. Lots of them.

Storytelling is more than words. It's rhythm and rhyme, tonality, body language, dramatic pauses: presentation. Just like music isn't just sound. A note ringing out can be very beautiful, but if it's constant, never ends, is it still beautiful? We can add some vibrato, crescendo, diminuendo... We can do many things with that note, but without the pause, the lack of sound, you'll eventually lose interest.

RR Virdi mentions silence a lot ??? no doubt inspired by Patrick Rothfuss and his Silence Of Three Parts in The Name Of The Wind, a book to which there are many similarities. Virdi uses the entire palette of storytelling tools to give us all the stories within The First Binding.

It took me FOREVER to get through these 830 pages. It demanded of me a patience I don't usually hold when reading. But the music lover in me appreciated the use of all these tools ??? the rhyme and rhythm (specifically found in chapters with stories within a story, the stories of old), the silence and the drama, the full package of a showman.

The First Binding is 830 pages that ask of you to take your time and taste every single word of it, to truly listen, and not just read. I found that I wanted to read parts of it out loud for myself to enhance my experience.

I cannot recall to have read another book that does this, and for that I love it dearly.