bezarue 's review for:

The First Binding by R.R. Virdi

2.0

adventurous challenging slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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The first 300 pages of this book took me over three months to read. This was the slowest start to a book I have ever attempted, and if it wasn't part of a readathon I would have DNF'd. It did pick up a lot after that, and managed to be a fairly engaging story, but that first 300 pages killed me dead. And I didn't even feel like the beginning did a good job of setting up the world either- like I felt all the world building came mostly afterwards to be honest. It needed a glossary because there were 950 characters and two timelines which I don't really think was employed to best effect, and I quite often lost a grasp on who was who. It also just had so much misogyny baked in, but in a way where it clearly thought it had created a fairly equal fantasy society? Like I don't think was intentional. And why did every single female that Ari met apart from Aram be so desperately in love with him? I didn't believe the relationship in the present between him and Eloine, plus all the other reviews say it's plagiarism so like yeah no thank you