The Binding

Having been a bookbinder apprentice a long time ago I would have liked to think that I might have had an affinity of some kind with this fantasy, it was nice to read of a few tools and terms from my past, it had a fairly good plot and the idea that us binders could assist in letting others not have to remember their troubles by just binding them away seemed a great idea.

The reality is that this is not that well written for this reviewer and far too long to the point of being laborious to read. There was one binding after about 200 pages, and that was hardly riveting. There are two major characters in what is basically a gay romance turned into a fantasy novel. Split into three parts, the first part told in the first person by protagonist one, the second a third person narrative and the final as a first person by protagonist two, I was very disappointed that the writing never gave me the feeling that the three parts were anything other than the same person. As to sentence structure, it was very weak. “I'm too cold to care. I huddle in the corner while he leads the horses to the stalls. He cracks the ice in the bucket. My brain has frozen. I can't even think.” and on and on it seemed. It felt that I was reading a high school student with a great idea, but without the experience to put the sentences into anything other than a few short words. I was not expecting this to be literary genius by any stretch and expected nothing more than entertainment, but it just felt all too YA for my tastes.

Sadly, it hardly touches the wonder that was Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell if the author was aiming for a Dickens style fantasy. Not for me, I suppose.