Book Report - Binding Words series books 1-10 by Daniel Schinhofen

Originally Published: Dec. 7, 2023, 8:38 p.m. Last updated: Dec. 7, 2023, 8:38 p.m.

Tags: books

Holy shit am I into Daniel Schinhofen's books! It took me a week or so to read book 1 of this series, but by then I was fully hooked and averaged less than a day per book for the rest of these. I was up until 6am reading one night. Like Aether's Revival, it looks like the series is still ongoing, so now I have 2 books from the author to look forward to.

Binding Words, book 1, is Morrigan's Bidding. Sean MacDougal dies to Thor in a random, mundane barfight. After an argument between Michael, Lucifer, Odin, and Morrigan, Sean accept's Morrigan's offer and is sent to a new body, life and world, a world of magic and Agreements ruled by two Fae Queens. Morrigan requests only that Sean find a way to break the ancient Agreement that she and the rest of the Tuatha de Danann made with the Summer and Winter Queens ages ago. Sean is a little genre-aware, quickly realizing that he's becoming a dense harem protagonist. It's fun. The Tuatha gifted Sean with super strength, speed, healing, etc, but the most important ability feels to be the one that lets him learn any Talent that he experiences others using.

Like Aether's before it, Binding Words has a loose LitRPG element. It's important, but it's not explicitly laid out as LitRPG very often. In BW's world, Talents take the place of Skills in more common systems, and Energy is the resource used for them and for magic spells. More energy means you can use stuff more often and with more power, but doesn't have any passive effect the way it might in other systems. Anyway, Talents are rare and have both a nature and nurture component. Many Talents can be taught/learned given enough time and a good enough Bond, but some are tied to a bloodline or a biological element. As an example, our first love interest, Fiona, is part-dryad and was a famously skilled Wood Shaper before her Shame. Dwarfs may have Metal or Earth Shaping available to them. Myna, a part feline-moontouched, can Camouflage, turning invisible. You get the idea.

I'm a sucker for capitalizing mundane words to give them more specific meanings. As the series title hints, words and agreements are a central part of Binding Words, which is fitting given the Fae Queens and Fae lore in general. In this world, agreements between parties are magically enforceable, and saying you'll do one thing or another can have dire consequences if not thought up. In return, these agreements can make things happen that would otherwise be impossible. In rough order of power, we have Wagers, Agreements, and Bonds. If these are broken, a punishment can be levied (I can't remember if this is capitalized, as it happens like twice between all 10 books) and either as the punishment or afterwards as part of an appeals process of sorts, a Shame can be levied. A Shame is a permanent disfigurement of the person in the wrong. We're introduced the concept almost immediately, as the chief of the village Sean first ends up at after arriving in the new world has been blinded for his Shame, and Fiona has had half her body magically transformed into Mithril. The stigma of Shame makes for interesting socio-political dynamics, and the threat of Shame keeps characters in line, even if the actual event almost never happens during the narrative.

Wagers are simple as you can guess. Agreements are mutually beneficial, with all parties involved putting something of agreed-upon equal value on the line. Sean's powers and background are dangerous to spread info around, so he often brings allies into the fold by offering an Agreement of silence about the private knowledge, with their lives on the line if they break it. Bonds come in varying power levels and are capable of much more interesting benefits. A bond is specifically made to bond a weaker individual to a stronger one, with the weaker one becoming some level of indentured servant or slave (depending on the details of the bond) usually for a set period of time, but the stronger individual sharing either Energy, Talents, or even knowledge with the weaker. The strongest bonds are Life Bonds, with the Life Bonded individual having their life tied to the Bonder. If the Bonder dies, the Bonded will as well within the day. There is no way to break a Bond without an agreed-upon exit clause, and there is no way to break a Life Bond at all. Life Bonds seem like a thing people do sometimes if they really have to, or if they're punished for a heinous crime, but there's a lot of super icky stuff that goes into different aspects of the concept. Sean gets into having basically a slave harem before long, but it's ok because reasons. I'm really not a fan of putting this aspect in the story, but it wasn't enough to keep reading, though I did often roll my eyes as I read.

Ok, flaws. I think we spent a bit too much time on Sean being whiny and having a hard time accepting that 20+ women were in love with him. Just a waste of space. Him and Fiona hit it off quickly and were going to have a friends with benefits situation, but shit went off the rails quickly. Myna was fatally wounded, like full on died for a minute, and Sean was able to use some of his power to bring her back to life, but found her Life Bonded to him as a result. Turns out that having a Life Bond and caring even a little about your Bonded will lead you both to fall in love with each other, so Fiona asks to be Life Bonded as well so that she's not left out of the love triangle. After that the women agree that if you want to join, you Life Bond and you marry all at once. And after that we just start collecting. We stall out at 10, then 11, wives, with 2 of them dead, but with a promise to marry another 11 once the first set of babies is born. It's a lot. The first group all got niches and specific interests and there's a lot of time spent differentiating most of them from each other, but I think we lost the thread with some of the second half. There's twin minotaur girls and I still couldn't tell you which is which even like 5 books after they were introduced.

Furthermore, we're still on the same fantasy racism trope that AR had, and I don't think it's as well done this time around. People are mean to the Moonbound and anyone visibly part Moonbound is treated poorly. Sometimes people say mean things about Myna, and then Sean uses it as an excuse to kick their asses. Or doesn't, as needed by the given social situation. It adds things to the overall plot, but I don't know that I care for the things it adds. Moonbound are much more driven by their animal-origin instincts in this setting that they were in AR, or at least it's mentioned more often since in AR the emphasis was on the magic system and the resulting politics there. Myna is a brat cat in heat, the bovine twins like being manhandled and hope for a brand, the canines like collars, etc. It's interesting to think about the implications, but I'm still using the word "icky".

Finally, related to the first point, we spent too much time on Sean being way too humble and too rule-bound about what he's accomplishing. He does objectively, blatantly amazing stuff, and is like "but I'm just tinkering!" or whatever. It's exhausting and exasperating. General note to the author, there's a limit before any repetition of the same situation becomes obnoxious. "I can't do that, it's illegal!" also came up way too often. Sean is lawful good to a fault, and it gets people killed, but he still doesn't learn. Many of the conflicts end up with manuevering the opponents into situations where Sean and co can force the opponent into a confrontation legally to finally get rid of them. And then the opponent breaks the law to get an advantage anyway. I feel bad for those relying on Sean that end up suffering the consequences of his softness. That's what he is, a soft crafter boi, and it's a shame that never progresses. Many of the wives end up being nicely non-flat, with interesting character arcs as Sean's influence leads them to growth and change, but Sean himself is basically the same at the end of book 10 as he was in book 1.

Favorite parts. I love the usage of Talents and how Sean goes about tinkering and inventing using the crafting Talents he gets access to. I think he's not proactive enough about catching them all until he finally gets a fucking clue at the very end of the series, but he makes pretty good use of the Talents he does pick up. One of my favorite things when reading is "what would I choose to do with these abilities" and BW's Talent system makes for great speculation. I found myself pleasantly surprised many, many times during big events.

Similarly, we cover deification and godhood and there's some very interesting concepts like Pantheons and specialization and divine planes and stuff that are starting to be fleshed out.

The characters themselves are a joy to read about. They cute and lovely, they have anxieties, desires, ideas, and agency. I think it's their banter and their uniqueness that most kept me as glued to the pages as I was.

Hmm. When I look at it this way there's a lot more bad than good. Might take another look later, because I might just be tired of typing.

Looking forward to more, as it feels like we're only 1 or 2 books from a final conclusion.