Book Review: WRAITHBOUND by Tim Akers

Book one of the Spiritbinder saga

Won’t lie to you, dear reader: about 20% of the way through this book I was getting chest pains, because Tim Akers wrote a story that was quite similar to one I have been working on. Things like “I really hope [X] doesn’t happen now…” or “Crap, did he just use [Y] for the worldbuilding?” crossed my mind. I almost wished in the end that it wouldn’t be good.

Fortunately it walks its own path, and I enjoyed the road that it took to get there. This is new-era epic fantasy doing good things in the genre.

The Story

WRAITHBOUND is a family story wearing the fake nose and mustache of a quest fantasy. Our focal character is a young boy called Rae, but unlike a certain big-property space wizard with a similar name, he actually struggles and has to think. He lives with his parents and sister on the outskirts of the “Ordered World,” where they lament the loss of their once-comfortable lives. Worse, the Ordered World is generally safe from Chaos (big spiritual forces at work, folks) but homesteads on the border are a bit more dangerous.

But Rae was old enough to remember when his family still lived well, and he’s been cooking up a plan to get back. With a little bit of coin, some blackmail, and a fair amount of cunning, he’s able to give himself magical superpowers like his father.

Somewhere along the way, a mistake was made, and his new powers are actually kind of a huge hazard. I can’t explain what happens next without spoiling big, impactful developments. Just know that Rae and his sister Lalette have to spend the rest of the book trying to put things as right as they can.

And it’s something of a slow burn the whole way. Tim Akers doesn’t drag you along through purple concrete prose, but the book isn’t in any rush to get to its conclusion either. I felt like he struck a good balance between the worldbuilding and the pace; it’s not Son of the Black Sword-fast, nor Wheel of Time slow. We experience most of it through the eyes of Rae, so let’s talk about…

The Characters

It’s an overdone trope in sci-fi/fantasy to give us an orphaned Chosen One as the main character, and Akers avoids that. Instead we get an intact family with a capable father, a mother with a strong presence, an earnest son, and a fiery daughter. I liked just how much the family worked together and looked out for each other, even as they struggled and disagreed on things (much like a real family, hmmmm…)

I do think Lalette was a little much at times (even though I have a loud and fiery daughter with attitude to spare) but she played a good foil to Rae, and kept him on his toes on their journey. Rae feels like Harry Potter with a little more depth and ambition from the get-go, and that’s a good thing.

The World

It might take the reader a minute to get used to the elements of this world, with words like “justicar” that look familiar but have unclear meanings. The magic is familiar though: there’s a hereditary quality, and from there you need to know what type you potentially hold, and then bind a magical spirit of that type (elemental spirits, water, fire, etc) to your own soul.

The spiritbinding can be really dangerous though, and you’ve got to know what you’re doing or else it can go off the rails in a bad way. You get a good look at that in the book, so I won’t say too much. Rae’s father used wind spirits to fly and do things with air, and Rae wants to do the same. It all feels very “playable” and that helps with the immersion factor.

Also, can we keep getting more fantasy worlds with firearms? I really dig this trend. There is no law under heaven requiring all fantasy novels to be stuck at a 10th-century tech level.

Politics

None.

Content Warning

PG-13 in terms of action and language.

Who is it for?

This book is for people who want Larry Correia’s action in a Brandon Sanderson world, with a fair amount of the fat trimmed off the roast. If you like epic fantasy that moves (but not too fast) give this a look.

Why buy it

This is a story about a good kid trying to do a good thing, but he makes a mistake and winds up in over his head. Familiar enough to be comfortable, yet new enough to surprise you. WRAITHBOUND is the forward for the epic fantasy genre which finds itself buried under thousand-page epics far too often.