iden Myr is a continent shaped like a man, a land in turmoil since a factional struggle six years earlier deprived all of its magicians of their powers. The loss of magelight has brought social turmoil, along with the floods, crop failures and storms that devastate the landscape. In Terry McGarry's The Binder's Road, various candidates seek to stabilize the chaos: an island kingdom of would-be conquerors called the Khinish, former mages who now gather and synthesize information in hopes of defeating the plagues that run through the population, and a home defense force under the leadership of a determined blademaster.
Driven by barely understood impulses, a young man travels from town to town, on the trail of a pair of killers who not only murder but mutilate prominent members of the communities they visit. Early in his quest, Louarn discovers a trio of orphans—three sisters who wield strange powers that are nothing like the abilities conveyed by the now-vanished magelight. Afraid to reveal their considerable abilities but unable to completely hide them, the girls are obvious targets for the assassins.
Louarn's protective instincts are aroused by the girls, but he finds himself torn. His growing affection for the three is in sharp conflict with his desire to avoid any and all emotional entanglements. And even if he can gain their trust—they are hardened survivors even at the ages of 9, 7 and 5—the danger to the sisters is hardly unique. In fact, all of Eiden Myr seems to be coming apart.
Complex and believable characters
The sequel to McGarry's debut novel, Illumination, The Binder's Road serves up the magelight universe with cooly evocative prose and an inventive and complex magic system. Through the simple expedient of giving her mystical continent the shape of a human, the author elegantly makes her novel's geography intuitive and transparent.
The harrowing reality of life for the three orphaned girls is brought home by the thin edge on which they dance—they make bad choices, and their lucky breaks are as often as not engineered by charity-minded adults. Clearly the girls are too young to survive indefinitely on their own, despite their abiding affection for each other; there is no romantic pretense here that kids can raise themselves, or that love conquers all. Unguided, the girls exist in a state of contradiction to that of their homeland: Eiden Myr, the author implies, is inherently resistant to takeover by the many forces that would centralize rule over its people.
Unfortunately, the tangle of factions and rivalries—both past and present—create a complex political situation, one that is constantly tearing narrative attention away from the book's most interesting characters and storylines. The Binder's Road's politics and magical hierarchies are a murk. The process of first setting out the various power struggles and then resolving them drains passion and strength from the novel's vibrant (and mostly female) cast of characters.
Even so, McGarry's vision is ambitious, her universe unique. The Binder's Road may struggle at times to keep its head above water, but its fine moments are very fine indeed, breaths of an air sweet with the promise of good things to come.
