The Binder's Road

Eiden Myr #2

by Terry McGarry

A troubled land.
A priceless gift.
And the dawn of a new light.

Six years after a conflict that extinguished all magelight, Eiden Myr is in chaos. Wilding weather destroys crops. Drought bakes some regions while others are flooded; mountains quake; poisoned rivers rise; disease and pestilence spread.

In a dying trader town, three little girls fight to pro-tect a secret that could cost them their lives, while a young lad-of-all-crafts finds that local murders are only the first clue in a chilling conspiracy. In the far north, the remnants of the realm's warders struggle to compensate for magelight's loss. In the far south, a military race is remembering its origins and rousing from its stupor. Along the shoreline, a band of guerrilla fighters, posted to repel invasion, prepares to battle for mastery of the disaster-ridden realm-while one woman, a disgraced soldier, summons the courage to defy them all.

And on a remote, windswept island, a new breed of scholar strives to plumb the mysteries of ancient texts before they crumble in the absence of the wardings that preserved them-and before the realm crumbles for want of the knowledge they contain.

Which of them is the binder destined to reshape the shattered world?

Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy

608 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Terry McGarry is the author of the Tor fantasy novels Illumination (one of Library Journal's Five Best Genre Titles of 2001), The Binder's Road, and Triad, and a variety of short fiction; her genre poetry is collected in the award-winning chapbook Imprinting, and her works have been translated into German, Spanish, Finnish, Italian, and Russian. She has been a freelance book copyeditor since 1987, specializing in sf and fantasy, and she worked at The New Yorker for fifteen years, the last six as a Page O.K.'er. She has also been a bartender on Wall Street, an English major at Princeton, a street trader in Ireland; she has trained in Krav Maga and Western martial arts, and plays Irish traditional music at gigs and pub sessions.

Reviews

[Chip Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE BINDER’S ROAD is a notch above the first book in the series, Illumination. Better characters, a more defined story, and better pacing make this one of the best fantasies I’ve read in quite a while. This is also an easier read than ILLUMINATION, with a more direct style and less confusing prose. The story here is also less brutal on the characters; while they face hardship, it is not so over-the-top torturous as it was in ILLUMINATION. If you were left unconvinced by McGarry’s first book, still give this one a try. Many of the mistakes she made there have been improved here, and what you are left with is definitely worth your time.

In THE BINDER’S ROAD, Eiden Myr has fallen into hard times after the extinguishing of the magelight that occurred at the end of Illumination. Disease and disaster are things people are gradually getting used to, but now politics and secret plots to take control present an even graver threat. Murder is happening, war is coming, and nobody seems to know what to do about it. That’s the stage for THE BINDER’S ROAD, upon which enters a whole host of excellent characters. Caille, Pelufer, and Elora are three orphaned sisters with hidden talents and no certain future. Lourn is a special man who seems to have few limits, but who suffers from an unremembered past. Dabrena is tormented by her past, but is pressed into leadership despite her fears. The stories of these disparate people are woven together beautifully in a powerful tale of a world on the brink.

The only criticism I have for this book is that it was longer than necessary. For one, the murder mystery aspect of the story fell short and did not add enough to the whole to be worth inclusion in my opinion. Worilke’s involvement was never fleshed out, her motivations were unclear, and her methods were haphazard. It was all sort of tacked on to the more important stories and the book would probably have benefited from trimming it out entirely. Also, the end of the book dragged on for far too long. The climactic ending of the two main story arcs was fantastic, but then McGarry took another 100 pages or so to wrap up all the loose ends, basically showing all of our characters coming to their happy-ever-afters. These excesses are forgivable and the book overall was still excellent, but a critical editor could have improved it even further.

One thing that I like about McGarry’s novels is that they are written to stand alone. While it is still recommended that the books be read in order, it is not required to make these books understandable or enjoyable. Both books in the series thus far (Illumination and The Binder’s Road) contain entire stories and end with nice and tidy conclusions. McGarry’s career may have been better served to set a stronger hook at the end of each book, but I appreciate the feeling of completion that each leaves the reader with.

[Traci Loudin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great story, hard to put down. But I have to admit that I was confused throughout the ENTIRE book as to why the girl who was the sole main character of Illumination, was not in this book at all. Only once I read Triad did I realize that the author made these three books, not as a trilogy, but as a triad, where you can read any of the three first because all three are about slightly different characters existing in the same world. The logical chronological timeline, however, is Illumination-Binder's Road-Triad.