James Islington’s The Will of the Many launches his Hierarchy saga and his second epic fantasy saga overall. A young man whose family (a royal family, at that) was murdered a few years prior to the beginning of the novel is the lone survivor. The boy goes by the name of Vis when we meet him in an orphanage, if people knew he was actually Diago, Prince of Suus, his life would be in grave danger. . He soon catches the attention of a powerful senator named Ulciscor Telimus, who soon adopts him on the condition that Vis enter the Catenan Academy to discover the truth behind the death of Ulciscor’s brother. From there, the bulk of the novel takes place in the Academy, but school isn’t exactly a safe place even if a prince in hiding is able to keep his true identity concealed.
The Catenan Republic—the Hierarchy—may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.
I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilized society in allowing my strength, my drive, and my focus—what they call Will—to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.
I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.
But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.
And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.
To survive though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them, and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.
And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.
The “Will” in the title of the book refers to the willpower and essentially soul people must cede over to the Hierarchy. Vis has yet to reach the age when this will be required of him and he has yet to cede any of his will. The timing of his adoption couldn’t be better, but that cost conflicts with Vis’s heart, he must become the enemy of the people who murdered his family. As a student in the Academy, his exemption from ceding his Will continues, and if he progress enough, he could even become a senator and never have to cede his Will.
Vis is not immune to the bonds of friendship that can form under strict learning and being part of a student body. Before his life as a student, Vis never had any friends, so forming friendships are new to him. He also makes enemies, as is typically the case in these kinds of fantastical academia stories.
“Dark Academia” is a hot trend in fantasy these days and I definitely see some resonance between Islington’s novel and that phenomena, but I wouldn’t exactly slot the book (and series) in this category. At its core, The Will of the Many has some of that, but it is a lot more. There are hints that this is a post-apocalyptic world with the way that characters refer to a Cataclysm that occurred a few centuries prior to the beginning of the novel. There’s the subterfuge that Vis goes through nearly every day of his life, hiding his true identity from everybody, masking why Ulciscor wants Vis in the school.
On the other hand, the book can be summed up as “young prince thought to be dead attends school, makes friends and enemies.” It is a testament to Islington’s storytelling ability that he fleshed out that premise across nearly 700 pages and I was completely enthralled for the great majority of those pages. The character work he does with Vis is truly impressive. What makes Vis’s character growth and development doubly impressive is that Vis is one of those protagonists who never fails, but there’s still tension through all of the trials and tribulations he faces. Vis is also our narrator, the entirety of this novel is told through his first-person point of view. That “always successful” narrator could come across as grating, but again, Islington made Vis a character whose voice pulls the story along and generates empathy and likeability along the way.
Confession time: When this book first published in 2023, I saw almost universal praise across the genre landscape of reviewers / book blogs / etc. I read the author’s first novel The Shadow of What Was Lost and didn’t connect with the book as much as I hoped I would. I also saw many, many comparisons to Red Rising by Pierce Brown, a novel that, to put it very mildly, did NOT work for me. Those two things gave me a bias against reading this book. But the more I thought about it, the more I saw about the novel and how my “trusted reviewers/readers in the genre” wrote about this book, I wanted to try it. I am damned glad I did because I was very impressive with this novel, as all those words I put to screen prior to this paragraph attest. For my reading sensibilities, I think a more apt comparison, or “If you like that, then you’ll like this” recommendation that Red Rising would be Kate Elliott’s The Court of Fives.
Then there’s that ending. Woof. I’ll say no more about it.
What I will say is that I’m thankful the fine folks at Saga Press were kind enough to ask me to review this book and that they sent me an ARC of the second in the series, The Nameless Land because I’m diving into it just as soon as I finish writing up this review. Is this book as good as the hype I saw for it when it first published? I don’t think that’s fair because the more hype, the more potential for a letdown. But The Will of the Many is an excellent novel that will likely be a highlight of the reading year for me, especially for a “backlist” novel!
So… if you like fantasy novels that fit into that Bildungsroman mold like The Name of the Wind, with hints of a past cataclysm, a fairly fresh magic system, The Will of the Many is well worth your time.
Saga Press | Trade Paperback
June 2025 (Reissue ) | 720 Pages (including appendices & misc back matter)
https://jamesislington.com/
Excerpt: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Will-of-the-Many/James-Islington/Hierarchy/9781982141189
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
