Review: The Will of the Many

The Will of the Many by James Islington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Up to now, I haven't read any of James Islington's books before, but I think that'll have to change now that I've finished this one. I believe it was recommended in the Red Rising subreddit, in part because of its similar Romanesque styling and propulsive story arcs. But Vis Telimus, our protagonist here, is nowhere close to a copycat of Darrow. In fact, in some ways, he's Darrow's opposite, but also they could probably relate to each other because of how much their respective empires have taken from them. Vis grew up as a prince named Diago, but he's been in hiding since his family's homeland became just another colony of the Catenan Empire. And he's not sneakily infiltrating the academy to bring down the Empire, but because there's a mystery that he needs to solve. A mystery whose answers, when they come...well, not everything is solved in this book. In fact, there's a hell of a lot of story threads left hanging. But thankfully Islington is already working on the second book, because while the book does take its sweet time building up to its ending, that ending is a massive mind blower on multiple levels, and I, for one, demand resolution on all those levels ASAP.

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