The Will of the Many — James Islington
6.0/10
The Will of the Many is an uneven reading experience: on one hand a ponderous, over-packed novel of a society on the brink of civil war, on the other hand a brisk account of a seventeen year old’s magical school year. Islington tries to balance both and sadly, fails. Instead, what he has written is a decidedly un-magical, politically unsound, emotionally derivative novel.
Plot Overview
Vis is the prince of a small island kingdom recently conquered by the Catenan Empire, also known as the Hierarchy. The name comes from their magical system, one in which an individual gives up their life force (aka cedes their Will) to another, who in turn can use Will to do great feats of strength, imbue items with abilities, etc.
After escaping the death of his entire royal family, while living as an anonymous orphan working in a prison for petty cash, a chance encounter with a Military official leads to Vis going undercover as a student at an elite magical academy on a remote island for all of the children of the elite. However, the chance encounter wasn’t as “chance” as expected, and Vis is in turn conscripted by the rebellion to act as a TRIPLE agent.
The plot devolves thusly, with Vis forced to both spy on the school principal for his Military official sponsor as well as feed information to the rebellion, all while working his way up to being No. 1 in the entire academy.
What I Liked
Eidihn. He has a complicated, tragic backstory that is slowly revealed. He pushes back on certain things Vis asks of him. He keeps his own council.
The premise of a magical system that requires what seems to be direct life force as a central mechanism of power
The final Iudicium section. A genuine mystery with twists are resolved, and action is well-paced and builds upon itself emotionally. Islington is effective at writing contained, action-centered scenes within a larger story.
The Politics of The Will of the Many
The Will of the Many oftentimes makes gestures at caring about the politics of the world it has constructed.
It doesn’t, really.
For instance, Islington sets up a rebel faction known as the Anguis that hopes to overthrow the Hierarchy. Some problems:
The Anguis are short-sighted terrorists who kill indiscriminately.
They blame the impoverished people for supplying the Hierarchy with power, that their “inaction” is not “neutrality.”
Beyond what parallels can or cannot be drawn to real resistance movements, and what this may or may not reveal about Islington’s own ill-considered views on such movements, even within the context of his own story they lack internal logic. If their aim is to bring down the Hierarchy, they seemingly have no plan for how they should replace a corrupt democracy so completely tied to this magic system. They look down upon the very people they would supposedly liberate.
Devil’s Advocate: But in the penultimate chapter, it’s revealed that the Anguis leaders have knowledge of pre-Cataclysm magic that may explain why they act in ways that seemingly go so completely against their own interests.
Yes, perhaps more information about their motivations will come to light. But it’s demonstrated that this is not information the entire Anguis network has access to; in fact, many characters in this novel parrot this ideology with seemingly no pushback.
In fact, when a rebellion leader presents this flawed line of argument to Vis, that it is “the Will of the many that killed [his] family,” his only response is “I know… But that’s the world. You can’t punish them all.”
Although this may objectively be true, as the higher caste draw magical power from the lower, this is also a society where the lowest caste, also known as Octavii, are forced to cede or else be assigned to a living coma in magical devices known as the Sappers. Furthermore, Vis, despite living for three years amongst the very poor that the Anguis blame, seems to consider himself above their choices made under duress, despite making near-identical observations in the opening chapters, and discussing its necessity with characters like Kadmos.
Islington has not fully considered the political ramifications of his own work, thus leading to moments of political and ideological inconsistency that both create ineffective antagonists as well as paint a far more selfish, ill-considered character portrait of Vis than Islington likely intended.
Vis, Our Protagonist.
He’s a Gary Stu, Duh.
He’s good at everything and he’s rarely challenged or proven wrong. Not only that, but Vis is a reactive character who does not grow, change his worldview, learn a lesson, or even pick a side. All of this is pretty typical of the genre, so I’m not really going into it.
His Internal Narration
Vis believes himself better than everyone else around him despite all evidence to the contrary, because he knows something the other characters don’t: Vis is subconsciously, meta-textually aware of the Deus Ex Machina of the story, the reader, the author.
Let me expound on this; Islington wrote his story from first-person present tense. Given this, Vis will often have little asides where he explains why he chooses to act a certain way (avoiding eye contact to deliver a more awkward demeanor, for example). It’s all very Light Yagami-esque. But if we take a step back, who is Vis sharing these insights with? Who is he talking to? Us, the reader?
It’s such a strange writing choice that every time I come across it I have to pause: it’s not Vis talking to us, it’s the author, speaking from behind the curtain. Islington must explain every word, every glance; he trusts the reader to infer nothing, to understand nothing. He handholds you through every. single. interaction. Not only that, but his own opinions leak out of Vis in strange, character-compromising ways.
Take the example below: Vis comes across as a fedora-boffing Redditor, rubbing his hands together as he thinks about all the social interactions he’s successfully navigated. He’s a prince! He’s grown up on diplomacy, on foreign relations!
Where is this weird, Social-Observations-of-the-Common-People attitude coming from? Because it’s the author. Because he believes Vis is special, because he feels the need to comment on how Vis sees normal social observances for the petty machinations that they are.
Islington has not crafted a meaningful, internally consistent narrative voice for Vis, which only exacerbates existing issues with his character present in the novel.
(If you’ve ever heard of the Batman Gambit, that’s what this is).
His Motivation, or Lack of One
Throughout the vast majority of this book, Vis is almost entirely self-interested. He only joins the Academy so that he can escape to some far-reaching military outpost where he doesn’t have to cede Will, something he considers beneath him, equivalent to giving up.
Thus, in order to spur the plot along, Islington is forced to continually use some sort of outside force to drive Vis to keep exploring, and adjusts the motivations of secondary characters as necessary.
For instance: Ulciscor, Vis’s Military sponsor. His brother Caeror committed “suicide,” but Ulciscor believes foul play. He initially framed his desire to plant Vis in the school as a Military spy in a school run by the opposing Religion government faction. A chapter later: Vis asks him about his brother, Ulciscor denies ulterior motivations. Fifteen chapters later: “Find proof of how he died… Fail, and I will put you in the Sapper.”
It’s incongruous, and Vis himself even comments on it. But his response amounts to: “Aw man, I GUESS I’ll do this dangerous mission… you’ve forced my hand!”
The problem with this sort of A -> B domino-style character motivation is that not only does it make other characters incredibly inconsistent, it also means Vis is always the final domino, only driven into plot-relevant action by the will of others.
Secondary Characters
They are almost all uniformly predictable, fodder to be fed into the Vis-As-Gary-Stu Industrial Complex.
The smart-but-physically-weak best friend he heroically rescues on his first day
The perfect popular girl he first meets that he eventually ends up dating, but maybe it’s too good to be true?! (😱)
The gruff mentor who gets to help him with his Training Montage
Speaking of the Gruff Mentor,
Her name is Lanistia, and she is the second-in-command of Ulciscor. We spend two chapters on Vis’s relationship with her, how she knew Ulciscor’s brother Caeror, how she was left blind in the same set of mysterious circumstances that led to Caeror’s death. When Vis finds victims with the EXACT same wounds as Lanistia’s, the following line is her ONLY on-page reaction: “Lanistia, true to form, barely reacts.” (Ch. LV). This similarity is never brought up again.
This is just one example of a characterization flaw I see Islington demonstrate over and over again; nothing can stand in the way of the Vis Plot Machine, no character ever truly challenges him, no character does anything that Vis cannot work around or predict somehow.
Lanistia cannot have a complex reaction to the realization that her extremely violent, life-ruining trauma was not chance. That would take away from valuable page time dedicated to the following scene where Vis talks to the rebellion leader, and we can’t have that! Interesting moments of potential character exploration are pummeled into submission by Islington’s perfect, idealized vision of how the plot should progress.
Devil’s Advocate: But what if that’s just part of her character, her gruff, woman-of-few-words demeanor?
Good question. For context, the entire reason Ulciscor is sponsoring Vis is so Vis can investigate his Caeror’s death. So isn’t it incredibly strange in retrospect that this obvious connection is never even commented on by either Ulciscor or Lanistia, the two people who suffered the most in the aftermath? What type of shit-from-the-butt murder investigation are they running here? Is being ass at her job as well as stupid also in Lanistia’s character?
Do you see what I mean now? Islington doesn’t care to explore what her reaction may be, so she just simply has no reaction. Islington doesn’t really care about investigating Caeror’s murder, because he knows what actually happened to her. And if Islington clearly doesn’t care about these things, why should the reader? The strings of the author are visible, the magic trick fails to disguise the napkin in the fist.
Romance & Women in The Will of the Many
The Will of the Many should have been billed as a Young Adult, and nowhere is this more obvious than the romance. Emissa, his love interest, is fun, charming, helpful, and remarked upon by many as beautiful. Blandly perfect, and supposedly leagues ahead of Vis in class. But does she ever outsmart him? No. Does she ever do something better than him? No.
You can like the idea of a perfect, intelligent, well-spoken woman, but Emissa is not that. Emissa is another vehicle through which Vis can receive Deus Ex Machina help. She’s there as support, there to be daringly rescued, there to cry on his shoulder, there to offer emotional comfort in times of need. She does almost nothing of her own initiative that does not directly benefit Vis.
The Magic System
There’s not much of one. Because the students don’t actually practice Will (surprise!), only discuss theory in class (where big words are tossed around for no reason other than the sort of peppering in of little terms and factoids for background noise authors often disguise as worldbuilding).