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A review by manjala
The Will of the Many by James Islington
3.0
The Will of the Many is probably the most hyped high-fantasy book of this year. Sadly, me and my book club friends didn't really get why. There's a couple of issues me and them both had, which was a notable enough observation that I want to write down some of them.
Even though all of the following did bother me, I feel no regrets about the reading experience of this at all. I don't regret reading this as I actually had fun with it! The ending was such a major brainfuck that I might give book two a try. I just don't think this is a particular high fantasy book that deserved all the hype. I personally vastly prefer the author's other series, which actually is one of my favorite trilogies of all time(!)
Some bullet points of criticism:
- The book had some obvious tropes that have been used many times in high fantasy books already
- The writing style and character interactions felt a bit "YA-ish" for the genre, I would describe it as a bit too snarky?
- I feel like the cool concepts of the system of Will and worldbuilding weren't used to the author's advantage enough. The whole book felt like a setup for a long series of books, but that didn't warrant the lack of actual exposition or information we got as readers. In short, nothing was really shown or explained overall. This made the world not feel alive at all.
- Emotional moments that I would've loved to actually have experienced, felt like they were being glossed over. This made the book feel like a rushed setup for future events.
- The main character has major anger issues, some of the choices he made frustrated me to no end. To be fair, he is a teen and I also cut him some slack because of his past, but it was just a bit too much for me at time. The fact that he was also a Gary Stu and basically was good at everything just made it worse.
- The "school setting" everyone described in their reviews was more of a military training camp, and felt like it served as a training montage for our main character.
- We discussed experiencing the same pattern every chapter: MC wakes up at the beginning of the chapter, suffers an injury (or multiple), overcomes a challenge.
Even though all of the following did bother me, I feel no regrets about the reading experience of this at all. I don't regret reading this as I actually had fun with it! The ending was such a major brainfuck that I might give book two a try. I just don't think this is a particular high fantasy book that deserved all the hype. I personally vastly prefer the author's other series, which actually is one of my favorite trilogies of all time(!)
Some bullet points of criticism:
- The book had some obvious tropes that have been used many times in high fantasy books already
- The writing style and character interactions felt a bit "YA-ish" for the genre, I would describe it as a bit too snarky?
- I feel like the cool concepts of the system of Will and worldbuilding weren't used to the author's advantage enough. The whole book felt like a setup for a long series of books, but that didn't warrant the lack of actual exposition or information we got as readers. In short, nothing was really shown or explained overall. This made the world not feel alive at all.
- Emotional moments that I would've loved to actually have experienced, felt like they were being glossed over. This made the book feel like a rushed setup for future events.
- The main character has major anger issues, some of the choices he made frustrated me to no end. To be fair, he is a teen and I also cut him some slack because of his past, but it was just a bit too much for me at time. The fact that he was also a Gary Stu and basically was good at everything just made it worse.
- The "school setting" everyone described in their reviews was more of a military training camp, and felt like it served as a training montage for our main character.
- We discussed experiencing the same pattern every chapter: MC wakes up at the beginning of the chapter, suffers an injury (or multiple), overcomes a challenge.