Andraste

I had plans to keep an up to date book log. Well, that didn't happen.

The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, Book 1) (James Islington) (2023): In audiobook, narrated by Euan Morton. At 17, protagonist Vis experiences unexpected elevation from the bottom of the Hierarchy's boot to its elite academic academy, a new player in several schemes related to the phlebotinum the Hierarchy runs on, except like all good pseudo-Rome fantasy with phlebotinum underpinnings, guess what, it might destroy the entire world or something, more to come in Book Two.

I spotted this while browsing at a romance bookstore, and based on the blurb, I couldn't figure out why it was there. Having listened through the audiobook, specifically the part where the girlfriend is strongly implicated to be lying through her teeth about A Lot and oh yeah, literally tries to stab him to death, I'm still not sure how it got there.

Is The Will of the Many playing every trope of Manly Man In An Epic, Fighting Against Overwhelming Empire, 100% straight? Sure looks like it from here. Vis spends a lot of time being emotionally tortured by memories of His Secret Past that He Must Keep Secret Or Die, and also performing physical feats of great strength, stamina, agility, etc. It must be nice to pull double all-nighters while running marathons and stuff.

The novel hammers in that the Hierarchy is Bad, and their primary opponents, the Anguis, are also Bad, because human rights violations and hypocrisy, there's no good choices, blah blah. In Baru Comorant style, Vis is forced to join with his enemies to investigate its secrets (and maybe trash the evil hegemonic empire) from the inside. Except the interesting non-hetero worldbuilding is missing.

The cool part of the novel would be the phlebotinum, if the author were interested in it. Citizens of the Hierarchy have Will taken from them, which deprives them of energy, but gives Will wielders super strength and "imbuing" powers to make small magic devices - super-locks, trackers, lights - as well as great public works, like magic flying trains. I guess you could also heal with it, if that was something the novel was interested in. (Spoilers, the novel doesn't seem that interested in it.)

I think it'd be deeply interesting to think about imperial pressure to participate in this transfer of energy / executive function / whatever as a metaphor for all sorts of stuff, but mostly the novel uses it as "and then we had plot convenient superpowers or trains or whatever," which is disappointing.

The plot builds to an epilogue revelation that the Will phlebotinum is connected to a technology to copy and split yourself across three linked (?) worlds (???) - Res, Obiteum, Luceum - which is also connected to an ancient Cataclysm that some idiot(s) might trigger again in their grasping at Moar Power or something. Also there's some Larger Conflict (tm).

Pretty sure Vis isn't going to do the smart thing, which would be to find the Final Boss protecting the Will technology core, then destroy the Will technology beyond reconstruction, at least not without two more novels of being emotionally and physically tortured by the author's fictional proxies. If we're lucky maybe he'll reconcile with the girlfriend who tried to kill him before she perishes at the hands of his enemies / sacrifices herself for him.

The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson) (2020) in large cast audiobook. Premise: addressing carbon emissions and by proxy climate change by legislation, also some terrorism.

I read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy in my teens, and some of his other works between then and now. It feels like he has a specific utopian vision expressed repeatedly in his works, but as an American who read this in January 2026, his belief in a more peaceful, ecologically wise, equitable human future seems as dreamlike as Tolkien's First Age. That somehow this better world also comes into place through assassination and property damage doesn't help with my suspension of disbelief. Possibly the experience of one (1) pandemic, plus January '26, killed my willingness to believe in KSR's "if you build it" fiction.

Between the Islington and the KSR I reread some Scholomance as a "terrible schools and the societies that make them" palate-cleanser. After the KSR I reread a bunch of Radch series and Murderbot because sometimes you need to hang out with some unreliable and very angry narrators.