A review by nigellicus
The Will of the Many by James Islington

adventurous tense

5.0

Grand epic fantasy type thing - a Roman-Emprie-esque empire that taps into peoples' wills and channels them to individuals at the top of pyramids, making them strong, imbuing objects with power. Our narrator is the survivor of a small island kingdom that's been the most revent acquisition of the empire, surviving in an orphanage, working in a nasty prison, fighing in arranged bouts. He attracts the attention of a member of a powerful family and ends up getting adopted, all the time keeping his real identity secret. But he's been adopted for a reason, and gets sent to an academy to, among other things, solve a murder and discover whether someone's found an ancient weapon. A rather terrifying resistance movement who know exactly who he is further complicates his life. There's lots of twists and reveals and reversals and politics, good fun.