Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by keybladium
The Will of the Many by James Islington
2.0
2.5/5
This book has so much potential to be great with a complex world and the structure of the hierarchy but I just didn’t feel like it done a good job with that.
To start, I found the characters to be irrelevant and bland aside from the core characters, there was never much chemistry between Vis and the other students aside from around 2 and it just made me not care much for anyone else.
The characterization of Vis was also very inconsistent, he was very skilled and composed at the start but in certain situations he was the complete opposite. In some parts he was very smarts, the next he’s very dumb or couldn’t do the things he done before (and the main reason he was chosen in the first place?).
It felt like things went too fast too. It had a slowish start but I was thinking it would be like Harry Potter where things pick up when he goes to the academy but it just went super fast with no time at all to flesh out his experiences with the academy or the classes and conflicts/relationships with the students and teachers. That was the part I was looking forward to but instead he was advancing through classes every other chapter and it didn’t feel satisfactory nor deserving most of the time. I wish they slowed down with the academy and really delved deeper into the life there and emphasized more the characters Vis meets to make later moments have more of an effect.
Another problem I had was the world to me didn’t feel well explained. I know there’s a thing called “Will” but I couldn’t explain what it is or what it actually does but it’s integral to the story. A lot of the society I didn’t understand too aside from the conflicts between certain people.
The biggest drawback for me was the descriptions of the scenarios. The action was described was very well with things like movements and reactions, but the scenery and settings were very lacking which made it near imposible for me to be immersed in those scenes. I couldn’t visualise what the setting actually was and I had to constantly reread sections or go back pages to see if I’ve missed something or to try to immerse myself more into the action.
And without going into spoilers, I found the ending to be very confusing and I felt like some plot points should’ve been addressed a lot more by the ending. But the very final chapter itself was very confusing, and not in a effective cliffhanger way but just very confusing that even now I don’t really understand what happened and doesn’t make me excited for the next installment.
The book wasn’t terrible and I did enjoy moments but I just found it to be wasted potential when it could’ve been so much more imo and when reading, the most important thing to me is immersion and I can’t enjoy a book as much if I’m not immersed.
This book has so much potential to be great with a complex world and the structure of the hierarchy but I just didn’t feel like it done a good job with that.
To start, I found the characters to be irrelevant and bland aside from the core characters, there was never much chemistry between Vis and the other students aside from around 2 and it just made me not care much for anyone else.
The characterization of Vis was also very inconsistent, he was very skilled and composed at the start but in certain situations he was the complete opposite. In some parts he was very smarts, the next he’s very dumb or couldn’t do the things he done before (and the main reason he was chosen in the first place?).
It felt like things went too fast too. It had a slowish start but I was thinking it would be like Harry Potter where things pick up when he goes to the academy but it just went super fast with no time at all to flesh out his experiences with the academy or the classes and conflicts/relationships with the students and teachers. That was the part I was looking forward to but instead he was advancing through classes every other chapter and it didn’t feel satisfactory nor deserving most of the time. I wish they slowed down with the academy and really delved deeper into the life there and emphasized more the characters Vis meets to make later moments have more of an effect.
Another problem I had was the world to me didn’t feel well explained. I know there’s a thing called “Will” but I couldn’t explain what it is or what it actually does but it’s integral to the story. A lot of the society I didn’t understand too aside from the conflicts between certain people.
The biggest drawback for me was the descriptions of the scenarios. The action was described was very well with things like movements and reactions, but the scenery and settings were very lacking which made it near imposible for me to be immersed in those scenes. I couldn’t visualise what the setting actually was and I had to constantly reread sections or go back pages to see if I’ve missed something or to try to immerse myself more into the action.
And without going into spoilers, I found the ending to be very confusing and I felt like some plot points should’ve been addressed a lot more by the ending. But the very final chapter itself was very confusing, and not in a effective cliffhanger way but just very confusing that even now I don’t really understand what happened and doesn’t make me excited for the next installment.
The book wasn’t terrible and I did enjoy moments but I just found it to be wasted potential when it could’ve been so much more imo and when reading, the most important thing to me is immersion and I can’t enjoy a book as much if I’m not immersed.