Dazzlingly ambitious, jaw-droppingly epic, and with a rising tide of blood and fire, James Islington’s The Strength of the Few is the electrifying sequel to the acclaimed Will of the Many. I’m going to say a lot of words and get into the nitty gritty of the book, but to sum it up: this book is a banger. 

“You have to make them believe, my dear boy, whenever they see you step out onto that stage. Because it is faith that makes us cheer, and a triumph forgotten is no different to defeat.”

There are moments where a master of the craft is delivering their stand-out performance. Joe Abercrombie penning Age of Madness, Kendrick Lamar crafting To Pimp a Butterfly, Lebron James in the 2016 finals, Bruenor Battlehammer crafting Aegis-Fang, if you’ll allow the fictional example, and so on. These moments in time are fragile things, and they rode a knife’s edge on their path to glory. 

Islington is on that path. 

The Will of the Many was a proclamation that Islington was crafting something special, but The Strength of the Few is that bold, confident step down the path. Every twist and plot decision seems obvious in hindsight, but blew me away during the actual reading, which is the sign of a meticulously crafted plot with lots of confident foreshadowing. The prose, the dialogue, the world itself, is advanced level stuff. 

The Strength of the Few juggles three separate plot threads, and pretty evenly. I can’t go into the details without spoiling, but I call them Columns, Spirals, and Life. Spirals started out as my least favorite of the three, but by the end, I think it was my favorite. That story has a bit of a Malazan-esque storyline where things aren’t fully explained at first, and ultimately I think that helped the narrative. Life, on the other hand, holds your hand a bit, and I could have used with less of it. It’s all personal preference, and truly doesn’t matter because the way each story progresses and ends are all elite in their own way, but where Islington shines the hardest is his climaxes. Each story is a complete thing, full of twists and turns, and each one has a ticking time bomb that explodes. It’s three books in one, which means at least three “oh fuck” moments, and each one bangs. 

While The Will of the Many is more of a dark academia book, The Strength of the Few is where we’ve graduated. There’s still training montages and progression, but gone is the class days and school setting. Instead, we have three separate settings, all involving the same level of allying, politicking, and back-stabbing that Islington has shown advanced skills of. The advancement of plot, and of stakes, does Hierarchy a lot of credit and shows the real-world application of the things we’ve only speculated and guessed at. 

I have to make one more note on the plot, because it’s truly special. My jaw quite literally dropped twice, and The Strength of the Few is the closest I’ve been to crying at an SFF book since Erikson’s Toll the Hounds. Some say the mark of a truly great book is how much it makes you feel, and if that’s true, this is a phenomenal book. 

Putting my cards on the table, I am utterly shocked at the advancement of Islington’s prose. Reading his earlier work showed that he had ambition, knew how to craft a narrative, and that he was someone who could deliver on his promises, but his prose had never truly impressed me. The Will of the Many was an improvement to the “rather good” tier, which is where I figured Islington would peak, but good lord. The writing and voice and lyricism present in The Strength of the Few is actually incredible. I comfortably put The Strength of the Few in that elite, upper echelon of books from a prose perspective. 

The action and the magic system are well-crafted and very cool as always. There’s new tricks at work here and the resulting scenes are an awesome spectacle. Sometimes it’s John Wick-esque in its proximity to violence where you can feel characters’ breath, sweat, and blood, and at others it’s more Sanderson flavored in its spectacle and usage of magic systems to the fullest extent. Regardless of which approach Islington utilized, he deserves full marks. 

“We must suffer the hundred little deaths of self in order to protect this world. Not because what we do is good, but because good will no longer exist if we do not.”

While The Strength of the Few is an undeniable triumph, there are ever so small deficits in the middle third. It starts and ends incredibly strong, but the pacing in the middle feels slightly off. Chapters could have been cut and combined, and one of the three plot-lines (Life) that Islington juggles never fully dropped, but I did think it got close to the ground. 

I do have to make a quick note that if you liked The Will of the Many only because of the school setting, this one may not be for you. Aspects of that sub-genre that people like are present here, but we’re largely out of the school setting and into the real world. 

That said, those are small things that the endings utterly washed away, and this is easily a five star book. Hierarchy is becoming one of those series that will go down amidst the pantheon of SFF greats. 

To sum it up, The Strength of the Few is better in pretty much every way than its predecessor. The Will of the Many was a good book—a really, really good book—but The Strength of the Few is a great one. If you’re reading this review as either someone who enjoyed book one or was curious about the series as a whole, do not hesitate. Go to the bookstore, pick this up, and enjoy the journey. 

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