The Will of the Many
By James Islington
The Catenan Republic—the Hierarchy—may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.Although I'm sure it would improve my mind more to read about real educational methods, I am using this to count towards the prompt, a "non-traditional education" even though I suppose one might argue that in the pantheon of fantasy/sci-fi fiction, sending children to a school in which at some point a bunch of people die is practically de rigeur now.
I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilized society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus—what they call Will—to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.
I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.
But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.
And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.
To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy's ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.
And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.
Anyway, this book has a lot of
problems, but it's still a very satisfactory read, and I'm very much
looking forward to the second, which will hopefully come out before the
end of the year.
So Vis,
our erstwhile hero, gets picked up after drawing notice at his regular
9-5 job at a prison and his extracurricular job at a fight club, just as
he's wondering how to solve his own dilemma of not wanting to cede Will
to the stone pillars of well, semi-slavery, I guess. His benefactor
wants him to solve the mystery of how his brother was murdered (and the
resulting cover-up) and Vis wants a way that'll get him out of bowing
down to the government. It's a win-win.
And
it turns almost immediately into a lose-lose for Vis, as he realizes
that his new benefactor will send him to life imprisonment (which, as
Islington has imagined it, is both horrifying to imagine and yet also
easy to see the justification. The book starts in prison and it's a
great choice to draw the reader in and show it firsthand), and there's
also at least one other shadowy organization pulling the strings who
threaten what may be the only thing worse than prison: revealing his
true identity, as the son of a deposed ruler, on the run after his
family was murdered during the coup in what is later called by one of
the Romans, a "bloodless transition ".
The
first problem: Vis is supposed to be 17, but he sounds like he's 25
going on 40. Sure, I guess I don't know many 17 year olds who grew up as
royalty and then have spent the last three years in hiding, but it's
unbelievable, even in a world where someone uses magic to replace their
eyeballs. Vis is still a really compelling character and personality, so
it doesn't distract from the story except where we're reminded that he
hasn't yet turned 18. But it begs the question - why not just make him
23??
Second, Vis is
good at everything. No, wait, scratch that, he's EXCEPTIONAL at
everything. This one did begin to wear a little bit by the end of the
book, since so many of his obstacles seemed to be solved by, "let me
employ this skill that they're supposedly better at than I am, except
I'm actually a surprise genius at it." It's explained due to his
pre-orphan education but seriously: he speaks seventeen thousand
languages, duels better after trying out new tech three times (not a
joke) than people who have been using it for decades, swims like a fish,
knows Roman chess strategy backwards and forwards, makes friends with
wild animals like he's Steve Irwin, and I'm sure his singing voice is
better than yours too. But I let it slide because at the end of the day,
Islington's genius is that we still WANT Vis to win, we still want him
to cut the belly of the empire open and gut it like a fish.
He
does this partly by making Vis both incredibly noble and incredibly
hot-headed. Despite his preternatural advantages, it never seems like a
sure bet that Vis will win because of his two dueling problems: his
temper, which frequently gets the best of him, and his refusal to stoop
to solutions which harm other people (although ironically he does end up
killing or harming quite a few himself). There's an important scene
before he arrives at the school when he is meets an old acquaintance of
his (pre-coup) who threatens to murder vast numbers of Roman citizens.
As the acquaintance argues, anyone who supports the system is guilty,
including the people at the bottom of it, and doing nothing to stop it
would be both the easier thing to do as well as be a sort of revenge
against the people who murdered his own family. But to Vis' credit, he
takes a stand.
The third
and last way I will complain about Will of the Many never occurred to
me while I reading the book, and but will probably have the most
influence over my enjoyment of the series as a whole: in a world where
people can be given strength or Will from others and women are told to
begin bearing children by age 22 "for the glory of the empire" or pay a
hefty fine, the omission of the threat of rape is a bizarre one. Maybe
you could say, well, Vis is a 17 year old man, he doesn't think about
it. But the author isn't 17. I cannot conceive of a world which prizes
childbearing as this one does (the tax is mentioned multiple times in
the book) that wouldn't also result in an incredibly lopsided male to
female ratio in the school and public life. Half the main characters are
women, and the rule gets handwaved away over and over again.
And
for all the violence that happens, rape is NEVER mentioned, not even to
say, "well the punishment is so bad that we wiped it out". I have to
assume there's a reason he included the tax in the first place, so maybe
we'll get an explanation later, but I just come back to the idea that
there shouldn't be nearly as many women in the school in the first
place. It's like going to a movie set and realizing all the food is fake
and the houses are just walls. It brings the whole illusion tumbling
down. I'm not saying I want this story to include rape: I don't. But
within the internal logic of the world that Islington has created, it's a
glaring omission that it's never addressed.
Nevertheless, the ending blew me away, and I am HYPED for the next one.
14: A Book About A Non-Traditional Education
