The Catenan Republic is repeatedly described as incomprehensibly large and wide, inexorable, buckling under its own weight.
The irony of my feelings for this sequel, given this sentiment, is not lost on me.
Spoilers for the Will of the Many and the Strength of the Few below. Read at your own peril.
As someone who devoured the first installment of the Hierarchy series, I was very much looking forward to starting the second volume. I’m a quick reader who tends to hyperfixate, and having finished the 650+ page-long first book within a scant 9 otherwise-busy-days, I wanted to give myself enough time to both let the first volume sink in, and build anticipation for the second one — a break I achieved by reading Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup in the meantime (a book I’m not sure I would’ve pushed through otherwise).
The fanfare I felt over the Strength of the Few died down almost immediately upon opening page 1. I suppose after the ending of book 1, it should have been obvious to me that we would get a split between Res, Luceum, and Obiteum; but frankly my thoughts about Res had been so recursive and curious that it simply didn’t cross my mind.
I’ve come to understand this is one of the most common criticisms of Hierarchy’s second volume: we spent over 600 pages getting acquainted with all the characters, world-building, politics, and mysteries of Res; it’s only natural that’s the world you’re most invested in. And yet, after Vis makes what is framed as a monumental, and somewhat unexpected, decision at the end of book 1, we don’t get to spend any time with him as he grapples with 1) his reasoning, nor 2) the consequences and day to day life of this decision.
More than once, I became excited and sat up in my chair when I opened a chapter and saw the symbol of Res. And more than once, I finished the chapter with a latent sense of confusion and frustration.
I was so looking forward to Vis developing relationships old and new, graduating from high school shenanigans to actual Senate scheming, political manoeuvering, getting more answers on the fateful events at the end of the first book, uncovering more about Veridius himself and his past/current actions.
If you’ve read the book, you know that this never really arrives.
Quality time with Veridius, Eridius, Ostius, or really anyone consequential to book 1’s climax is confusingly sparse. Instead, you’re jostled between overlong action set-pieces and jarring timeskips. Between weeks of Vis waiting around, or worse, entire pivotal moments skipped over (sometimes with a cursory recap, sometimes without even that courtesy), the pacing in Res is at best confusing and at worst sloppy. I would normally give examples here, but if you’ve read the book I’m sure you know exactly what I refer to.
ooh baby, baby it’s a wild world
The original, unique, trailblazing child that I was, I used to be obsessed with Ancient Egypt. Owned several books, documentary DVDs, endless drawings and sketches… It was an important part of my childhood and a historical period I’m still thoroughly captivated by.
Ancient Celtic Ireland, I can admit to having far fewer touchpoints with. A game stands out, actually: The Séance of Blake Manor, a delightful investigation game I played to death last Christmas. The storyline and ambiance are steeped in Irish folk tradition and mythology, and I’m happy to say I learned so much on top of all the fun I had.
And yet, I struggled enormously to visualize everything outside of Res — the environs, the people, the clothes, everything. You might call me unimaginative, except both these worlds draw from extremely recognizable historical periods, making the flatness feel like a storytelling problem. Caten had this sense of a living and breathing being, inspired by Ancient Rome but clearly a thing of its own. Luceum and Obiteum felt derivative and shallow in comparison. While book 1 gave me vivid, immediate pictures of Vis’s first time in Caten, the naumachia, Solivagus, Suus — I finished the sequel with the faintest, murkiest sense of what Duat even looked like, and frankly did not care enough to try to fill the gaps myself.
nice to meet you, my name is plot device
There is some defense to the sparse characterization in book 1, since we experience the story through Vis — whose guardedness, compartmentalization, and trauma color the way he reads people. In SotF, this defense wears thin.
I called Callidus’s friendship with Vis (and eventual death as a consequence of it) from the moment he was introduced early in book 1. Through the start of SotF, I started to get the feeling Aequa would meet the same fate.
As very well-remarked by a fellow reviewer:
Female character by James Islington: Hair + eye color, maybe hair texture
Male character by James Islington: Handsome, commanding, athletic, fiercely intelligent, loyal, awe-inspiring, thoughtful eyes, powerful
It’s funny timing that the Odyssey came out while I was writing this — there’s something Nolan-esque in Islington’s character work in this volume. My main gripe with Nolan is that his characters often feel like poorly disguised plot engines, whose lines and actions land as disjointed and unconvincing. The male ones, that is — as a woman, you’d be lucky to have any semblance of personality, mostly you’re there to provide the male characters an emotional catalyst.
Characters are load-bearing. Even for a plot-driven reader, the plot only lands and hits when the characterization around it makes sense. I’m not interested in stories where shocking things happen simply because they happen; I want people with complexities, contradictions, motivations, and agency enough to cause those plot ripples for reasons that are cohesive and believable.
By that measure, the worst characterization crime is sensing an author bent a character out of shape just to hit some plot beat. If SotF doesn’t reach that stage, it’s only because a majority of the characters are one-dimensional, underdeveloped, interchangeable, tiresome.
We already mourned Callidus with Vis after the Iudicium only to have this death cheapened through a reversal. Same for Vis’s family, 3 members out of which we saw return from the dead. Both the traumatic opening and climax of book 1, undone in an instant.
Aequa won’t meet the same fate, though. Her death doesn’t feel like it belongs to her (like Callidus’s did), nor to the killer (like Vis’s family’s deaths did). Her death reads like fuel and kindling, a plot beat needed to push Vis to where Islington wants him. In books 1 & 2, Eidhin tells Vis each man must know where his moral line is and be resolute never to cross it. The Res-Vis Islington seems to be building toward is harder, more compromised — pushing that line inch by inch, until we barely recognize him as our fledgling Prince of Suus. Islington serves us his proto-Augustus cold, like revenge, at the expense of the only interesting female character in the book.
luceum: it’s giving la tribu de dana from temu
I’ve seen many reviewers describe Vis’s Luceum storyline as unrealistic. They couldn’t imagine him so easily turning away and letting go of the fight that’s defined him for the past several years.
I don’t share that read.
The arc itself doesn’t strike me as implausible at all, actually. It’s the scaffolding around it that I don’t buy. We don’t get enough time in Luceum, depth from the Luceum characters, or contradiction from Vis, to make it believable. I’m supposed to believe Vis trusts these people more than Callidus and Eidhin, or even Aequa, after all he’s been through with them? Have they earned his trust? Have they even earned their own existence as characters?
What I wanted: lingering guilt, anxiety, trauma, helplessness, a self-worth crisis after losing his arm, the conviction that he’d already lost everything that mattered; and the reckless abandon of a man with nothing left to protect. All of this leaking through the cracks even while he insists he’s found peace and this was his choice.
What we got: how do you say “it ain’t much, but it’s honest work” in Celtic?
short story long
I was deeply drawn to the world of the Hierarchy series in the Will of the Many. Book 1 had a sense of scale and largesse, but it was firmly held together by tight, legible characterization. Book 2 amplifies the scale, but loses the tightness.
The Will of the Many felt like it could go anywhere — while the Strength of the Few tried to take you everywhere.
Islington describes the Hierarchy as “a monster that has to feed to survive,” one that, having consumed everything else, is left with nothing to feed on but itself. I greatly admire the world he’s built, and I’m genuinely curious whether he manages to pull all these threads back together in book 3 — or whether his story has started to consume itself as well.