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As someone who devoured the first installment of the Hierarchy series, I was very much looking forward to starting the second volume. I\u2019m 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\u2019s The Tainted Cup <\/em>in the meantime (a book I\u2019m not sure I would\u2019ve pushed through otherwise).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019t cross my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve come to understand this is one of the most common criticisms of Hierarchy\u2019s second volume: we spent over 600 pages getting acquainted with all the characters, world-building, politics, and mysteries of Res; it\u2019s only natural that\u2019s the world you\u2019re 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019ve read the book, you know that this never really arrives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quality time with Veridius, Eridius, Ostius, or really anyone consequential to book 1\u2019s climax is confusingly sparse. Instead, you\u2019re 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\u2019ve read the book I\u2019m sure you know exactly what I refer to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2026 It was an important part of my childhood and a historical period I\u2019m still thoroughly captivated by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ancient Celtic Ireland, I can admit to having far fewer touchpoints with. A game stands out, actually: The S\u00e9ance of Blake Manor<\/em>, a delightful investigation game I played to death last Christmas. The storyline and ambiance are steeped in Irish folk tradition and mythology, and I\u2019m happy to say I learned so much on top of all the fun I had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I called Callidus\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As very well-remarked by a fellow reviewer:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Female character by James Islington: Hair + eye color, maybe hair texture<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Male character by James Islington: Handsome, commanding, athletic, fiercely intelligent, loyal, awe-inspiring, thoughtful eyes, powerful<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s funny timing that the Odyssey came out while I was writing this — there\u2019s something Nolan-esque in Islington\u2019s 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\u2019d be lucky to have any semblance of personality, mostly you\u2019re there to provide the male characters an emotional catalyst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Characters are load-bearing. Even for a plot-driven reader, the plot only lands and hits when the characterization around it makes sense. I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019t reach that stage, it\u2019s only because a majority of the characters are one-dimensional, underdeveloped, interchangeable, tiresome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We already mourned Callidus with Vis after the Iudicium only to have this death cheapened through a reversal. Same for Vis\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aequa won\u2019t meet the same fate, though. Her death doesn\u2019t feel like it belongs to her (like Callidus\u2019s did), nor to the killer (like Vis\u2019s family\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen many reviewers describe Vis\u2019s Luceum storyline as unrealistic. They couldn\u2019t imagine him so easily turning away and letting go of the fight that\u2019s defined him for the past several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t share that read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The arc itself doesn\u2019t strike me as implausible at all, actually. It\u2019s the scaffolding around it that I don\u2019t buy. We don\u2019t get enough time in Luceum, depth from the Luceum characters, or contradiction from Vis, to make it believable. I\u2019m supposed to believe Vis trusts these people more than Callidus and Eidhin, or even Aequa, after all he\u2019s been through with them? Have they earned his trust? Have they even earned their own existence as characters?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I wanted: lingering guilt, anxiety, trauma, helplessness, a self-worth crisis after losing his arm, the conviction that he\u2019d 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\u2019s found peace and this was his choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we got: how do you say “it ain’t much, but it’s honest work” in Celtic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Will of the Many felt like it could go anywhere — while the Strength of the Few tried to take you everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/codenamemia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ooh baby, baby it\u2019s a wild world<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
nice to meet you, my name is plot device<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
luceum: it\u2019s giving <\/strong>la tribu de dana<\/em><\/strong> from temu<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
short story long<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n