I had wanted to like The Will of the Many by James Islington. Madam Catastrophy had read the jacket blurb and thought it would be up my alley. Her instincts regarding my tastes are usually pretty solid.
But since I was currently reading Babel; or, The Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History by R. F. Kuang, which also deals with colonialism and features as its protagonist an outsider at Oxford, perhaps I didnât have the bandwidth or the patience to spare a novel in a similar vein that was after almost a hundred pages still read like a prologue.
Furthermore, Ms. Kuangâs The Poppy War — which I had read a year or two ago — also centered upon an outsider among the elite in a military acadamy, and felt meatier because she had been drawing upon real-world Chinese history, particularly the Sino-Japanese War and the Opium Wars with the Dark Empire of Granbretan Great Britain.
The characteriation of Vis Telimus as an angry loner with a secret who did dirty work and fought in illegal underground cage matches in the first 100 pages did little to help.
I kept asking myself questions like, Havenât I seen this anime before?
or Havenât I played this JRPG before?
No doubt fans of Islington will say that I am being unfair, and that I had stopped just before it really got going, and that the payoff at the end would make it all worthwhile.
They might not even be wrong.
However, I am under no obligation to be fair when reading for pleasure. If youâre looking for an epic fantasy that grabs you by the collar within the first ten pages, like Coleridgeâs Ancient Mariner accosting a wedding guest because he must tell his story right now, this isnât the book for you. If youâre OK with a slow burn as long as the writing holds your attention, this might not do it for you, either.
Iâm putting aside Will because it just wasnât doing it for me; Iâm OK with a slow burn if the writing is sufficiently compelling, but I canât help but suspect that James Islington writes more in the windowpane tradition of Brandon Sanderson than I generally prefer. This being the case, Islingtonâs prose wasnât rich enough to tide me over until the plot thickened and the characterization deepened. So, back to the public library Will goes, where it might get borrowed by somebody better able to appreciate it. And if it hasnât been sold off in the meantime, I might pick it up again when Iâve reduced my pile of unread books.