Reading material

FORMAT/INFO: The Will of the Many was published May 23rd, 2023. It is 630 pages long and published in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Three years ago, Vis Telimus was orphaned when the Catenan Republic invaded his homeland and killed his family. Since then, he's been on the run and in hiding, doing his best to avoid taking part in an integral part of Republic society: the ceding of Will. It's a tradition aided by technology where a person literally gifts part of their willpower to another, giving the recipient enhanced strength and speed. Vis has avoided this fate for years - but an offer from a mysterious stranger may change everything. Vis is offered the chance to go undercover at the Republic's elite academy, in exchange for solving a murder that took place there. But more than one faction wants to use Vis for their aims, and it will take all of Vis's cunning to keep himself alive as he dives into the maze of secrets hidden on the academy's island.

The Will of the Many is a well-executed, if familiar, story of intrigue and plots at a nation's elite academy - familiar, that is, until a jaw-dropping finale. For most of the book, I always had a rough sense of where the plot was going. It's your classic scrappy orphan underdog who gets thrown into the deep end of a special academy, where competition is cut-throat and sometimes deadly. It's a trope I love quite a bit, so I fully enjoyed that aspect of the story.

The thing I bumped against is that Vis is not your true underdog. Because of his background, he is actually fairly well-educated in everything from rhetoric to combat; what he doesn't know already, he easily picks up without too much issue. He seems to easily read people and knows how to manipulate them, and we rarely see him make a true misstep.

I am a person who loves competent characters. But I love them when they exist in conflict with actual friction in the plot. I want to see them on their back foot, or for things to go horribly wrong. And things never TRULY go horribly wrong for Vis. He might be in danger, yes, but you know there's always another ace up his sleeve. It just seemed like a lot for a seventeen-year-old to be good at, and it took me out of the story a bit.

But even so, I did like the layers of intrigue in the story. There are multiple factions all exerting pressure on Vis. He has to figure out how to walk the fine line of giving everybody just enough of what they're asking for that he doesn't fully commit to their cause, but they leave him alone so that he can pursue his own goals. That was where the most tension came from, and were some of the parts of the story I enjoyed the most.

But hands down the best part of the book is the absolutely bonkers final pages of The Will of the Many. It's safe to say I genuinely have no idea how the story is going to play out in the sequel. It's possible that the author purposely kept this a fairly familiar plot to onboard the readers into this world before veering into a wildly different kind of story. It's safe to say that this is one of those books where how things go in the sequel could have me revising my opinion of The Will of the Many, for better or for worse.

CONCLUSION: The Will of the Many is an excellent story for those who love an academy trope. It's got mystery, intrigue, rivalries, and a deadly competition. But above all else, what's got me coming back is the ending because I truly cannot wait to see what happens next.

 

FORMAT/INFO: What Fury Brings will be published by Fiewel Books on September 23rd, 2025. It is 368 pages and available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: In a kingdom where most of the noblemen were killed in an uprising several years ago, it’s become common practice for royalty to kidnap husbands from neighboring kingdoms. Princess Olera is one such royal member. To secure her position in line to the throne, she needs to prove she can tame a proper husband. She’s decided the meek poet prince of a neighboring kingdom is an ideal candidate. But a drunken prank sees the prince swapping places with his brother, and Olera unknowingly ends up with warrior prince Sanos instead. Sanos has to hide his identity long enough to escape - but the more he gets to know his bride-to-be, the less he’s sure of what he wants.

What Fury Brings is a bit of a muddled romantasy, caught between trying to be a sultry romance and an exploration of gender dynamics. The author is very clear with her intent on writing this book, starting with the author's note where she bluntly states she's taken cis men and women's normal gender roles and reversed them, so that men are the ones who are supposed to be seen and not heard, look beautiful for their spouse, treated as weak soft things that exist to pleasure the opposite gender. While the female-led kingdom of Amarra is more progressive about sex and gender identities than its neighboring male-led countries, it is not free from cruelty, exploitation, or slavery. Olera vows to make changes to her kingdom to do away with much of this - a fact she tells to the man she literally kidnapped to further her political ambitions.

This premise is definitely targeted at those who like a dominant/submissive relationship, and requires you to be onboard with a kidnapping trope. Female main character Olera is clear that she will not force herself on male lead Sanos, but the fact remains that he spends much of the book imprisoned and in chains until he decides he’s fine to marry this woman. If you find that off-putting, bounce along to the next book. For me, I came fully on board and ready to see what the author did with the premise.

As for the spice, I found it often more explicit than sexy. On the one hand, there’s a freshness to the frank and direct discussion of sex and bodies to be found in this book. The matriarchal society Olera belongs to strips much of the mystique away from sex, a fact which Sanos finds unnerving in his more closeted society. On the other hand, that also meant that the descriptions felt more clinical than seductive. It's perhaps why I felt cold on the romance, not truly feeling the spark that's supposed to be growing between the two characters.

What Fury Brings is a book that leaves me perplexed with what to do with it. It is a sledgehammer of commentary by saying "Hey, by reversing normal gender roles, can't we see how terrible this situation is?" It is also using those reversed roles to unabashedly lean into dominant/submissive kink. It both uses the power imbalance to titillate the audience, while also lecturing that the power imbalance is bad. In short, it wants to have its cake and eat it too. Which just leaves me with a bit of whiplash: am I supposed to find this arousing or offputting?

CONCLUSION: There's no denying that What Fury Brings is bingeable candy, a story of light court politics and intrigue that you can read in fairly short order. But What Fury Brings also has aspirations of being more than that, and in dealing with weightier themes, the story stumbles. What I came to realize is that just because the societal gender power imbalances are reversed does not mean I now suddenly enjoy the societal power imbalances. I'd rather read a fantasy story without the imbalance at all. Maybe if this had been a story that put the genders on equal footing and then found the pleasure in an imbalance, I would have liked it more. I fully understand the drive that caused the author to write this story, but at the end of the day it just didn't work as a romance for me.