The Strength of the Few

This is the second book of the Hierarchy series, and I picked it up almost immediately after finishing the first one. As I mentioned in my review of The Will of the Many, that book was, at the time, the best book I'd read in 2026 so far, so naturally, my expectations going into this sequel were incredibly high. There's always a risk with sequels to a book you loved that much, sometimes they can't possibly live up to what came before, and sometimes the hype you've built up in your own head sets you up for disappointment no matter how good the actual book is. I'm genuinely happy to say that wasn't the case here at all, this book met, and in a lot of ways exceeded, exactly what I was hoping for.

For anyone who needs a refresher or hasn't read book one recently, The Strength of the Few picks up right after Vis wins the Iudicium, the very thing he spent the entire first book working toward, only to lose almost everything else in the process. Then, impossibly, an ancient device beyond the Labyrinth replicates him across three separate worlds, so instead of following one Vis through one storyline, we're suddenly following three different versions of him, each navigating a completely different world shaped by different history and culture.

After the cliffhanger ending of the first book, we're finally able to see what actually happens next, and the way Islington chose to resolve that cliffhanger is genuinely inventive. Instead of just continuing with one Vis in one timeline, we now get three different versions of Vis spread across three entirely different worlds, each of them distinct in culture and flavor. Alongside the Roman-inspired setting we already know from book one, which continues on in its own thread, we now also get a world inspired by Egyptian culture and another inspired by Celtic and druidic culture. It's such an ambitious structural choice for a sequel, splitting the narrative into three parallel first-person perspectives instead of sticking with a single voice, and it immediately makes the world feel so much bigger and more varied than what we got in the first book, while still keeping enough thematic and structural echoes between the three worlds that they never feel disconnected from each other.

I'm happy to say the Roman-inspired world, the original setting from book one, is still my favorite of the three by a solid margin. It feels the most intriguing overall, mostly because it's the one carrying the weight of everything I already care about from the first book, the political intrigue, the Academy dynamics, the characters I've grown attached to. Worth noting, though, that even this thread doesn't lean into the dark academia feel of book one quite the same way anymore, the story has genuinely shifted genres a bit now that it's split across three worlds, so if you loved book one specifically for its dark academia identity, know that this sequel moves in a somewhat different direction. That said, I do feel like, despite being the best of the three, it got the least amount of chapters devoted to it, or at least it felt that way while reading, so I could be wrong about that, but it definitely left me wanting more of it every time we cut away.

The Celtic thread comes in as my second favorite. There's something genuinely compelling about how Islington builds out that world's mythology and power structures, and it manages to hold its own even without the built-in emotional investment the Roman thread already has going for it. The Egyptian-inspired world, on the other hand, was my least favorite of the three, it often dragged and felt boring in comparison to the other two, and there were stretches of those chapters where I found myself just waiting to get back to one of the other perspectives.

That said, regardless of which cultural influence Islington is drawing from, he manages to make each one feel genuinely intriguing and interesting rather than falling into cliché, which is honestly impressive given how easy it would be to lean on tired, surface-level tropes with settings like these. None of the three worlds feel like a shallow aesthetic reskin of a real culture, each one clearly has real thought and research behind it. Bravo to the author on that front.

In my review of book one, I mentioned that my biggest criticism was that things just tend to work out a little too conveniently, characters surviving when they probably shouldn't, stakes not always feeling as real as they should. That same problem still persists here to some degree, but it's noticeably better this time around. There were some genuinely unexpected character deaths in this book that made me legitimately angry when they happened, which, to be clear, is a good thing, that's exactly the kind of reaction a book should be able to provoke if it wants its stakes to feel real. That said, I do think one death in particular felt like a bad call on the author's part in terms of where it leaves the plot for future books, without spoiling anything, it's a loss that I think closes off some interesting narrative possibilities rather than opening new ones.

We also get to see Vis himself changing on something that's been core to his character since book one, his refusal to cede his Will. Watching that defining stance shift is a huge moment for the character, and it genuinely shows real growth rather than feeling like a contradiction of who he's been up to this point. It's handled carefully, you understand exactly why this version of him arrives at that decision, and it made me even more invested in where his arc goes from here.

The ending left me genuinely excited for what's coming next. Without spoiling anything, the way the three threads start to intersect and inform each other by the close of the book sets up some fascinating possibilities for the rest of the series, and I closed this one immediately wanting the next installment.

Overall, this is a 4.5 out of 5 stars for me, a slight downgrade from book one, mostly because of the Egyptian thread dragging and that one character death I'm still not fully on board with, but still another great entry in this series. Islington continues to prove he's one of the more ambitious and thoughtful voices in fantasy right now.