The Will of the Many

How the book is structured

The Will of the Many is set in Caten, a fictional empire modeled on the Golden Age of the Roman Republic. Three hundred years before the novel opens, an event called the Cataclysm killed nineteen of every twenty people on the planet and erased the civilizations that came before. In the centuries since, the Catenan Republic has used the salvaged remnants of Pre-Cataclysm technology to conquer what's left of the known world and to enforce a magical caste system called the Hierarchy. Under that system, every citizen surrenders — "cedes" — a portion of their own life force, called Will, to those above them in an eight-tier pyramid. An Octavus cedes Will upward. A Septimus receives Will from those below and cedes their own portion up the chain, and so on, until the unimaginable concentrated power of the Will of the many arrives at the Senate at the top.

The novel follows seventeen-year-old Vis, an orphan in the conquered border city of Letens — secretly Diago, the last surviving prince of Suus, an island kingdom Caten brutally absorbed three years ago. Vis has refused to cede his Will to the empire that murdered his family, which makes him a fugitive on borrowed time. When the Military senator Ulciscor Telimus adopts him as a covert weapon against the Religion faction, Vis is sent to the elite Catenan Academy on the island of Solivagus to compete, to spy, and to uncover what really happened to Ulciscor's brother three years earlier.

The book is divided into three Parts, each named with a Latin tag, plus an Epilogue. Chapters are numbered in Roman numerals (I through LXXIV) running continuously across the Parts.

Part I — *Imperium Sine Fine* ("An Empire Without End"):

Letens, the prison, the orphanage, the adoption, and Vis's brutal training at the Telimus estate.

Part II — *Deus Nolens Exituus* ("Get It Done Whether God Likes It Or Not"):

Vis arrives at the Catenan Academy, claws his way through its political and physical trials, and begins exploring the forbidden ruins on Solivagus.

Part III — *In Cauda Venenum* ("The Poison Is in the Tail"):

Vacation on Suus, the Iudicium contest, the Anguis attack, the Labyrinth, and the final reckoning.

Epilogue — *Ex Uno Plures* ("Out of One, Many"):

The genre-breaking revelation that recasts everything that came before.

Rather than summarize every individual chapter — there are 74 of them — what follows is a chapter-grouped recap that walks the full plot of each Part in order.

Part I — Imperium Sine Fine

Overview

The opening Part establishes the world and gets Vis from the prisons of Letens to the Telimus estate near the capital. We learn how the Hierarchy works, watch Vis quietly refuse to participate in it, and meet the senator who is about to weaponize him. By the end of Part I, Vis is officially Vis Telimus, a Sextus by adoption, and is training under the blind Lanistia for a mission he doesn't yet fully understand.

Chapters I–IV: Letens

Vis works days as a low-ranking guard in Letens Prison, where condemned criminals are bound to devices called Sappers that drain their Will to be sold upward to the wealthy. He passes the long shifts playing a strategy game called Foundation with the older guard Hrolf and trying not to be noticed. A flashback opens the book: Vis's father, blood-slicked, dangling his son over a precipice and whispering Courage before letting go — a memory Vis can't escape. A well-dressed stranger calling himself Sextus Hospius arrives with credentials from the Proconsul to interrogate a prisoner named Nateo. Vis escorts him into the deep cells. Hospius questions Nateo in Vetusian, a dead language Vis isn't supposed to know, and asks about names — Caeror, Obiteum, Luceum, a gate. When Nateo lunges at Hospius, Vis intervenes and brushes the Sapper's housing — which should drop a man in seconds. He barely feels it. Hospius notices. He tips Vis a silver coin for his discretion and leaves.

That night, Vis goes to the Letens Theatre, a hidden venue where Septima Ellanher runs illegal fights. He fights bare-knuckle to earn the money he uses to bribe the orphanage matron into not reporting his missed ceding dates. The Theatre's bookkeeper Gaufrid has matched him against a ceding Sextus several classes above him; Vis fights stripped and greased to defeat the man's Will-imbued advantages, weathers the crowd's taunts about his scars, and explodes into a brutal counterattack. To keep the Hierarchy from investigating, Ellanher fabricates a cheating scandal and bans him.

Chapters V–VIII: The adoption

Vis returns to the orphanage and the cruel Matron Atrox wakes him to assist with a noble adoption interview the next day. Vis is months from his eighteenth birthday — the age at which all citizens must cede their Will at an Aurora Columnae or be branded a traitor and sent to the Sappers — and he's already lied about his birth date to buy himself four extra months. He plans to flee Letens before the deadline.

The man who arrives is the stranger from the prison. He introduces himself by his real name: Magnus Quintus Ulciscor Telimus, a senator of the Military faction. Ulciscor tests Vis's intellect, deduces that Vis has never ceded, and offers him a deal. He will adopt Vis as Sextus of Family Telimus, giving him a name and a place inside the very empire that murdered his family. In exchange, Vis will enter the Catenan Academy on the island of Solivagus — the empire's elite school, where future senators are forged — and quietly investigate what happened there three years ago, when Ulciscor's brother Caeror supposedly committed suicide during a contest called the Iudicium. Ulciscor blames the Academy's current Principalis, Veridius Julii, who defected from Military to Religion immediately afterward. He wants the truth, and he wants leverage against Religion. Vis accepts.

Chapters IX–XII: The Transvect

Ulciscor takes Vis aboard a Transvect, a vast hovering Pre-Cataclysm transport, and they begin the journey to the capital, Caten. En route they are ambushed by the Anguis, a militant resistance movement that opposes the Hierarchy and the Aurora Columnae. An archer in their command — a woman who later proves to be Sedotia, the Anguis leader — recognizes Vis on sight and shoots Ulciscor in the shoulder. She tries to recruit him. Vis recognizes her too: she's from Suus. He refuses, helps Ulciscor reboard the Transvect, and they escape. Ulciscor now knows there's more to his new ward than he was told. He doesn't press it. Yet.

Chapters XIII–XX: Villa Telimus

At the Telimus estate outside Caten, Vis is introduced to the household: the dispensator Kadmos, the senator's wife Relucia, and Vis's new tutor, a blind Sextus named Lanistia. Lanistia was Caeror's lover. She was nearly killed in the same incident that killed him; she lost both her eyes and has gaps in her memory she can't fill in. She "sees" by constantly imbuing the air around her with Will. She is also one of the deadliest fighters Vis has ever encountered.

Lanistia's training is brutal. She beats him with practice blades, drills him in Catenan etiquette and politics, runs him through a private replica of the Academy's Labyrinth, and forces him to start using imbued stones to manipulate his environment — even though Vis will not cede. A Governance senator named Advenius Claudius visits the estate to size Vis up; he hints that he knows Ulciscor is hunting Veridius, and asks Vis to train alongside his daughter Aequa, who is already at the Academy. Ulciscor agrees, with reservations.

Chapters XXI–XXIV: The naumachia

Vis attends the Festival of Jovan in Caten, using Aequa as social cover. There he is approached by the leader of the Anguis — Estevan, another son of Suus — at the colosseum, where a hundred thousand spectators have gathered for a naumachia, a flooded sea battle in which prisoners fight to avoid the Sappers. Estevan tries to recruit Vis. When Vis won't commit, Estevan triggers a Pre-Cataclysm weapon called a Melior that kills thousands of people in the arena in seconds, then drives a knife into himself and makes it look as if Vis was responsible. Vis recovers the stylus that controls the Melior, escapes through the sewers, and disposes of the body. He passes out from his injuries.

He wakes a week later a national hero. The Senate has named him Vis Telimus Catenicus — Vis "of the Catenans" — and ratified his adoption. Ulciscor finally lets him in on the older mystery: Caeror sent his brother a coded letter weeks before his death that read Translation right. Obiteum lost. Luceum unknown. Scintres Exunus worked. Gate still open. More strange pre-Cataclysm power. Only Veridius knows. Ulciscor doesn't believe his brother died by suicide. He believes Veridius killed him and used the cover-up to leverage his way into Religion. He also reveals that Lanistia survived the incident and has fragmentary memories of ruins east and west of the Academy. Part I ends with Vis preparing to embark for Solivagus.

Part II — Deus Nolens Exituus

Overview

The middle Part is the dark academia heart of the novel: Vis arrives at the Catenan Academy, navigates its eight-class hierarchy and its murderous social politics, climbs from the bottom of Class Seven to the top of Class Three in a single year, makes his first real friends, and explores the forbidden ruins on the far side of the island. The conspiracy thickens. The supernatural pokes through.

Chapters XXV–XXIX: Arrival

Vis lands on Solivagus and meets Principalis Veridius Julii in person. Veridius is charming, perceptive, and immediately makes it clear that he knows Ulciscor blames him for Caeror's death. He places Vis in Class Seven, the lowest tier, and walks him into a confrontation in his very first hour: a brutal Class Six bully named Eidhin, a refugee from the conquered country of Cymr who hates the Republic, is targeting Callidus, a brilliant Class Seven student whose father runs the Census. Vis floors Eidhin without ceding Will. The penalty for striking a higher-class student is expulsion, but Vis maneuvers Eidhin into accepting a formal Threefold Apology — a public ritual that closes the matter and prevents him from later demanding redress. Vis serves a month of stable duty for the brawl. Emissa, a senator's daughter in Class Three, volunteers to muck out the stables beside him for reasons of her own.

Chapters XXX–XXXV: Friends and the Labyrinth

Vis is promoted from Seven to Class Six and rooms with Eidhin. Slowly, Vis befriends them all: Callidus, who is small and asthmatic but cleverer than anyone in the Academy; Eidhin, who is contemptuous of Caten until Vis starts speaking to him in his own Cymr tongue; and Emissa, who matches Vis stride for stride. Class Six gets its first run at the Academy's Labyrinth — a Will-controlled training maze whose walls move on command. Vis is paired with Eidhin and loses badly when Eidhin refuses to give him directions in Common. On the switch, Vis works out that Eidhin doesn't speak Common well and starts giving him orders in Cymr instead; they solve the Labyrinth on the first try. The bigoted Praeceptor Dultatis disqualifies them for "cheating."

Chapters XXXVI–XL: The ruins

That night, Vis scales the spiked wall around the Academy and crosses into the forbidden interior of Solivagus. At the center of an ancient ruin he finds a great domed structure. The walls inside are covered in symbols of an unknown language — the same symbols carved into the walls of the Academy's Labyrinth. In a deeper chamber, dozens of mummified corpses are arranged in a circle, each with its eyes removed by an obsidian blade and replaced with the same eyeless wounds Lanistia bears. A whispered voice in an old tongue speaks the words Obiteum is lost. Do not open the gate. Synchronous is death. The corpses' empty sockets open. Vis flees back to the Academy.

Chapters XLI–XLV: Climbing

Vis is promoted to Class Five, then Class Four. Veridius keeps pushing him toward Class Three with the air of a man running an experiment. Vis and Callidus train together every morning. Vis and Emissa fall — slowly, against their better judgment — into something neither will name. A Senate physician arrives unannounced to take a blood sample from Vis and shows him a sketch of a black pyramid: Vis recognizes it from a vision the Anguis stylus pushed into his mind, and lies through his teeth. Lanistia and Ulciscor independently arrive to debrief him; Lanistia recalls a second set of ruins on the western side of the island.

Chapters XLVI–LI: Class Three

To finally enter Class Three, Vis stages an elaborate Foundation match against the existing class member Belli, with Emissa's covert help. He wins. Belli is demoted. Praeceptor Nequias, Class Three's instructor and a Veridius loyalist, dislikes Vis on sight. Belli, demoted and humiliated, is later murdered — and her mutilated body becomes one of the threads Vis will tug in Part III. Nequias announces that the year is ending and the Iudicium — the Academy's final contest, which earns the winner a Senate appointment — is about to begin. Class Three competitors must each draft two students from the lower classes as their team. Vis picks Callidus and tries to pick Eidhin; Eidhin gently declines.

Part III — In Cauda Venenum

Overview

The final Part takes Vis to Suus, then back to the Academy for the Iudicium itself. Hidden enemies are unmasked: Relucia, Ulciscor's wife, is the Anguis leader Sedotia. The Military faction has been secretly funding the Anguis to destabilize the Senate. Veridius is hiding something inside the western ruins. Vis runs the real Labyrinth, has his existence "synchronized" across three realities, watches his closest friend die in his arms, and walks out of the year's contest crowned, mutilated, and irretrievably changed.

Chapters LII–LV: Vacation on Suus

Before the Iudicium, Indol — the powerful son of a Magnus Dimidius — invites Emissa, Belli's old circle, and Vis to his father's summer residence. To Vis's horror, the residence is on Suus — his own homeland, where Caten executed his family three years ago. He walks the halls of what used to be his neighbors' palaces. He saves Emissa from a riptide in the lagoon; they take shelter in a sea cave and finally kiss. He meets a steward named Fadrique who recognizes him as Diago, kneels, and shows him a hidden room of artifacts saved from the royal household — including a wooden ship Vis carved as a child with his real name etched into the keel.

Through hidden passages in the residence, Vis eavesdrops on a private Military summit and learns the worst truth of the book so far: leaders within Military have been secretly funding the Anguis. They armed Estevan with the Melior. They orchestrated the festival massacre to terrify the population and consolidate Military's grip on the Senate. The names Vis memorizes are sent to Sedotia. Sedotia, in turn, reveals her own face: she is Relucia Telimus, Ulciscor's wife. The Anguis demand Vis win the Iudicium so that the Senate appointment puts their inside man in the heart of the Republic.

Chapters LVI–LX: Ulciscor's ultimatum

Back at the estate during a Festival for the Dead, Vis reports the Suus discoveries to Ulciscor. Ulciscor responds by demanding Vis enter the western dome and run the Labyrinth carved inside it. If Vis refuses, Ulciscor will hand him to the Sappers. Lanistia protests; Ulciscor overrules her. Vis is alone now in three directions at once — Ulciscor's pawn, Relucia's pawn, and Veridius's pet candidate.

Chapters LXI–LXIV: The real Labyrinth

Vis crosses into the forbidden western ruins one final time. At the gate of the red dome he is met by the wolf cub he saved years ago, now full grown — an alupi named Diago, his own childhood name. The wolf lets him pass. Inside the dome, Vis finds Belli's mutilated body. He runs the true Labyrinth — not the training replica at the Academy, but the original. He reaches a chamber at the center that triggers what the carved warnings called Synchronization: an agonizing splitting of his consciousness across three realities. He escapes the chamber alive, bitten on the arm by an eyeless "Warrior" — a wound that begins, almost immediately, to blacken and rot.

Chapters LXV–LXIX: The Iudicium begins

Praeceptor Nequias accelerates the contest. The Class Three competitors must retrieve a relic called the Heart of Jovan from a high tower elsewhere on the island, while every competitor swallows a Will-tracked beacon that lets the others target them. Class Four supporters can choose to bind to their senior, defect, or chase a separate prize.

Vis assembles his team — Callidus, Aequa, and a small group of lower-class students — and the Iudicium begins. Almost immediately the field goes wrong. Aequa appears to betray Vis, then turns out to be a double agent who has been sabotaging the rival senior Iro's team from inside. Vis nearly dies to a powerful opponent. He works out that the trackers need a central broadcast point to function and steals one. He crosses into Iudicium territory the Academy considers forbidden, encounters the wolf Diago again, and survives — barely.

Chapters LXX–LXXII: Massacre

Vis discovers that the safety teams stationed across the island have been murdered and replaced by Anguis infiltrators. They are not there to keep the students safe. They are there to kill any student who saw too much, and to push Vis through to victory. He sprints across the island warning his classmates. An Anguis operative corners him, recognizes that Vis has run the western Labyrinth, and lets him go — Relucia's orders. The scarred man outlines the bigger plan: Military will use the massacre to seize emergency power, with Vis as their planted Senator-elect.

Vis reaches the tower. He finds Emissa already there. A black-eyed guard with what looks like a Pre-Cataclysm parasite latched to the base of his skull nearly kills Vis before Emissa severs the thing with a desperate use of her own Will. Emissa believes him about the coup. She binds his wounds. Then her own eyes go black. She demands the Heart of Jovan. She stabs Vis and hurls him from the tower. He hits the river. The Heart of Jovan snaps back into his hand as he falls.

Chapter LXXIII: Callidus

Diago the wolf drags Vis ashore. The tracking stones say his medallion never moved from where the Heart should be; the system thinks he's still inside the tower. He staggers across the island toward where he last saw Callidus and finds an Anguis corpse with its throat torn out — and Callidus, tortured nearly to death, bleeding out beneath a tree. Callidus presses a small white medallion into Vis's hand and asks him to tell his father why he was demoted from Class Three to Class Seven. He dies before Vis can reach help. Vis carries his body the rest of the way back to the Academy, talking to him the whole way.

Chapter LXXIV: The reckoning

Vis stumbles into the Academy plaza with Callidus's body and the Heart of Jovan. The Iudicium ends. The surviving students stand with Veridius. Vis vows, aloud, vengeance on Veridius for Callidus. He collapses.

He wakes in the infirmary days later. His infected left arm has been amputated. Veridius is sitting beside him, and he knows — knows — that Vis ran the real Labyrinth. He tells Vis that Emissa attacked because she saw the bite on his arm and concluded he had been "tainted" by what was in the western ruins. Veridius begs Vis to accept a Senate appointment within Religion so that he can be brought into the truth. He says he is trying to prevent a second Cataclysm. Vis refuses. He chooses Governance instead — Callidus's father's faction — so that he can deliver Callidus's last message and investigate the system from inside the office that Census reports to. Veridius is furious. The council ratifies the choice anyway.

Alone in the infirmary, Vis finds the wooden ship from Fadrique on his bedside table. His real name — Diago — is carved into the keel. Someone has reached him here. Someone knows.

Epilogue — Ex Uno Plures

A separate Vis awakes in a stone chamber inside the western ruins. Not the Vis from the infirmary. A second one. He is whole — both arms intact — and he is being welcomed by a stranger to a place called Luceum.

A third Vis awakes in the same chamber. He is whole. He is met by a man he has never seen before in the flesh, but whom he recognizes instantly from Ulciscor's grief-stricken descriptions: Caeror Telimus. Ulciscor's "dead" brother. Caeror tells Vis that he is in Obiteum, that the three of them — the three Vises — are now spread across three parallel realities, and that they will need to work together to survive a threat far larger than the Hierarchy. The Synchronization in the western Labyrinth did not "split" Vis. It triplicated him. The book ends on that revelation.

About the Book

The Will of the Many is the first novel in James Islington's planned Hierarchy series. It was published by Saga Press (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) and Gallery on May 23, 2023. The hardcover runs around 640 pages in most editions, and the book reached the New York Times bestseller list within weeks of release. It currently sits at a Goodreads average above 4.5 across more than a quarter of a million ratings, one of the highest scores of any adult fantasy debut of the decade.

Islington was previously the author of the Licanius Trilogy (The Shadow of What Was Lost, An Echo of Things to Come, The Light of All That Falls). The Hierarchy is a planned three-book series — early publicity called it a two-book story, but Islington has since confirmed three.

The sequel, The Strength of the Few, was published on November 11, 2025. The third and final volume has not yet been announced.

If you've finished The Will of the Many and need a refresher on where the three Vises ended up before diving into The Strength of the Few, the short version is: one Vis is in Res (the original reality, recovering from the Iudicium and his amputation), one Vis is in Luceum, and one Vis is in Obiteum with the very-much-alive Caeror Telimus. The trilogy will follow all three.