The Will of The Many by James Islington - A Review

      Sometimes I will wait a bit before I start with a new series for fear I will be so in love with the previous series, I will not give the new series a clean slate to start. I start comparing the characters and the worldbuilding one to the other, which is not fair to the author.  I really liked James Islington's first series The Icanius Trilogy and approached this new series with a bit of trepidation.  I should not have worried. After a bit of a slow start, this tale begins to move at a pleasant pace. 

 I thought that I was done with the "Kids in School" trope, but I guess not. This book really picks up when the teenage main character goes to the "Academy."  There is a bit of a Dickensian start to the book. And a smattering of Romanesque imagery, and tech that jars you out of your first impressions. So, there is a bit of worldbuilding to this first book. I did not feel overwhelmed by the worldbuilding and there were no long paragraphs of info dumps, a big plus. The info was feed in small bites at which it seems to me, the perfect timing of info and pace. 

       The book has a First-Person narrative style, which is always my favorite style to listen to as an audiobook. The book is performed by Euan Morton, a brilliant voice actor whose work I have come across a few times. I am a big fan of audiobooks. I have been listening to audiobooks when they were suitcase like with 40 cassettes, then CDs that were a little more manageable. Love the audiobook experience while working out or cleaning.