Sue’s review of The Will of the Many (Hierarchy, #1) > Likes and Comments
88 likes · Like
So if I read Red Rising I don't need to bother with TWOTM?
Pernille wrote: "So if I read Red Rising I don't need to bother with TWOTM?"
If you've already read Red Rising, yeah dont bother with TWOTM. They're basically same story, same conflict
If you haven't read any, pick one of them
Though I'd lean more towards RR, it has more emotions
but I gave both 2 stars
Sue wrote: "Pernille wrote: "So if I read Red Rising I don't need to bother with TWOTM?"
If you've already read Red Rising, yeah dont bother with TWOTM. They're basically same story, same conflict
If you have..."
I'll go with RR then, as I have access to the RR audibook but not TWOTM, plus it's sold out in bookstores.
excited to read the book and come back to this rant review!!
You might want to read the book more thoroughly because there are several sections in your review that show, that you either didn't understand it or didn't read it thoroughly enough.
And always remember, when everyone is against you, you should at least give the opposing position a chance and try to understand them because you might even be the one who's wrong.
@JanickPreun
I wish I could show you the annotations I did for the book
I think I'll add a link to my tiktok
I don't mind opposing ideas as long as they are respectful and with evidence
Having just finished The Shadow of What was Lost, I'm more convinced that Islington recycled his own ideas
His use of board games, wolf, time travel concepts, hidden identities, Princes in disguise.....
So, thank you.but I'll stick to my review
I can’t believe you think this was a copy of crescent city! I hated that book and it was SO unnecessarily long 😂 after reading so many SJM and booktok recommendations this was a breath of fresh air. No hate, I’m just shocked by your review haha
Tonje wrote: "I can’t believe you think this was a copy of crescent city! I hated that book and it was SO unnecessarily long 😂 after reading so many SJM and booktok recommendations this was a breath of fresh air..."
Hmmm let's see
So you have a world divided into Hierarchy (Asteri, Vanir, humans..) where the higher powers feed of the Will/energy of the people and use that Will to power up themselves, the city and machinery. The power is lacking so the Hierarchy creates clones to use as batteries
yeaahhhh
definetly not the same 🤣🤣
Also, I am reading Islington's The Licanius Trilogy, and while that is brilliant, Islington is defiently recyclying his own ideas into the Will of The Many.
I was some 3% into the book when I found out Vis was a boy 🤣 I was reading him in a girl’s voice till then 🥹 my bad, I didn’t read what the book was about
Fun review to read, just one small nitpick. Priory has a word count of 295k, so it's a longer book. That's all.
Sharmila wrote: "I was some 3% into the book when I found out Vis was a boy 🤣 I was reading him in a girl’s voice till then 🥹 my bad, I didn’t read what the book was about"
🤣🤣 I was halfway through the book when I realized that Vek is supposed to mean Fuck
I feel like we didn’t read the same book.
@Julian
I am always open to conversation and debate and I am willing to change my mind if given proof
Prove to me that Ves is a rounded character and not monotonous
That JI did not use the same concepts from his Licarius trilogy of different worlds, hierarchies and politics
That his conflict is not the same as SJM
That his world is unique
And I'll happily write another review
I only got a quarter of the way through before DNFing but I can’t tell you how many times I said, this is fantasy Red Rising.
I'm going to be honest. I feel like you're one of those reviewers who are unnecessary rude and snarky for no reason. Do you actually think this book is one of the worst of the worst? All of your problems with Vis can be resolved if you factor in the fact that he's a teenager. And the reason he has to be more capable than most is because how else could he been chosen to enter the academy. You say the books like Red Rising and TWOTM have the same "know it all" characters but again, do you want to follow a protagonist who are unremarkable in every way? Speaking of "know it all" characters, you gave Project Hail Mary a 5-star yet the protag in that book is a bit of a Gary Stu too, even more than Vis if you ask me since we actually followed Vis throughout his training sessions. So your biggest gripes with this book are 1. The plots are too similar to other books and 2. The protag is too much of a know-it-all? And that's enough to rank a quite capable and well written book a 1 star? I truely recommend you to look inward and ask yourself if you're an actual good review or a deeply bitter person who just want to snark for internet points.
P/s: Just saw you gave "To Kill a Kingdom", a book that has 70% of its content telling us about charaters going around and describing shit they see, 4 stars yet here in this review you complained that Vis over described the places he went to even though they actually are interwoven into the mythology of this book? Again I question your ability to review books.
The people who only get a certain percent through the book should keep their opinion until they finish it. Your opinion is baseless
Can't muddle through your review, but now I'll be checking out Crescent City! Thanks!
Crystal wrote: "I'm going to be honest. I feel like you're one of those reviewers who are unnecessary rude and snarky for no reason. Do you actually think this book is one of the worst of the worst? All of your pr..."
I am going to be honest too, I feel you are one of those Karens who hate seeing one star reviews of their books so they ad hominem against the reviewer meaning you are the bitter one
You have a conflicting argument. At one point you want me to excuse how Vis was written because he is "a teenager" but then you want me to accept him as "a know-it-all all" even though he is a teenager!!!! strange...
and what makes a character a good character is their ability to develop whether towards goodness or badness...Vis was a monotone.. a one-dimensional KNOW IT ALL TEENAGER
If a writer chose a teenager to put the weight of the world on his shoulder then I will judge the character based on that and not on their age
Bringing other book reviews shows your immaturity and naivety, but let me satisfy you.
Ryland in Project Hail Mary is a middle aged physicist. He had the maturity of experience. He is in a medium where the only way to survive is using Science, he did not show knowledge in art or literature, did not challenge Spider in chess and won , in fact, he made so many mistakes that the alien creature had to fix.
There is no neglected rebellion or trials where he wins every single time
got it?
As for To Kill a Kingdom, you do realize that it is a romantacy right? that you review it in comparison to other romantacies and the requirement of what makes a romantacy work! you do not compare Fantasy Romance to Epic Fantasy. That is absurd
It was promoted as an Enemies to Lovers /Little Mermaid Retelling with Dark theme
did it deliver that? Hell yeah it did
TWOTM is presented as High Fantasy / Dark Academia
and i think I explained how it failed in that aspect
one star because Islington - who has written a brilliant series, the Licanius series, which I gave 4/5 stars - has brought a recycled concept of his old books. one star when I compare TWOTM with HIGH FANTASY such as Brandon Sanderson and GRRM
also TKAK is around 350 pages and no, the description is not 70%..I doubt you've read it...a paragraph describing the ship is acceptable whilt 2 pages telling me the shape of a cave wall is not
While TWOTM is 660 pages which I could place at least 250 pages with excessive descriptions
you question my ability to review? hehehe i laughed so hard
chill professor ....you look like you just came out of the womb
Joshua wrote: "The people who only get a certain percent through the book should keep their opinion until they finish it. Your opinion is baseless"
are you visually impaired?
Sue Said: "a boy/girl/person loses his/her/their family/loved ones/partner to an unjust regime that divides people based on colors/ranks/districts. Vows for revenge so they go into hiding within them. Luck throws him in the path of a high-ranking personnel who adopts him as his son so he can infiltrate an Academy/organization and spy/report on it. The resistance leader finds the lad and attempts to recruit him. At first, he is reluctant until he is reminded of the system's brutality. Our protagonist trains hard to enter the Academy." end of part 1."
I feel like this is a very (bad) broad strokes breakdown that you could apply to any number of fiction series, it is just sorta describing a sort of sub genre within fiction. You could apply this break down to Dune, which is a critically acclaimed sci-fi novel, you could loosely apply it to Wheel of Time, again a critically acclaimed fantasy novel.
Now I enjoyed the book, it wasn't the best book I ever read and I have my fair share of gripes with it (the magic system is barely explained), but the way that you say it is the same as Crescent City, you could say this is the same as Hunger Games, Red Rising, or any number of amazing books.
These books are written with "know it all" kids (as you put it) because this is going to be a series and they want to crank through this content and give you the set up so that the rest of the world can be developed later in the series. You could say the same criticism of Red Rising with Darrow at the Academy, or in Dune with Paul learning the ways of the Freman.
Mason wrote: " Sue Said: "a boy/girl/person loses his/her/their family/loved ones/partner to an unjust regime that divides people based on colors/ranks/districts. Vows for revenge so they go into hiding within t..."
"I feel like this is a very (bad) broad strokes breakdown that you could apply to any number of fiction series, it is just sorta describing a sort of sub genre within fiction. You could apply this break down to Dune, which is a critically acclaimed sci-fi novel, you could loosely apply it to Wheel of Time, again a critically acclaimed fantasy novel."
Ah! but who came first? if a book is a copy of a copy of a copy of an original? why should I treat it anything but
so if it is "a sub genre" as you call it, what distinguishes it from the rest??? what does it bring to the table?
the character is copied
the world is copied
the conflict is copied
the magic is copied
and personally, if that is ok with some readers, I have high standards that prevent me from acknowledging this book anything but a copy
and I gave Red Rising 1 star for being a Hunger Games on Mars and for Darrow being a one-dimentional character....
If authors are failing to give us "new" and resorting to "copy" then I'll just call them copiers not authors.
I have many, maaaany readers especially male readers describing this book as "unique", "outstanding" and "nothing I have ever read before"...."bah humbag"
What’re you talking about sign language?? Where in this book is there sing language?
I really liked it, but I hadn't read his previous books. I picked up his first book recently and I dnf-ed it like 50 pages in because of what that Augor servant guy did to that girl, who is a 16 yr old child. I'm still pretty psyched about reading the strength of the few, though. Hopefully what ever he writes after the Hierarchy series will be different enough for previous readers to get behind.
Saying this author plagiarized SJM is craaaaaazzzzzzyyyyy work. 😂😂😂
Also you seem incredibly insufferable. I wish we could ban this type of rage bait for engagement, snarky reviewing. With this much time and energy on your hands, I look forward to reading your own novel. I’m sure it’ll be amazing.
Kim wrote: "Saying this author plagiarized SJM is craaaaaazzzzzzyyyyy work. 😂😂😂
Also you seem incredibly insufferable. I wish we could ban this type of rage bait for engagement, snarky reviewing. With this mu..."
Look here Kim-wanna-be-dashian with the same reading capacity as her...If you lack the critical thinking to figure it out, don't worry, I've got you because if you scrolled a bit in the comments you would have seen I answered the same query ..
"So you have a world divided into Hierarchy (Asteri, Vanir, humans..) where the higher powers feed of the Will/energy of the people and use that Will to power up themselves, the city and machinery. The power is lacking so the Hierarchy creates clones to use as batteries
yeaahhhh
definetly not the same 🤣🤣"
now, you are calling me insufferable? did you see me going into the 5-star reviews of this book, attacking people's personalities and opinions? you should have gone to these low-standard praises and formed a happy cult together instead of coming to others' reviews and showing how little understanding you have!
Where did I say he plagiarised? I said copied...two different terms sweety!
You loved this book, great! Happy for you, go spread the news of your low standards with other people who praise authors for doing the bare minimum.
Because heaven forbids we demand actual level of originality from authors who can't come up with their own stuff!
Michelle wrote: "I really liked it, but I hadn't read his previous books. I picked up his first book recently and I dnf-ed it like 50 pages in because of what that Augor servant guy did to that girl, who is a 16 yr..."
I understand that completely. Not everyone is going to like the same books. But personally, I found his first book more daring, more dark, and that is why as you go into it, the character development was amazing.
TWOFTM felt diluted and catered
Pretty sure the sign language part you referenced was actually a different spoken language. The other teams used hand signals (not sign language, just simple “codes” that I interpreted to be like hand signals when riding a bike, but random so their opponents couldn’t understand them). The teacher was mad they spoke another language (non-Catenan) and disqualified them for that.
And to your other comments…so if something follows a similar formula to anything that’s come before, it’s a 1 star?
I think some of the mystery is the point here. Like the hierarchy is using technology they didn’t build and don’t fully understand because they reap the benefits of it. Part of the ceding seems to be because people want power. Money exists even though we could just trade, but there’s a system to make things faster and we follow it even though it’s inequitable.
And as for people going back to normal after tragedies like the naumachia, that happens in real life. Certain areas are more directly impacted, but that wasn’t where this story took place. They left Caten that night. There’s war and death every day, and people still go to work, sometimes even in the places where war is happening.
I think the Anguis are also purposely complex. Aside from knowing that the Hierarchy conquered Suus and other countries, we don’t know much about what makes them evil. In Suus, they only seemed to have killed the royal family. But in Eidhin’s homeland they killed and imprisoned many more people, but still negotiated a treaty. They seem corrupt, but it’s not like the Empire where we see them blow up a whole planet. On the other hand, the Anguis are seen multiple times committing murder. Yeah, they have a point about complicity (I think the Will system makes it more obvious how everyone in a corrupt system can become a cog), but does that really justify their methods? It’s like people who bring up the death toll from Luke blowing up the Death Star, except that we knew was a more necessary evil.
You’re entitled to your opinions, I just find it hard to believe that a book this well written that sparks this much thought and discussion is truly ONE star.
Michael wrote: "Pretty sure the sign language part you referenced was actually a different spoken language. The other teams used hand signals (not sign language, just simple “codes” that I interpreted to be like h..."
Hello Michael,
thank you so much for your respectful reply
I enjoyed it because you made very good points
I went back to the book to make sure about "sign language", I know it is Code, I should have written "like sign language"
Does this book deserve one star? No. My initial rating was 2.5
however, after the "same conflict" with SJM, I decided to lower the rating. As I said in my review, it is a well-written book and much better than many books that came in the same year.
as for your question "so if something follows a similar formula to anything that’s come before, it’s a 1 star?" the answer is No of course as long as the book adds its own which in this case I did not find anything that I would say it belonged solely to TWOTM.
If everything is taken from everything else, I lose respect for the book. But that is me.
I do understand why readers love and hype this book. I am happy for them. However, my perspective is "once we allow authors to take everything from other books, authenticity dies"
and frankly, I am happy to be the voice that calls such books
again, I am not against inspiration or "copying" certain parts, characters or conflict. It is the "what are you bringing to the table"
This blatant taking everything from other books will pave the way for AI books. We are already seeing that
again, nothing against Islington. I loved his Licanius series, but I expected something mind blowing after so long of him not writing.
So what I’m hearing is I should read Red Rising 👀
@Ona
Read whatever you want 🌹
My review is not to say "read this Dont read that"
I am just pointing out the similarities
FYI. I disnt like Red Rising for almost the same reasons I mentioned here
Maybe you'll live TWOTM more than RR
I did not like this book. Vis was about as unable as they come, to the point that at about 60 pages in, I was googling to see if the author was setting up a growth situation.
But two points:
Islington is setting up a Roman-based fantasy world, not Greek. Important for the larger implications he and like he’s trying to (unsuccessfully) set up.
Secondly, it’s not sign language. Eidhan is a stand in for a welsh character (mountain tribes aggressively resisting Roman occupation, and Cymru is the welsh name for the welsh language and nation. Additionally, the words Islington used for Eidhan’s language use recognizable welsh letter systems.)
It’s still incredibly bad. About as derivative as it gets. No depth. Trope heavy. Predictable. More of an education in how not to write than anything else. And yet, people like it, so maybe we should all be writing shitty schlock so we can be successful, too.
I weep for the future.
Like Lindsey I weep for the future too if books like these are considered “good”
@Lindsey
Thank you for that 🌹🌹
And yeah. It is Roman...probably i was immersed in Greek mythology at the time, and the romance definetly copied a lot from them
I don't know why in my mind I thought it was sign language. I did a very quick survey reread because I wanted to read book 2 and yeah, it's a somewhat dead language they used as code
I would say book 2 is a little bit better than book 1 but definetly this one is just as you said, heavy trope, everything we've seen before, which is what we are getting nowadays unfortunately
From what I saw you said it was well written, but you gave it 1 star? No hate but… these reviews are public, and effect the overall rating. Which intern affects the authors income. A one star is as low as a rating can be. You may not have enjoyed this book and thought it was a copy, but it definitely isn’t a 1 star. Also definitely read red rising lol it’s one of my favorite series!
Titus wrote: "From what I saw you said it was well written, but you gave it 1 star? No hate but… these reviews are public, and effect the overall rating. Which intern affects the authors income. A one star is as..."
Oh no! Poor Islington! whatever he would do now! my poor insignificant one star amongst the thousands of 5 stars will cut his income!!
This, respectfully, is the most "underwhelming" comment ever!
You do realise that a traditionally published author is already paid immensly for his book deal? or that he gets royalties for every book sold not reviewed? or that when there are over 200k reviews here, there are 5 times maybe 10 times that number of ppl buying the book and not reviewing! so belive me, Islington's pocket is safe from my meager one star review
Also, this is not how reviews work! this is not a charity!
When I said it is well-written, the only point you took from every negative I pointed, i refered to sentence structure and grammar...
however, plot, character, conflict, story plan, originality, inguinity was very VERY lacking
I am never going to give a book that gives me nothing new more than one star
I think you are spot on! great review! What also bothered me immensely is how early in the book MC finds not one but two catacombs filled with literally dead but moving and talking human beings. They come alive and shout stuff. MC just, moves on from this very traumatic events. ANy normal person would spend the rest of the months constanly thinking about what they saw and who were those people and how are they looking so alive and dead but undead? What is that place etc. Normal person would constantly wreck their brain and constantly go to the library trying to find litterature about it etc. Not the MC. He and the other character he tells the stories never thinks about it after that, he just focuses on his classes. That was wild to me. As you said he was mostly just too emotionless like a robot
Totally don’t see parallels at all. This is not some pornographic romantacy. The main character in Krys did not go to a school. She was not part of the pack for her best friend. Yeah, no. You’re ranting for the sake of ranting, did you even read the book?
back to top
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Pernille
(new)
May 09, 2024 01:52AM
So if I read Red Rising I don't need to bother with TWOTM?
reply
|
flag
Pernille wrote: "So if I read Red Rising I don't need to bother with TWOTM?"If you've already read Red Rising, yeah dont bother with TWOTM. They're basically same story, same conflict
If you haven't read any, pick one of them
Though I'd lean more towards RR, it has more emotions
but I gave both 2 stars
Sue wrote: "Pernille wrote: "So if I read Red Rising I don't need to bother with TWOTM?"If you've already read Red Rising, yeah dont bother with TWOTM. They're basically same story, same conflict
If you have..."
I'll go with RR then, as I have access to the RR audibook but not TWOTM, plus it's sold out in bookstores.
excited to read the book and come back to this rant review!!
You might want to read the book more thoroughly because there are several sections in your review that show, that you either didn't understand it or didn't read it thoroughly enough.And always remember, when everyone is against you, you should at least give the opposing position a chance and try to understand them because you might even be the one who's wrong.
@JanickPreunI wish I could show you the annotations I did for the book
I think I'll add a link to my tiktok
I don't mind opposing ideas as long as they are respectful and with evidence
Having just finished The Shadow of What was Lost, I'm more convinced that Islington recycled his own ideas
His use of board games, wolf, time travel concepts, hidden identities, Princes in disguise.....
So, thank you.but I'll stick to my review
I can’t believe you think this was a copy of crescent city! I hated that book and it was SO unnecessarily long 😂 after reading so many SJM and booktok recommendations this was a breath of fresh air. No hate, I’m just shocked by your review haha
Tonje wrote: "I can’t believe you think this was a copy of crescent city! I hated that book and it was SO unnecessarily long 😂 after reading so many SJM and booktok recommendations this was a breath of fresh air..."Hmmm let's see
So you have a world divided into Hierarchy (Asteri, Vanir, humans..) where the higher powers feed of the Will/energy of the people and use that Will to power up themselves, the city and machinery. The power is lacking so the Hierarchy creates clones to use as batteries
yeaahhhh
definetly not the same 🤣🤣
Also, I am reading Islington's The Licanius Trilogy, and while that is brilliant, Islington is defiently recyclying his own ideas into the Will of The Many.
I was some 3% into the book when I found out Vis was a boy 🤣 I was reading him in a girl’s voice till then 🥹 my bad, I didn’t read what the book was about
Fun review to read, just one small nitpick. Priory has a word count of 295k, so it's a longer book. That's all.
Sharmila wrote: "I was some 3% into the book when I found out Vis was a boy 🤣 I was reading him in a girl’s voice till then 🥹 my bad, I didn’t read what the book was about"🤣🤣 I was halfway through the book when I realized that Vek is supposed to mean Fuck
I feel like we didn’t read the same book.
@JulianI am always open to conversation and debate and I am willing to change my mind if given proof
Prove to me that Ves is a rounded character and not monotonous
That JI did not use the same concepts from his Licarius trilogy of different worlds, hierarchies and politics
That his conflict is not the same as SJM
That his world is unique
And I'll happily write another review
I only got a quarter of the way through before DNFing but I can’t tell you how many times I said, this is fantasy Red Rising.
I'm going to be honest. I feel like you're one of those reviewers who are unnecessary rude and snarky for no reason. Do you actually think this book is one of the worst of the worst? All of your problems with Vis can be resolved if you factor in the fact that he's a teenager. And the reason he has to be more capable than most is because how else could he been chosen to enter the academy. You say the books like Red Rising and TWOTM have the same "know it all" characters but again, do you want to follow a protagonist who are unremarkable in every way? Speaking of "know it all" characters, you gave Project Hail Mary a 5-star yet the protag in that book is a bit of a Gary Stu too, even more than Vis if you ask me since we actually followed Vis throughout his training sessions. So your biggest gripes with this book are 1. The plots are too similar to other books and 2. The protag is too much of a know-it-all? And that's enough to rank a quite capable and well written book a 1 star? I truely recommend you to look inward and ask yourself if you're an actual good review or a deeply bitter person who just want to snark for internet points.P/s: Just saw you gave "To Kill a Kingdom", a book that has 70% of its content telling us about charaters going around and describing shit they see, 4 stars yet here in this review you complained that Vis over described the places he went to even though they actually are interwoven into the mythology of this book? Again I question your ability to review books.
The people who only get a certain percent through the book should keep their opinion until they finish it. Your opinion is baseless
Can't muddle through your review, but now I'll be checking out Crescent City! Thanks!
Crystal wrote: "I'm going to be honest. I feel like you're one of those reviewers who are unnecessary rude and snarky for no reason. Do you actually think this book is one of the worst of the worst? All of your pr..."I am going to be honest too, I feel you are one of those Karens who hate seeing one star reviews of their books so they ad hominem against the reviewer meaning you are the bitter one
You have a conflicting argument. At one point you want me to excuse how Vis was written because he is "a teenager" but then you want me to accept him as "a know-it-all all" even though he is a teenager!!!! strange...
and what makes a character a good character is their ability to develop whether towards goodness or badness...Vis was a monotone.. a one-dimensional KNOW IT ALL TEENAGER
If a writer chose a teenager to put the weight of the world on his shoulder then I will judge the character based on that and not on their age
Bringing other book reviews shows your immaturity and naivety, but let me satisfy you.
Ryland in Project Hail Mary is a middle aged physicist. He had the maturity of experience. He is in a medium where the only way to survive is using Science, he did not show knowledge in art or literature, did not challenge Spider in chess and won , in fact, he made so many mistakes that the alien creature had to fix.
There is no neglected rebellion or trials where he wins every single time
got it?
As for To Kill a Kingdom, you do realize that it is a romantacy right? that you review it in comparison to other romantacies and the requirement of what makes a romantacy work! you do not compare Fantasy Romance to Epic Fantasy. That is absurd
It was promoted as an Enemies to Lovers /Little Mermaid Retelling with Dark theme
did it deliver that? Hell yeah it did
TWOTM is presented as High Fantasy / Dark Academia
and i think I explained how it failed in that aspect
one star because Islington - who has written a brilliant series, the Licanius series, which I gave 4/5 stars - has brought a recycled concept of his old books. one star when I compare TWOTM with HIGH FANTASY such as Brandon Sanderson and GRRM
also TKAK is around 350 pages and no, the description is not 70%..I doubt you've read it...a paragraph describing the ship is acceptable whilt 2 pages telling me the shape of a cave wall is not
While TWOTM is 660 pages which I could place at least 250 pages with excessive descriptions
you question my ability to review? hehehe i laughed so hard
chill professor ....you look like you just came out of the womb
Joshua wrote: "The people who only get a certain percent through the book should keep their opinion until they finish it. Your opinion is baseless"are you visually impaired?
Sue Said: "a boy/girl/person loses his/her/their family/loved ones/partner to an unjust regime that divides people based on colors/ranks/districts. Vows for revenge so they go into hiding within them. Luck throws him in the path of a high-ranking personnel who adopts him as his son so he can infiltrate an Academy/organization and spy/report on it. The resistance leader finds the lad and attempts to recruit him. At first, he is reluctant until he is reminded of the system's brutality. Our protagonist trains hard to enter the Academy." end of part 1." I feel like this is a very (bad) broad strokes breakdown that you could apply to any number of fiction series, it is just sorta describing a sort of sub genre within fiction. You could apply this break down to Dune, which is a critically acclaimed sci-fi novel, you could loosely apply it to Wheel of Time, again a critically acclaimed fantasy novel.
Now I enjoyed the book, it wasn't the best book I ever read and I have my fair share of gripes with it (the magic system is barely explained), but the way that you say it is the same as Crescent City, you could say this is the same as Hunger Games, Red Rising, or any number of amazing books.
These books are written with "know it all" kids (as you put it) because this is going to be a series and they want to crank through this content and give you the set up so that the rest of the world can be developed later in the series. You could say the same criticism of Red Rising with Darrow at the Academy, or in Dune with Paul learning the ways of the Freman.
Mason wrote: " Sue Said: "a boy/girl/person loses his/her/their family/loved ones/partner to an unjust regime that divides people based on colors/ranks/districts. Vows for revenge so they go into hiding within t...""I feel like this is a very (bad) broad strokes breakdown that you could apply to any number of fiction series, it is just sorta describing a sort of sub genre within fiction. You could apply this break down to Dune, which is a critically acclaimed sci-fi novel, you could loosely apply it to Wheel of Time, again a critically acclaimed fantasy novel."
Ah! but who came first? if a book is a copy of a copy of a copy of an original? why should I treat it anything but
so if it is "a sub genre" as you call it, what distinguishes it from the rest??? what does it bring to the table?
the character is copied
the world is copied
the conflict is copied
the magic is copied
and personally, if that is ok with some readers, I have high standards that prevent me from acknowledging this book anything but a copy
and I gave Red Rising 1 star for being a Hunger Games on Mars and for Darrow being a one-dimentional character....
If authors are failing to give us "new" and resorting to "copy" then I'll just call them copiers not authors.
I have many, maaaany readers especially male readers describing this book as "unique", "outstanding" and "nothing I have ever read before"...."bah humbag"
What’re you talking about sign language?? Where in this book is there sing language?
I really liked it, but I hadn't read his previous books. I picked up his first book recently and I dnf-ed it like 50 pages in because of what that Augor servant guy did to that girl, who is a 16 yr old child. I'm still pretty psyched about reading the strength of the few, though. Hopefully what ever he writes after the Hierarchy series will be different enough for previous readers to get behind.
Saying this author plagiarized SJM is craaaaaazzzzzzyyyyy work. 😂😂😂Also you seem incredibly insufferable. I wish we could ban this type of rage bait for engagement, snarky reviewing. With this much time and energy on your hands, I look forward to reading your own novel. I’m sure it’ll be amazing.
Kim wrote: "Saying this author plagiarized SJM is craaaaaazzzzzzyyyyy work. 😂😂😂Also you seem incredibly insufferable. I wish we could ban this type of rage bait for engagement, snarky reviewing. With this mu..."
Look here Kim-wanna-be-dashian with the same reading capacity as her...If you lack the critical thinking to figure it out, don't worry, I've got you because if you scrolled a bit in the comments you would have seen I answered the same query ..
"So you have a world divided into Hierarchy (Asteri, Vanir, humans..) where the higher powers feed of the Will/energy of the people and use that Will to power up themselves, the city and machinery. The power is lacking so the Hierarchy creates clones to use as batteries
yeaahhhh
definetly not the same 🤣🤣"
now, you are calling me insufferable? did you see me going into the 5-star reviews of this book, attacking people's personalities and opinions? you should have gone to these low-standard praises and formed a happy cult together instead of coming to others' reviews and showing how little understanding you have!
Where did I say he plagiarised? I said copied...two different terms sweety!
You loved this book, great! Happy for you, go spread the news of your low standards with other people who praise authors for doing the bare minimum.
Because heaven forbids we demand actual level of originality from authors who can't come up with their own stuff!
Michelle wrote: "I really liked it, but I hadn't read his previous books. I picked up his first book recently and I dnf-ed it like 50 pages in because of what that Augor servant guy did to that girl, who is a 16 yr..."I understand that completely. Not everyone is going to like the same books. But personally, I found his first book more daring, more dark, and that is why as you go into it, the character development was amazing.
TWOFTM felt diluted and catered
Pretty sure the sign language part you referenced was actually a different spoken language. The other teams used hand signals (not sign language, just simple “codes” that I interpreted to be like hand signals when riding a bike, but random so their opponents couldn’t understand them). The teacher was mad they spoke another language (non-Catenan) and disqualified them for that. And to your other comments…so if something follows a similar formula to anything that’s come before, it’s a 1 star?
I think some of the mystery is the point here. Like the hierarchy is using technology they didn’t build and don’t fully understand because they reap the benefits of it. Part of the ceding seems to be because people want power. Money exists even though we could just trade, but there’s a system to make things faster and we follow it even though it’s inequitable.
And as for people going back to normal after tragedies like the naumachia, that happens in real life. Certain areas are more directly impacted, but that wasn’t where this story took place. They left Caten that night. There’s war and death every day, and people still go to work, sometimes even in the places where war is happening.
I think the Anguis are also purposely complex. Aside from knowing that the Hierarchy conquered Suus and other countries, we don’t know much about what makes them evil. In Suus, they only seemed to have killed the royal family. But in Eidhin’s homeland they killed and imprisoned many more people, but still negotiated a treaty. They seem corrupt, but it’s not like the Empire where we see them blow up a whole planet. On the other hand, the Anguis are seen multiple times committing murder. Yeah, they have a point about complicity (I think the Will system makes it more obvious how everyone in a corrupt system can become a cog), but does that really justify their methods? It’s like people who bring up the death toll from Luke blowing up the Death Star, except that we knew was a more necessary evil.
You’re entitled to your opinions, I just find it hard to believe that a book this well written that sparks this much thought and discussion is truly ONE star.
Michael wrote: "Pretty sure the sign language part you referenced was actually a different spoken language. The other teams used hand signals (not sign language, just simple “codes” that I interpreted to be like h..."Hello Michael,
thank you so much for your respectful reply
I enjoyed it because you made very good points
I went back to the book to make sure about "sign language", I know it is Code, I should have written "like sign language"
Does this book deserve one star? No. My initial rating was 2.5
however, after the "same conflict" with SJM, I decided to lower the rating. As I said in my review, it is a well-written book and much better than many books that came in the same year.
as for your question "so if something follows a similar formula to anything that’s come before, it’s a 1 star?" the answer is No of course as long as the book adds its own which in this case I did not find anything that I would say it belonged solely to TWOTM.
If everything is taken from everything else, I lose respect for the book. But that is me.
I do understand why readers love and hype this book. I am happy for them. However, my perspective is "once we allow authors to take everything from other books, authenticity dies"
and frankly, I am happy to be the voice that calls such books
again, I am not against inspiration or "copying" certain parts, characters or conflict. It is the "what are you bringing to the table"
This blatant taking everything from other books will pave the way for AI books. We are already seeing that
again, nothing against Islington. I loved his Licanius series, but I expected something mind blowing after so long of him not writing.
So what I’m hearing is I should read Red Rising 👀
@OnaRead whatever you want 🌹
My review is not to say "read this Dont read that"
I am just pointing out the similarities
FYI. I disnt like Red Rising for almost the same reasons I mentioned here
Maybe you'll live TWOTM more than RR
I did not like this book. Vis was about as unable as they come, to the point that at about 60 pages in, I was googling to see if the author was setting up a growth situation.But two points:
Islington is setting up a Roman-based fantasy world, not Greek. Important for the larger implications he and like he’s trying to (unsuccessfully) set up.
Secondly, it’s not sign language. Eidhan is a stand in for a welsh character (mountain tribes aggressively resisting Roman occupation, and Cymru is the welsh name for the welsh language and nation. Additionally, the words Islington used for Eidhan’s language use recognizable welsh letter systems.)
It’s still incredibly bad. About as derivative as it gets. No depth. Trope heavy. Predictable. More of an education in how not to write than anything else. And yet, people like it, so maybe we should all be writing shitty schlock so we can be successful, too.
I weep for the future.
Like Lindsey I weep for the future too if books like these are considered “good”
@LindseyThank you for that 🌹🌹
And yeah. It is Roman...probably i was immersed in Greek mythology at the time, and the romance definetly copied a lot from them
I don't know why in my mind I thought it was sign language. I did a very quick survey reread because I wanted to read book 2 and yeah, it's a somewhat dead language they used as code
I would say book 2 is a little bit better than book 1 but definetly this one is just as you said, heavy trope, everything we've seen before, which is what we are getting nowadays unfortunately
From what I saw you said it was well written, but you gave it 1 star? No hate but… these reviews are public, and effect the overall rating. Which intern affects the authors income. A one star is as low as a rating can be. You may not have enjoyed this book and thought it was a copy, but it definitely isn’t a 1 star. Also definitely read red rising lol it’s one of my favorite series!
Titus wrote: "From what I saw you said it was well written, but you gave it 1 star? No hate but… these reviews are public, and effect the overall rating. Which intern affects the authors income. A one star is as..."Oh no! Poor Islington! whatever he would do now! my poor insignificant one star amongst the thousands of 5 stars will cut his income!!
This, respectfully, is the most "underwhelming" comment ever!
You do realise that a traditionally published author is already paid immensly for his book deal? or that he gets royalties for every book sold not reviewed? or that when there are over 200k reviews here, there are 5 times maybe 10 times that number of ppl buying the book and not reviewing! so belive me, Islington's pocket is safe from my meager one star review
Also, this is not how reviews work! this is not a charity!
When I said it is well-written, the only point you took from every negative I pointed, i refered to sentence structure and grammar...
however, plot, character, conflict, story plan, originality, inguinity was very VERY lacking
I am never going to give a book that gives me nothing new more than one star
I think you are spot on! great review! What also bothered me immensely is how early in the book MC finds not one but two catacombs filled with literally dead but moving and talking human beings. They come alive and shout stuff. MC just, moves on from this very traumatic events. ANy normal person would spend the rest of the months constanly thinking about what they saw and who were those people and how are they looking so alive and dead but undead? What is that place etc. Normal person would constantly wreck their brain and constantly go to the library trying to find litterature about it etc. Not the MC. He and the other character he tells the stories never thinks about it after that, he just focuses on his classes. That was wild to me. As you said he was mostly just too emotionless like a robot
Totally don’t see parallels at all. This is not some pornographic romantacy. The main character in Krys did not go to a school. She was not part of the pack for her best friend. Yeah, no. You’re ranting for the sake of ranting, did you even read the book?
