r/HierarchySeries

The first book is amazing but it pretty much ignores the magic system completely. Then in the second book we get absolutely overwhelmed with increasingly escalating usage. We never got proper introduction into the scaling and difficulties at this point so it's hard to appreciate all these displays of power. I simply have no frame of reference.

I finished my rereads on both Licanius and Hierarchy, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE Islington's work. Does anyone have any recommendations for similar styles of writing that have the same fantasy magic system aspect and compelling characters? I'm thinking about reading Mistborn and the Kingkiller Chronicles, but I wanted to see if there were better options first.

>!So I’m only 110 pages into book 2 and the Vis in Lucideum (world that’s not Res or Obiteum) has given up…on his former life already for some reason???

So the reason I’m posting is because I’m very confused on this world’s Vis’s motivations. So this is how we currently stand: Res Vis (original) doesn’t know about anything with the other worlds and is just living in his world.

Obiteum Vis knows about everything so far - that’s he’s a “copy” sent to this world and all the other lore. And has been told he can’t get home.

Meanwhile the Lucideum Vis doesn’t know anything - thinks he’s just at some weird, far-away part of the world, I guess, right?

So why is my dude speaking like he’s given up on getting back to “home” like he’s knows he can’t? And why is he already calling it his former life and making peace with not going back and living in his current one?

I’m really confused. It’s like the author forgot what this world’s Vis knows and why isn’t he motivated like hell to get back to his academy and all his friends? Anyone else find this writing weird in this part of the book? No spoilers past 110 please!<

I’m sorry. I just started the strength of the few (100 pages in) but holy hell…I’m really getting tired of “gods-damned” in this book.

Like I get it; in real life, people always have a phrase they favor to say. But like…it is used way too much to the point of profound irritation to me.

I’m new to this community, so please don’t roast me if this has been brought up. But does it annoy everyone else as it does me? Like it’s too much, right?

I have seen from friends and from many people on this subreddit that there is a general dislike towards the Vis and Tara relationship. Why?

I understand that she is not the most complex character and their chemistry isn’t what he had with Aquea or Emissa but I still find it a pretty natural and nice subplot to the Luceum plot.

So, I just finished SOTW yesterday so I'm still contemplating the ending in all 3 worlds, but of course we know in Res >!that Ka is supposedly not the enemy but someone who claims that the cataclysms are the lesser evil and what would come instead would be much worse. Vis resurrects/activates the iunctii and the book concludes with this happy reunion of family and Callidus. What I don't understand is "Why is this good exactly?" Sure they're kind of back, but they're DEAD, and we've seen glimpses of how being brought back affects the psyche of the people. !<

>!IMO this cheapens death since most can be brought back (sorry Aequa) but not fully, so it's kind of a half measure.!<

I couldn't put the book down and still mostly enjoyed it; I'm excited for book 3! I just don't quite have a grasp on this compared to the end of The Will of the Many.

Hello! First off, I am completely new to the series and currently starting the first book, so please no story spoilers!

I am wondering how exactly the Pyramids work, how many there are (more than the 3 religion, military and government?), and so forth.

If my math is mathing, one Pyramid with one Princeps is around ~40k people. The three pyramids i know of so far are thus around ~120k people.

This seems like a very low number for what is afaik an entire continent spanning realm. So, are there simply more pyramids? Or are there only three pyramids but more people in them than i calculated? Is the Hierarchy simply incredibly small in population? Or is the far majority simply not part of the Pyramids?

Are the Prisoners part of the Pyramids, who do they cede their will too?

I just finished Strength of the Few and really enjoyed. Anyone open to giving fantasy series recommendations?

Loved this, Mistborn, Magician, Kingkiller Chronicles, LoTR, HP.

Didn't care for Broken Earth, and barely started Stormlight Achives before bouncing of it because it didn't capture me right away.

Maybe I'm just getting the wrong impressions, but I feel like most of the people he knows by the end of SotF wouldn't react as strongly to him being a prince of Suus as he thinks. Even in WotM, I think he could've told Callidus and Eidhin who he was by the time the Iudicium rolled around and they would've been fine with it. Hell, even Emissa might've kept it secret for him after the Iudicium imo. Especially given her guilt over trying to kill him and her awareness of the much higher stakes we learn about in SotF.

As for the others, I think telling Lanistia and Ulciscor at any point in either book would probably have been a bad idea (or outright suicide at certain points) except maybe after the sapper prison break, but Kadmos could probably be trusted with the information by the end of SotF.

Aequa definitely could be trusted with the information after visiting Solivagus with Vis, and I suspect she would have been able to figure it out on her own eventually.

I think the only repercussions from telling Aequa, Emissa, Callidus, or Eidhin at certain points would have been a sense of betrayal at being lied to. But they'd eventually come to terms with it and understand the necessity without feeling like they'd need to turn him in.

Idk. Am I just not understanding the full weight of Vis being "Prince Diago of Suus"? Sure, the Hierarchy would have him killed to avoid any potential uprising he could cause on Suus, but the people that know him best don't seem the type to assume he'd want that and turn him in for it. It just doesn't feel like telling certain people would be as huge a deal as Vis thinks it is

>!My theory is as follows: Caeror says that you cant wait too long after a persons death to turn them into an Iunctii. I think it's obvious that there is some way to preserve the dead bodies (how else would those 80k dead bodies at the end work logistically?). So I think Vis Father was preserved after his death until the Hierarchy questioned him. then he got put on ice again so to speak. then this world hopping scar face guy brought him back and send him to Luceum. When he gave the Amulet to Vis there, there was no way for his body to be preserved, so finally, after 5+ years, his body started his natural decomposition process. when Vis tries to put his Amulet on, that process is to far along for it to work. But maybe I didnt think of something.​!<

Caeror mentions to Vis that breaking someone's neck is most often (it sounds like there are extremely rare cases where it's not enough) doing enough damage so that the dead cant be turned into Inuctii. We also know the Hierarchy wanted to kill Vis' family so they can question them and get 100% truthful answers.

If I remember correctly, Vis is told they died quickly by hanging. A quick death by hanging means the neck was broken, which would mean the Hierarchy is both extremely lucky that the broken neck wasn't enough damage on all three hanged family members and they are stupid for killing them this way.

The other option is that Vis was lied to and that it was a long death by hanging, meaning the were strangled to death. But strangulation can causes damage to the brain tissue and it seems like the brain and nervous system need to be intact for Iunctii to be function (cause that's what gets damaged by a broken neck). so even if the hierarchy made sure that they died of strangulation, it would still be a dumb option. Why not just stab them in the heart?

Are the dumb?

I’ll admit I’ve only give a cursory scroll of the subreddit but I haven’t seen a single post talking about the absolute bangers of lines in this book, especially when it comes to grief and loss.

Covering the following quotes/analysis in spoiler text as they are from the second book and I don’t want to risk spoilers.

>!“Loss is hardest, Ulcisor once told me, when it is quiet.” The hardest part about losing something or someone is that the world doesn’t know. No matter how hard you wail and gnash your teeth and or rage or whatever ultimately your loss is small and inconsequential and your pain is nothing. We love people dear to us so deeply and when they leave us the idea that their importance to us isn’t proportional to the world is frustrating and terrifying.!<

>!“One of the great Sytrecian philosophers once argued that the concept of home is, at its core, about safety…. If it ever loses its sense of comfort, you can no longer truly call it by that name” This is a different kind of loss. It’s abstract. It’s a thing definitely, but!< >!it’s!< >!not something of tangible substance. To lose!< >!your!< >!home is more than to lose a place to sleep or keep belongings. What we’re losing here is a place of comfort and protection that is implicit in the sturdiness of the structure. A place of identity or comfort. It is grounding and gives you a foundation of yourself. A touchstone against the world. If I ask you to imagine a home there’s the understood idea that it’s safe.!<

>!“”You do not have to be less, Leathfhear,” he says softly. “Not unless you with wish to be.”” This one is the hardest to peg for me. We had the loss of loved ones and the loss of foundation. To me this quote speaks to the loss of self. Or to the struggle of reconciliation of yourself whenever you’ve been forced to change due to outside influences. You change because you have to and then you have time to slow down or whatever and see yourself again as you are and it’s different from the idea in your head.!< >!It’s!< >!unfamiliar and uncomfortable and alien. Maybe you’ve compromised to survive and it feels like a cheapening of you. Maybe you didn’t compromise and that’s what is the source of friction. This is the most ambiguous. We as people live day to day and as such change incrementally, and when we notice those changes more often than not it’s after a long period and they seem abrupt to us. That’s why it’s my favorite though. Accepting yourself is hard. Going through life and becoming a different you due to the natural course and still taking a full accountability and then still accepting yourself is amazing.!<

This is from what I read tonight, a fifth of the book maybe. There were a few I didn’t go back and find. I know we see more of Diago confronting his feelings in the second book and so there’s more of this to grab onto for discussion. But for what I would describe as a Fantasy trilogy I didn’t expect some Marcus Aurelius Meditations level one liners. There’s been moments where I’ve read some of these lines and choked up and had to take a second because of how close they hit home.

Anyways. Drop your favorite quotes of wisdom from the series and let’s appreciate James Islington and his ability to create and entreat pathos from us.

Not much content here a part from me crawling through this book, needing support, and having no one to talk to about this.

I loved the first one, couldn’t put it down.

This one is ending me. It’s been almost 4 months since I stared.

Cannot stand Obiteum.

Still very curious to know the end of it. I’m at 88%, wish me luck.

I might as well be downvote farming by posting this but here goes.

First note: I haven't finished the book yet so please don't spoil anything after this chapter. I literally just put it down after reading the scene. Yes, I'm fuming. Yes, I'm mad enough that I'm more emotional than rational. But I need to vent and I have ~opinions~.

Aequa's death is infuriating, it's heartbreaking, it plays into post-Game of Thrones fantasy tropes and it falls into problematic gendered tropes. I could forgive all that, but unfortunately I also think it's bad writing.

The biggest issue by far with tSotF so far is how ambitious it is. It's effectively 3 books simultaneously, with basically no intersection between the 3. By introducing two entire new worlds in book 2 of the series, a lot of the clever world-building that made Book 1 so strong has been fast-tracked for the two new worlds. Honestly, he's done it admirably. But what has suffered as a result has been character growth and depth.

None of the new characters introduced have any real weight to them. The most interesting is probably Netiqret, with the others largely forgettable. All that really held the story together to this point was the persisting cast from Book 1, of which Aequa was by far the most interesting and best-written. And all of them were getting way less time than I would've liked due to the split focus.

Speaking of forgettable characters... I genuinely had to google Decimus's name and I just read it. Decimus is one-dimensional and barely present. He's transparently antagonistic and unpleasant in the small number of appearances he does have. Iro was one of the least interesting parts of Book 1, serving as a one-dimensional barely-there antagonistic force in the same way as Decimus did, massively outclassed by Belli. The most interesting part of his story was his being chagrined at his father's actions at the chariot race - oh look, the boy has a personality!

This is the biggest problem to me here. This entire scene read as a blatantly contrived way to set Decimus up as a villain. It removed an "anchor" character in the midst of basically the entirety of Res being upended anyway - a time when we hardly needed it to happen, when we don't even have Eidhin around. The head crush was an obvious choice to make her "unrevivable" (one of the reasons I'm not a fan of resurrection stuff in magic systems is the whole real death trope) and was just so god damn random. Not to mention, whilst the differing strengths of Tertii is Quintii etc has been well established... we've also seen Vis beat up a Sextus. While not receiving any Will at all. So the sudden, complete helplessness felt incredibly forced. At the end of it all I'm not even mad at Decimus, I'm just mad at Islington. I don't even care about Decimus!

Adding to this is the trope/gender issues of the scene (and of most male first-person POV novels I think I've read honestly). I think fridging is over-maligned due to how prevalent it has been historically, and any death of a female character inevitably gets referred to as fridging. That said, there are very few good female characters in this series and Islington was clearly baiting a romance between RVis and Aequa. It's such a clear example of the fridging trope it's not even funny.

The worst part is, I don't want her to come back. Death should be impactful, should be final. Resurrections are largely lame. So instead, I'm left with what I feel was a poor decision, the loss of a character I liked, and no way it can be fixed without hurting the novel more.

I've read and enjoyed all of Red Rising. This is not (just) a reaction to the death of a character. That said, I am a bit tired of this post-ASOIAF world where every fantasy/sci-fi feels the need to constantly fucking kill everyone just for shock value or because "bad people do bad things". The first book struck a great balance. Callidus's death was tragic, pointless and massively impactful, but didn't make me feel cheated. This makes me feel cheated, and frustrated. It makes me not want to read the rest of the book, let alone the series, though I'm sure I still will. It has seriously damaged my trust in Islington as a writer.

Oh and, stop with the head crushing. It's unnecessarily violent, overdone and just annoying. That one's just a personal gripe though and doesn't really factor into my opinion.

EDIT: I am so sorry if anybody read this and got spoiled before I put the spoiler tag on. I changed account and copy pasted the post body and didn't correctly spoiler tag it 😭

Just finished Will of the many. I enjoyed it, particularly the last 20% of it. But the first 80% or so was just so so for me, a bit slow. I also just came off reading two of my favorite series ever, Red rising (much more fast paced) and SLA, so it was a tough act to follow i think.

I’ll def read strength of the few at some point but curious if i should jump right it even though i didn’t love love will of the many. Is there anyone who liked strength of the few more?

Full spoilers for The Will of the Many and The Strength of the Few.

I finished Strength and have been trying to reverse-engineer how Will actually works across the three worlds. I think Islington has given us enough information about Res and Obiteum to infer an underlying structure, while deliberately withholding the equivalent information about Luceum for Book 3.

The theory, in its simplest form, is this:

Res: The domain of Will is POWER. Will is externally channeled through THINGS, and its characteristic effect is to strengthen and manipulate.

Obiteum: The domain of Will is LIFE AND DEATH. Will is externally channeled through PEOPLE, and its characteristic effect is to restore and sustain.

Luceum: The domain of Will appears to be TIME. But we don’t yet know what Will is channeled through or what its characteristic effect is.

I don’t think these are competing classifications. Power / Life and Death / Time describes the domain in which Will operates; Things / People / ??? describes the channel through which it operates. And I think Synchronism may ultimately allow a person to access the complete system that was divided by the Rending.

1. Start with Res: POWER through THINGS

Res is the system we understand best. Will there is overwhelmingly associated with strengthening and manipulating the physical world. Will can be imbued into objects, after which those objects can be manipulated. We see increasingly ridiculous demonstrations of this as Vis accumulates more Will: weapons, stones, enormous physical objects, etc.

Res also allows self-imbuing. In that case, the target is yourself and the characteristic Res effect remains the same: Will strengthens the body. Vis can make himself extraordinarily strong and physically capable. So the underlying Res rule seems to be something like: Will + external object → strengthen/manipulate that thing. Will + self → strengthen/manipulate yourself.

Importantly, though, we don’t seem to see ordinary Res users imbue another living person and manipulate that person’s body. That’s a boundary. And that boundary becomes extremely interesting when we get to Obiteum.

2. Obiteum: LIFE AND DEATH through PEOPLE

Caeror essentially tells us that the basic grammar of Will still exists in Obiteum—ceding, imbuing, self-imbuing—but its characteristic effect is different. Instead of strengthen/manipulate, Obiteum Will restores/sustains. And its most extraordinary external target isn’t matter. It’s people.
Put Will into a dead person and you don’t simply telekinetically puppet a corpse as though it were a Res-style imbued object. The person returns as an iunctus—with memory, personality, preferences and agency—and Will sustains that continued existence.

That gives us a striking parallel: RES: Will → THING → strengthen/manipulate → POWER. OBITEUM: Will → PERSON → restore/sustain → LIFE AND DEATH. This is why I think calling Res “Power” and Obiteum “Life and Death” describes the domain, while Things/People describes the channel.

3. Self-imbuing may be universal — but the result changes by world

This was the piece that made the theory click for me. Self-imbuing definitely isn’t unique to Res. Caeror tells Vis/Siamun that self-imbuing exists in Obiteum too.

If the fundamental operation self-imbue survives the Rending, but the effect of Will differs by world, then: Res self-imbuing → strengthen/manipulate yourself. Obiteum self-imbuing → restore/sustain yourself.

We don’t, as far as I remember, get the wonderfully convenient experiment where someone in Obiteum gets stabbed, self-imbues and heals in front of Vis. So I’m labeling that second line an inference, not established fact. But I think Vitaeria give us indirect evidence.

4. Vitaeria may show us what Obiteum self-imbuing would accomplish

Vitaeria were created through Obiteum’s form of Will, and we see them use Will to sustain living bodies—including allowing people to survive conditions their bodies otherwise couldn’t. We don’t know where the Vitaeria’s Will comes from, and wearing one obviously isn’t literally self-imbuing. But it demonstrates something important: Obiteum Will applied to a living person’s body can sustain that body.

Therefore, if a person accumulated enough Will and then self-imbued with it, it seems plausible that the characteristic result would be restoration/sustenance, just as self-imbuing in Res produces Res’s characteristic strengthening effect. Keep that thought, because I think it may explain Ka.

5. Cascade suggests Will mechanics can cross worlds through a synchronous person

This is where things get REALLY interesting. Vis learns the mechanics associated with iunctii through Siamun’s experiences in Obiteum. Then Catenicus starts using Cascade in Res. That’s weird. He’s applying a Will technique associated with Obiteum’s people/death mechanics in a different world.

So Synchronism may do much more than allow three versions of someone to share information or sensations. A synchronous person may be able to learn a Will operation in one world and apply that knowledge in another. If so, Vis isn’t merely existing in three worlds. He’s beginning to reconnect pieces of a Will system that the Rending separated.

6. Cascade may also explain what Ka has been doing all along

The structure created by Cascade is especially interesting. Vis imbues iuncti. Those iunctii retain enough Will to perform their function/awaken others, while ceding surplus Will back upward to Vis. In other words, Vis creates something resembling a self-propagating Will pyramid made of iunctii, with Vis at its apex.

And who has apparently been operating an enormous network of imbued iunctii for a very long time? Ka.
That made me reconsider Ka’s power structures in both worlds. In Res, we know three Princeps are ceding Will to Ka. So Ka sits atop a conventional Res-style Will pyramid. In Obiteum, Ka has imbued an enormous network of iuncti. If Cascade is teaching us the mature architecture of that system, perhaps those iunctii similarly retain the Will necessary to sustain/propagate themselves and cede the excess back to Ka.

That would mean Ka isn’t doing two unrelated things. He’s building parallel Will-accumulation systems using each world’s native mechanics. In Res, the structure is a living pyramid → ceding → Ka. In Obiteum, the structure may be an iunctus network → ceding → Ka. Which immediately raises the giant missing question: What is Ka doing in Luceum?

7. And this may mean Ka isn’t dead

Here’s my more speculative prediction. Siamun stabs Ka. We’re naturally inclined to interpret that through ordinary physical rules: lethal wound = dead Ka. But this happens in Obiteum, where Will’s defining capability is to restore and sustain life across death.

If (1) Ka’s enormous iunctus network is ceding surplus Will back to him; (2) Ka therefore possesses an extraordinary reservoir of Obiteum Will; (3) self-imbuing works in Obiteum; and (4) Obiteum Will restores/sustains, then Ka may be able to self-imbue with that accumulated Will and survive/restore himself after Siamun stabs him.

To be very clear: I don’t think the book has explicitly demonstrated that Obiteum self-imbuing regenerates a lethal wound. That’s the speculative step. But all the pieces necessary for it seem to have been put on the board. And narratively, it would make enormous sense for Vis to finally have to confront a living Ka after learning that Ka may not actually be the enemy he thought he was.

8. So what the hell is Luceum?

This is where the theory deliberately has a giant blank. We know vastly less about Luceum’s Will mechanics than we do about Res or Obiteum. But Luceum repeatedly seems associated with the past/time.

And one detail now feels particularly important: the rule concerning physical deformity and kingship apparently preserves ancient knowledge that Synchronism causes characteristic physical damage. In other words, Luceum’s institutions seem to retain a safeguard designed to prevent a synchronous person from becoming king even after the culture has largely forgotten why the safeguard exists. That suggests Luceum may preserve unusually deep remnants of knowledge from closer to the Rending.

It also fits the broader pattern: Res: POWER through THINGS. Obiteum: LIFE AND DEATH through PEOPLE. Luceum: TIME through ???. But I don’t think Luceum is literally “the past.” The three worlds appear to be operating concurrently. Rather, my guess is that Luceum’s manifestation of Will operates somehow on time, history, memory, ancestry, or continuity with the past. We just haven’t been shown the underlying mechanic yet.

Which leaves the most important blank in the theory: RES: Will imbues THINGS → strengthen/manipulate → POWER. OBITEUM: Will imbues PEOPLE → restore/sustain → LIFE AND DEATH. LUCEUM: Will imbues ??? → ??? → TIME.

9. Why I think Islington is withholding Luceum on purpose

My guess is that once we know Luceum’s equivalent rule, we’ll be able to reconstruct what Will was before the Rending. Maybe the Rending didn’t simply create three worlds. Maybe it divided one complete system of Will into three incomplete manifestations.

Ordinary people can access only the manifestation belonging to their world. But synchronous people—Ka and now Vis—potentially bridge all three. That could explain why Synchronism is so dangerous. A synchronous person may be a living bridge across the Rending.

And that may connect directly to the Concurrence. If the Concurrence somehow depends upon reunifying things that the Rending separated, then a fully developed synchronous person capable of accessing all three aspects of Will could potentially be either the person capable of stopping the Concurrence or exactly what the Concurrence needs.

Which would also make Veridius fascinatingly partly right if he’s wrong about Ka: perhaps breaking Ka’s Synchronism really would stop whatever cross-world process Ka is capable of, but Veridius has misunderstood what Ka is trying to accomplish with it.

10. Things that don’t fit yet / please poke holes in this

The biggest one for me is the Gleaners flying in Obiteum. That’s physical manipulation that looks much more Res-like, and I don’t currently have a satisfying explanation for it. I briefly wondered whether Ka was importing Res-style Will mechanics into Obiteum, but that explanation doesn’t work cleanly because Res users don’t seem able simply to imbue another living person and fly them around. So I’m leaving the Gleaners firmly in the ??? column rather than forcing them into the theory.

Another wrinkle is the staffs in Luceum. They appear to be imbued with Will, and, inconveniently for my beautifully neat theory, staffs are definitely things. 😂 That could mean the Things/People/??? distinction is too simplistic, or it could mean we’re conflating the storage of Will with the characteristic channel through which Will operates in each world. An object might be capable of containing or conducting Will in any world—just as self-imbuing may be possible in any world—while the important distinction is what that Will can ultimately act upon and what effect it produces. There’s also the possibility that Luceum’s staffs are remnants of older/pre-Rending Will technology and therefore don’t follow ordinary Luceum rules. But at this point that’s speculation, and I don’t want to explain away evidence just because it makes the theory messier. The staffs are a genuine complication for “Res = Things,” and I don’t yet know what to do with them.

There are also major assumptions here about how Ka’s iunctus network operates and what Obiteum self-imbuing actually does. But the overall symmetry feels increasingly intentional: POWER through THINGS → STRENGTHEN/MANIPULATE. LIFE AND DEATH through PEOPLE → RESTORE/SUSTAIN. TIME through ??? → ???.

And Strength gives us enough information about the first two worlds to start seeing the pattern while conspicuously refusing to explain the third.

So: what goes in the Luceum blanks? And more importantly, what evidence have I forgotten that completely destroys this theory? 😂