Amazon’s upcoming adaptation of Fourth Wing is still years away, with the dragon-riding fantasy not expected to arrive until at least 2028. That’s a long wait for readers looking for another immersive fantasy series with a fiercely competitive academy, high-stakes rivalries, and a protagonist forced to fight for survival.
Fortunately, there’s already a book that scratches many of those same itches while carving out an identity all its own. James Islington’s The Will of the Many delivers a gripping school setting, layered political intrigue, and one of modern fantasy’s most fascinating magic systems. It shares enough DNA with Fourth Wing to feel instantly familiar, but it quickly proves it’s chasing something much bigger than another fantasy school story.
‘The Will of the Many’ Begins With an Impossible Mission
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like? Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky
Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🏜️Paul Atreides
🖖Capt. Kirk
✊Princess Leia
🔦Ellen Ripley
🔥Max Rockatansky
01
How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher? The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.
02
What is your greatest strength in a crisis? The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.
03
What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for? Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.
04
How do you relate to the people around you? Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.
05
You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do? How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.
06
What has your heroism cost you personally? Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.
07
How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in? Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?
08
When everything is on the line, what keeps you going? The answer is the most honest thing about you.
Your Hero Has Been Identified Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.
Arrakis · Dune
Paul Atreides
You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
USS Enterprise · Star Trek
Captain Kirk
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
The Rebellion · Star Wars
Princess Leia
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
The Nostromo · Alien
Ellen Ripley
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
The Wasteland · Mad Max
Max Rockatansky
You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.
You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
Vis has spent years hiding who he really is. Officially, he’s an orphan who’s earned a coveted place at the prestigious Catenan Academy, where the Republic’s future leaders are trained. In reality, he’s the last survivor of a conquered royal family, sent behind enemy lines to investigate a murder, uncover dangerous secrets, and dismantle the empire responsible for executing his family.
Simply getting into the Academy is only the beginning. To survive, Vis has to climb a ruthless ranking system where every friendship is political, every rivalry has consequences, and failure isn’t just humiliating — it could expose his true identity. The Academy itself is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. Like Basgiath War College in Fourth Wing, it rewards ambition, intelligence, and resilience over good intentions. Students constantly compete for advancement, alliances shift without warning, and nobody is guaranteed success simply because they’re the protagonist. That tension gives every challenge real weight, making it easy to understand why readers have embraced the book as one of fantasy’s standout academy novels.
What truly separates The Will of the Many from many of its contemporaries is its worldbuilding. Rather than leaning on familiar medieval fantasy conventions, Islington draws heavily from ancient Rome. The Catenan Republic is built around a rigid social hierarchy where citizens literally surrender part of their mental and physical strength — known as Will — to those above them. The higher someone climbs, the more power they possess because it’s being drawn from everyone beneath them.
It’s a brilliantly unsettling premise that influences nearly every aspect of the story, from politics and education to military power and social mobility. Instead of serving as another flashy magic system, Will becomes the foundation for examining authority, privilege, and the cost of maintaining an empire. The result is a fantasy world that constantly rewards curiosity. Every answer uncovers another mystery, and every new revelation suggests the Republic is hiding something far older and stranger beneath its polished surface.
‘The Will of the Many’ Balances Action With Big Ideas
Partial cover of The Will of the ManyImage via Saga Press
Epic fantasy often struggles to balance spectacle with substance, but Islington manages both. Vis is an immediately compelling protagonist because he isn’t simply trying to become stronger. He’s carrying grief, anger, and impossible expectations while constantly deciding how much of himself he’s willing to sacrifice to accomplish his mission. His intelligence helps him survive, but it also forces him into impossible moral choices where there are rarely clean answers.
Around him, the supporting cast feels equally purposeful. Friends have ambitions of their own, rivals aren’t villains for the sake of conflict, and even supposed allies remain difficult to fully trust; uncertainty keeps the story moving, turning every conversation into another layer of the novel’s larger conspiracy.
Beyond the academy competition and increasing intensity of the action, The Will of the Many asks some surprisingly serious questions; it looks at the ways in which oppressive systems manage to persist, what obligations humans have to one another, and lastly, whether simply changing those in power will create any real change in the world. In this way, the themes presented in this novel reinforce the overall pacing, but create a resonance that stays with you long after you turn the last page of the book.
Ultimately, this is what has made The Will of the Many one of the most well-reviewed and talked-about books in fantasy fiction to come out in recent years. Readers may initially come to read about an academy-type setting and action that is infinitely fast; however, they will continue because of its detailed plotting, memorable characters, and a growing sense of mystery as the story builds upon itself.
For anyone counting down the days until Fourth Wing reaches Prime Video, The Will of the Many is more than just a way to pass the time. It’s a reminder that some of fantasy’s most exciting stories are already waiting on bookstore shelves—and this one deserves every bit of the attention it’s received.
