The Strength of the Few
The Strength of the Few
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James Islington on The Strength of the Few
In his own words: quotes and insights from the author.Why he wrote it
A self-assessment and a world that changedBefore starting Hierarchy, Islington did something most authors avoid: he went back through his own critical reviews with a deliberate diagnostic goal. The exercise wasn’t nostalgic. It was the direct mechanism by which he decided what kind of writer he wanted to become next.
At the end of Licanius, I did a bit of a self-assessment to figure out what I could improve. I went through the three- and four-star reviews to see what readers who enjoyed the series thought I could do better. With Hierarchy, I’ve tried to apply those lessons.
The world he began building in 2019 was already a different one by the time he was deep in drafting Book 2. He had started Hierarchy before a pandemic, before the political turbulence that followed, and those years left marks he didn’t plan for.
Politically, too, yes. I started writing Hierarchy in 2019, and the world’s changed a lot since then. The pandemic, the growing complexity of the world; all of that seeps into the book.
Even before the book existed, Islington was signaling that the second installment would require a different kind of attention from readers. Speaking ahead of publication, he described the shift in stakes between Book 1 and Book 2 as a change in kind, not just in scale.
I suppose the headline is that the scope of the story and conflict is going to expand fairly dramatically. The Will of the Many is, in many ways, focused on Vis’ journey as he becomes involved in what’s going on — the stakes of the book are largely personal for him. The Strength of the Few isn’t going to lose that, but the story is going to become about much bigger things as well.
How he wrote it
Three versions of the same manIslington builds every book the same way: a firm skeleton of major scenes and character arcs, with open space between the fixed points. That method kept the series’ architecture stable even as individual threads surprised him during drafting.
I start with a skeleton of the idea I want to explore, the key points across the series, the general character arcs and the big scenes that are clear in my head from the very start. But I like to leave room between those points to come up with new ideas as I go. The directions certain characters might take. I try to keep that flexible.
The Licanius Trilogy demanded airtight time-travel logic, where a single inconsistency could collapse everything. Book 2 posed a different structural problem entirely, one that made outlining look easy by comparison.
In Book 2, we’re following three different versions of Vis. Each version experiences things differently. They diverge, they change and that complexity made the book harder to write. You’re still following the same person at heart, but through three different lenses.
He put the comparison plainly elsewhere: the book was easier to outline but harder to write. The skeleton held; the execution resisted.
One supporting character’s family grew far beyond their originally assigned footprint as drafting continued. Islington didn’t plan the expansion; the logic of the story demanded it.
Calidus’s family became more important than I initially expected. They were always part of the story, but as I wrote, it just made sense for them to take on a bigger role.
First-person narration was one of the specific lessons Islington drew from his post-Licanius self-assessment. Sustaining it across a full series was also a creative bet against his own comfort zone.
I’ve really enjoyed writing in first person; it helped push me forward as a writer. I think if I’d kept writing the same way as Licanius, I could have gotten stuck in a rut, ‘this works, people like it, so I’ll just keep doing it.’
Narrating always from inside Vis’s head created an unexpected side effect: Islington himself lost the sharp visual distance that lets an author picture their protagonist from the outside.
because everything is from his perspective, I also have a somewhat less rigid mental image of what he looks like compared to the other characters — I’m always picturing what he’s seeing, rather than picturing him, so his look’s not as sharply defined in my head.
The personal thread
The children who grew up alongside the seriesIslington began the Hierarchy series when his kids were toddlers. By the time he was deep in Book 2, they were school-age, and that elapsed time had quietly changed what the book was about.
A big theme in Book 2 is fatherhood. I’ve got a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old now, and when I started this series, they were little 2 and 5, I think. So that’s been a huge part of my life, and it naturally found its way into the story.
Islington has always written for the experience of reading rather than for the platform of authorship. That priority, stated about the series as a whole, explains why fatherhood and politics enter the book obliquely, carried by character and plot rather than announced as themes.
First and foremost? Entertainment. I’ve always read for pleasure, and whatever else a fantasy book is trying to do or say, if I’m not enjoying it then I’m not going to stick with it. I think especially in epic fantasy, too, where books and series tend to be long and can be genuine commitments to read, respecting readers’ time — making sure they’re actually engaged the entire way through — is paramount.
On what the book is wrestling with
Moral logic and the heroes of their own storiesThe three-Vis structure puts one person through three entirely different sets of circumstances, and each version runs their own moral calculations from inside their own history. That architecture would collapse without a theory of how people justify what they do, which Islington had worked out deliberately.
I think I set the moral greyness of the world by aiming to have most characters trying to be moral, but in a way that keeps them (as the saying goes) the heroes of their own stories — they’re doing what they think is right, or at least what they’ve convinced themselves is right. That hopefully means that even when they’re doing something self-evidently awful, you can also kind of understand and maybe even sympathise a little with why they’re making those decisions.
Readers who came to Book 2 having bonded with Vis in Book 1 find that the three-way split doesn’t dilute that attachment so much as stress-test it. Islington designed the emotional arc across all three versions to land as a single experience.
Hopefully a wide range. Each version of Vis experiences different things, they succeed and fail in different ways. So I hope readers feel that full emotional spectrum.
Even in Book 1, the relationship that cost Islington the most to write well was not the central plot but the texture of male friendship. He teased that Book 2 had pushed him further in a direction he couldn’t yet name publicly.
For The Will of the Many, I probably enjoyed writing the growing friendships between Vis and Eidhin / Callidus the most. There’s a dynamic I enjoyed writing even more for Book II, but for obvious reasons, I can’t say that one yet :)
What he wants us to sit with
The question the three Vis versions leave openThe three-Vis structure is not just a narrative device; it is the book’s core argument about identity. Each version of the same person, shaped by different circumstances, reaches different conclusions about what is right. Islington leaves the question of which version is most himself deliberately unresolved, and the emotional spectrum he designed is the reader’s to sort.
Hopefully a wide range. Each version of Vis experiences different things, they succeed and fail in different ways. So I hope readers feel that full emotional spectrum.
The production detail Islington fought for on the hardcover edition speaks to how seriously he takes the contract with readers: reversible dust jackets, one side in the new cover style and one in the original, so no one who had committed to the series from the start felt stranded by a mid-run redesign.
all hardcover editions of The Strength of the Few are going to come with reversible jackets, with the newer art on one side, and a cover in the original style on the other — so, hopefully, everyone will now be able to have the series in the design of their preference.
It is a small gesture, but it runs in the same direction as everything else in his stated priorities: the reader’s experience is not a secondary concern.