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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retros_x" data-source="post: 9519720" data-attributes="member: 7033171">I've finished The Will of The Many, unfortunately it doesn't end so good as I anticipated. The magic system made me wonder if it would've been better left as a scifi-novel, but was also in the end not as important as the first third suggested. I think the biggest strength are the characters and the plot - although the plot leads to nowhere. There is no finished character arc, almost no conclusion. The main characters has almost 0 development. He is super passive for the whole story, only reacting and being forced to act by other characters. I was really hoping that he stands up for himself in the end, but - no. It was definitely planned from the beginning as the start of a series but IMO you can still write books in a series that have their own conclusions while bringing the overarching story forward. Harry Potter is my very simple but famous example for that. This book feels like the author just cut his much bigger story at a fitting point. Left me very unsatisfied, although I am looking forward to the next entry.The twist in the ending is also... surprising, but its such an out of nowhere twist, I doubt any reader had a chance to see it coming - which is not a good twist IMO. The worldbuilding also feels very artifical and its a very plot-driven story.This all sounds very negative - I still had a lot of fun, I just had too high expectations I guess, it IS after all a booktok hype with all that comes with it: Focus on a flashy plot and world.edit: another funny thing that didnt bothered me too much, but it was an interesting observation: The author really needed to establish a lot in the first third of the book. Several factions, plot threads and concepts need to be introduced before the main plot can even start in act two. Thankfully he wanted to show and not tell. Unfortunately that means in a book with one first person narrative that the protagonist stumbles from one situation in the next one to show the reader all of that stuff, some of these situations pretty climactic and important. It has a slapstick vibe what happens to the poor guy before the real plot even starts. Also there are a LOT of scene transitions with fade to black because the protagonists falls unconcsious and ofc wakes up in a new scenario. This paired with the unelegant exposition enhances the artificial feel of the book. The story feels not very organic and really dominated by the plot (THIS needs to happen so THAT can happen). Very Sanderson like in that regard. The prose in general I liked a bit more than the early Sanderson I've read but unfortunately some of the visual description were a bit lacking in clarity. There were multiple things and scenes I couldn't really visualize because the descriptions in the book were a bit too arcane and confusing. This is something Sanderson does a lot better, he has a lot of "visual clarity" in his descriptions.</blockquote>

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