Books Like The Will of the Many: 14 Brutal Reads for the Post-Hierarchy Hangover

You have finished The Will of the Many, and the world has gone quiet. The Hierarchy is still standing, Vis is still climbing, and the sequel, The Strength of the Few, only sharpens the ache rather than ending it. So here is the next best thing: fourteen books that scratch the same itch James Islington left you with. Before the list, it helps to be honest about what fans of this book actually want, because it is four things working at once. A brutal academy and a ruthless climb. A buried identity carried like a knife. A slow revenge against a system that took everything. And morally grey ambition, the kind that costs the person who wields it. The list below is grouped by which of those you are chasing, so you can jump straight to your poison. A quick word on what did not make the cut: pure portal fantasy, cosy magic-school stories, and anything where the system is a misunderstanding rather than a machine built to grind people down. Everything here understands that the hierarchy is the point. The whole reading journal is here when you want more.

For the brutal academy and the ruthless climb

Red Rising by Pierce Brown. Lowborn Darrow is broken down and surgically remade so he can be planted inside the ruling caste and tear it down from within. It is the closest cousin to The Will of the Many on this whole list: the same infiltration, the same lethal meritocracy, the same young man carrying a dead family and a secret he cannot afford to drop. The Roman styling, the leaderboard brutality, the slow burn toward the people at the top, it is all here in propulsive, adult science fiction. If that is the exact nerve The Will of the Many hit, start here, then work through more adult books like Red Rising. Published 2014.

Babel by R.F. Kuang. An orphan is brought from Canton to Oxford and trained inside a translation institute that turns out to be the beating heart of an empire built on exploitation. It is dark academia with teeth: brilliant outsiders flattered and used by an institution that needs them, until the only honest response left is to burn it. For the prestige that curdles into rot, the slow radicalisation, and the moral weight of climbing a system you come to hate, this is the one to read next. Published 2022.

Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang. A woman claws her way into an elite magical academy that has shut people like her out for generations, then uncovers the atrocity the entire system is quietly built upon. It marries the underdog-climbs-the-institution shape of The Will of the Many with a cold, methodical unmasking of the truth at the top. Best of all it is a standalone, so it is the perfect single-sitting palate cleanser when you do not want to commit to another sprawling series. Published 2023.

Fireborne by Rosaria Munda. Orphans of a toppled regime are raised together and then forced to compete in a brutal, meritocratic academy where the buried past refuses to stay buried. The questions it keeps asking, about who actually deserves to rule and what a revolution costs the people standing inside it, are exactly the ones Islington likes to leave you holding long after the last page. For the academy rivalry, the divided loyalties, and the hard politics churning underneath it all, this one delivers. Published 2019.

For the buried identity and the long revenge

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. Betrayed and left for dead, the mercenary Monza Murcatto sets out to repay seven men, one name at a time. This is the purest revenge engine in the genre: cold, patient, and morally filthy, with a body count to match. If the part of Vis that never forgets, never forgives, and never cedes his Will to the empire that ended his family is what you are really chasing, Abercrombie hands you the adult, blood-soaked version of that hunger, set in a world where nobody walks away clean. Published 2009.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. Baru watches an empire swallow her home, then lets it adopt her and raise her through its ranks, all so she can climb high enough to burn it down from the inside. It is the same devil’s bargain Vis makes, told with devastating intelligence: how much of yourself do you give to the thing you mean to destroy, and is there anything left of you by the time you reach the top? One of the most heartbreaking, adult books on this list. Published 2015.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. The Count of Monte Cristo in space: a man left to die in the wreck of his ship reinvents himself completely, then hunts down everyone who passed him by and left him to rot. Decades old and still electric, it is the original template for the marooned, self-remade avenger that so much modern fiction, The Will of the Many included, draws on. Short, savage, and far ahead of its time, it reads like a man willing himself into something monstrous purely so the people who wronged him will finally have to look at him. If the cold, single-minded engine of revenge is what you came for, few books run it harder. Published 1956.

For the Roman empire and the political knife-fight

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio. Hadrian Marlowe narrates his own rise to infamy across a vast, decadent star-empire modelled on Rome, telling you from the first page that he becomes both a monster and a hero. For the operatic scale, the palace politics, and the unreliable confession of a man who climbed far too high, the Sun Eater saga is the natural next mountain to start climbing. Dense and ambitious, with the kind of slow burn that rewards patience. Published 2018.

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. A murder mystery set inside the machinery of a biologically stratified empire, where people are physically altered to serve their assigned function. It welds a propulsive, clever whodunit to the same fascination with rank, control, and quiet rot that runs all the way through the Hierarchy. Sharp, strange, and thoroughly grown up, it is an easy recommendation if you want the politics of a rigid system without losing momentum, and the central pairing of a brilliant, difficult investigator and her long-suffering assistant gives it a warmth most grimdark forgets to pack. Published 2024.

The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang. A militarised, rigidly hierarchical society, and the brutal price paid by a family expected to die for it without question. It is intimate where most of these books are sprawling, but the cost-of-the-system theme lands like a hammer, and the emotional gut-punch at its centre is among the most admired in modern fantasy. A standalone, again, for when you want the weight without the wait. It is the book to reach for when you want to feel what the climb costs the people too far down the hierarchy to ever benefit from it. Published 2019.

For the morally grey rise and the cost of power

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. A street thief with a buried gift joins a crew plotting to topple a god-emperor who has ruled for a thousand years. It is rebellion staged as a heist, with a hard-edged underclass, a system that looks utterly unbreakable until it is not, and a plan assembled piece by careful piece. For the machinery of a conspiracy against an empire, it is one of the best built in the genre, and a far easier entry point than its reputation for intricate worldbuilding suggests. Published 2006.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang. A war orphan claws her way into an elite military academy, then into a war that hollows her out and a power that scorches everything she loves. It is the most brutal coming-into-power arc on this list, grounded in real history and unflinching about atrocity, and it never once lets ambition off the hook. If you want the academy climb followed by the terrible cost of winning, this is the firmly adult answer. Published 2018.

The First Law by Joe Abercrombie. The grimdark benchmark for morally grey characters and a world that punishes idealism at every turn. If what truly hooked you about The Will of the Many is that nobody in it is wholly clean, Abercrombie’s first trilogy is the deep end of that pool: blackly funny, deeply cynical, and populated by people who are never quite heroes, no matter how badly you want them to be. Begin with The Blade Itself. Published 2006 onward.

If you have already read everything Islington wrote

The Licanius Trilogy by James Islington. The obvious next stop, and the one every fan ends up recommending. Islington’s first series opens with The Shadow of What Was Lost: a denser, more classically epic puzzle-box than The Will of the Many, but unmistakably the work of the same patient, plot-engineered mind, full of buried reveals that only pay off books later. If you want more of the author rather than just more of the vibe, this is where you go. Be warned that it asks for patience early and repays it heavily late, much like the man’s newer work. Published 2014 onward.

One more, releasing 2026/27

Still Here by Dominic Roworth. Here is the honest wedge. The Will of the Many has a magic system; this one does not. Still Here is a grounded dystopian series in the same lineage, Still Here, Book One of The Last Hand: a boy torn from his younger brother and forged into a hunter for the cabal who ended the world, climbing a leaderboard built of other boys’ bodies toward the room where his enemies finally meet. Same hierarchy-climb, same buried revenge, the same refusal to ever truly submit, but every bit of the horror and the wonder is human, with no magic to soften the edges. It is being written for exactly the reader this list is for. Join the early-reader list to read the opening chapter before anyone else. Releasing 2026/27.

Why The Will of the Many hits so hard, and what to look for next

Strip The Will of the Many back to its bones and the same four pieces keep surfacing: a hidden identity the hero cannot afford to drop, an oppressive system that rewards the climb even as it deforms the climber, a slow revenge that has to wait for exactly the right moment, and the moral cost of becoming powerful inside a thing you despise. Once you can see that shape, you can choose your next read on purpose: chase the academy when you want momentum, the revenge when you want the cold, the empire when you want the scale. Work through the list above, then keep an eye on Still Here for the version that takes the magic out and leaves only the human horror standing. Bookmark this guide too, because the dystopian and epic-fantasy shelves keep producing worthy successors, and it is updated as new adult releases earn their place on it. The shelf is deep, and it keeps getting deeper. When you are ready, see what Still Here is about and join the early-reader list so you do not miss the day it lands.