Gather, shrews—it's time for a book review.

"Which is more intricate?" he mused. "The designs of men, trying to reach gods, or that of gods, trying to reach men?" My hammer collided with a chunk of granite. "What is either to the intricacies of women, who reach both?"

Okay...this book!! My dearly beloved!! 🧚🏻‍♀️✨

From the very beginning, this book gave me all the fairytale medieval knight vibes that I didn't know I had been so desperately needing. There's a haunted stone cathedral with massive stained glass windows. Sentient gargoyles! Mysterious oracle priestesses in flowing robes that never show their eyes! And of course, valiant-ish knights!! Like 5 pages into the book I literally stopped reading and then spent about 15 minutes looking for some medieval instrumental music to listen to in the background because I decided I wanted to be fully immersed (I gave up because I never found the exact thing I wanted, but not before discovering a Medieval Taylor Swift playlist). It did take me a second to reconcile the medieval cathedral setting with the more casual dialogue between the Diviners at first, but overall the entire thing was gothic perfection.

The relationship between Rory and Sybil is funny and very sweet! (...which was a very nice break from the typical Romantasy you see where all they can talk about is how much they want to literally fucking kill each other then they share a [heated glance] for 60% of the book. I'm not hating on it, because that shit is my lifeblood. But it's still nice to see a little sweetness now and then, and this book has it.)

"You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don't know what to call it, but I want it. I want you."

What really mattered to me MORE than the romance, though, was the relationship between the six Diviners-young women in their twenties who have served as oracle priestesses for the past ten years. They may be nameless prophetesses who only wear gossamer gowns and never show their eyes even to each other, but GIRLHOOD CONQUERS ALL!!! They truly are drowning in sacred spring water and spitting out prophecies for a king then hanging out in their room smoking together and sneaking out to kiss boys. I love them. I love them so much. I love their sisterhood and loyalty and humor and banter. I love how Four gets their attention by saying "gather, shrews." I love how they all quickly and unanimously agree to clobber a man because he was mean to one of them (l literally annotated "I love girlhood" on that page). I love their commitment to stay together after their years of service are over because they know they already have everything they need with each other. And even later in the book once Six (aka Sybil) starts to get attached to Rory, her motivation for everything she does is still rescuing her lost Diviners. She is a GIRL'S GIRL above all and she never forgets her real true love—her five sisters from the cathedral.

If I am as indistinct as Rodrick Myndacious says, I thought as I looked at the other Diviners, their cloaks and shoeless feet just like mine, what a happy thing to be indistinct from them.

It was loud in my mind. But so was my promise to One. If you disappear, I will come find you. And then we will find the others together, no matter the signs, no matter the portents. And I would fall off the earth, if that's what it took, to keep that promise. [...] For the Diviners, I would bear it.

Tied with my love for the Diviners was my love for the...gargoyle...sidekick. Batlike gargoyle, I would die for you. I am your #1 supporter. If batlike gargoyle has no fans, I'm no longer alive. If the world is against batlike gargoyle, I am against the world. I don't think live ever cared as much for a side character as I care for batlike gargoyle. The absolute best quest companion a girl could hope for.

The mutt chased us for three city blocks. All the while the gargoyle shouted, his voice ringing through the streets, "Fear not, Bartholomew! Every day has its dog."

Final rapid-fire thoughts:

• One thing about this book is that you WILL be mf looking up cathedral terminology. Go ahead right now and write down what tf a narthex is because you WILL be needing to know it.

• Love and appreciate that Sybil/Six isn't described as tiny tiny skinny little girl with somehow a giant ass and tits. (Which is an overall annoyance I have with the Romantasy genre, but Rachel Gillig avoids the trap expertly.)

"I'm heavy," I said before he lifted me. It wasn't an apology.

• BRING BACK GIVING CHAPTERS ACTUAL NAMES INSTEAD OF JUST NUMBERS!! This book did and it reminded me how much I love that!! Anyway.

• Go in knowing that this book ends on a cliffhanger and the next one isn't out yet.

TLDR: Read this book. It was such a fun break from the typical ACOTAR/Fourth Wing Romantasy, and I liked it so much I immediately went and read The Shepherd King duology by the same author (see: One Dark Window) and loved those books, too. Rachel Gillig, you're an icon. Batlike gargoyle, I'II see you in Book 2. 🦇🫶

Song recommendation: "Ivy" by Taylor Swift

"Oh, I can't stop you putting roots in my dreamland / My house of stone, your ivy grows, now I'm covered in you"

I mean COME ON!!!! One day I will write a full line-by-line breakdown of the relationship between this song and this book...watch this space

4.5 ⭐️ This review has spoilers for BOOK 1 of this series, The Will of the Many, but does NOT have spoilers for THIS book, The Strength of the Few. If you haven't read WOTM—naughty, naughty! Get out of this review section!!

"A society cannot make a man a monster, Diago. But it can give him the excuse to become one."

Hail, fellow Octavii!! Gah....what do I even say about this book? This was one of my most anticipated Fall 2025 reads (which, to be fair, isn't saying a whole lot since I only read WOTM two weeks ago; nevertheless, I was HYPED for this one to come out). I have heard it called "the best book two ever written" by multiple reviewers, so I understandably had very high expectations. It was an incredible book...but I fear it just did not quite live up to what I had hoped for after reading WOTM.

To recap where we left off at the end of WOTM, Vis has run the Labyrinth and traveled through the mysterious "Gate" at the ruins during the Iudicium. As a result, he is copied into two other realms in addition to the one where he already resides. SOTF follows these three iterations of Vis in the three different realms—Obiteum, Luceum, and Res—as he tries to come to terms with the seemingly impending Cataclysm and navigate the social and political landscapes he finds himself (himselves?) in.

(BTW, if you want a quick WOTM refresher, James Islington released a bonus chapter "Interlude" that basically recaps everything from the first book. It's free to read online HERE and only took me about 20 minutes to get through.)

Firstly, it felt like this book was ten billion pages. It simultaneously felt overly long yet also not long enough. And like book 1, this bitch is DENSE. It is ten billion pages of needing to be LOCKED TF IN, so get ready to invest some serious time and brain power into reading this. This was the book version of Olive Garden never-ending fettuccini alfredo where every time I thought surely—SURELY—I must be getting close to the bottom of the bowl (book), BAM here's 250 more pages. At times that felt utterly exhausting. Never-ending fettuccini alfredo is delicious, but there comes a time when dinner just needs to be freaking over. While WOTM was also long, it had this very compelling mystery at the center of the story that kept the plot moving and had me eager to keep reading. This one lacked a bit of that forward momentum for me. It felt like it got too bogged down in the minutiae of what was happening in each universe when what I really wanted was big-picture answers and to see the overarching plot move.

When the plot was moving forward, it did so with utterly wack pacing. There were times side characters were barely introduced and then suddenly they were extremely important to Vis and we were supposed to care deeply about them. And on the other end of the spectrum, important characters from WOTM were pushed to the side and left behind while barely receiving any on-page time rather than getting the deeper character development they were set up for after WOTM. Very important events (particularly in Part III) happened off-page and were never really explained. They were just swallowed in these short time jumps that ate up what should've been epic scenes, and that was kind of disappointing and confusing at times. In the immortal words of Sevro from Red Rising: "shit escalates." I just wish shit had escalated a bit more and a bit quicker at times.

I will not be commenting on Chapter 71 except to say James Islington you better count your days because I am in your walls and I will not let you get away with this.

If I was feeling more inclined towards a bit of late-night literary analysis, I could write more here about the symbolism of death as a plot device in the book and the various archetypes we see Vis embody in each of the realms. But the truth is, this is one of those books you just have to read for yourself. Despite the ways it fell flat for me, I do really recommend it. It's very different than book 1, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It had some good twists and turns and a few moments that made me audibly yelp in surprise. You can tell James Islington plots out his books with red string on a cork board, and I say that in a complimentary way. It's what made this book 4.5 stars for me. I liked WOTM better, but I know some people will like this one more.

Finally, dear reader, I will leave you with the words from the Part II heading: Ante Omnia Armari—"before all else, be armed." Be armed with the Will of at least a Quintus going into this book if you want to have any hope of making it through. It's still worth it in the end.

“The Hierarchy is a monster that has to feed to survive. And inevitably, once it has eaten everything else, all that is left to consume is itself.”

P.S. Can someone PLEASE get me a goddamn map of Obiteum??

"i can fix him" "i can make him worse" well i can make him turn into a cucumber and abandon god