The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1) by Olivie Blake
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: Black MC, Cuban MC, Japanese MC, bi/pansexual MC
Published on: 1st March 2022
ISBN: 1250854512
Goodreads

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is the runaway TikTok must-read fantasy novel of the year. If you loved Ninth House and A Deadly Education, you’ll love this.

Originally a self-published sensation, this edition has been fully edited and revised, including gorgeous new illustrations.

Secrets. Betrayal. Seduction.
Welcome to the Alexandrian Society.

When the world’s best magicians are offered an extraordinary opportunity, saying yes is easy. Each could join the secretive Alexandrian Society, whose custodians guard lost knowledge from ancient civilizations. Their members enjoy a lifetime of power and prestige. Yet each decade, only six practitioners are invited – to fill five places.

Contenders Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona are inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds. Parisa Kamali is a telepath, who sees the mind’s deepest secrets. Reina Mori is a naturalist who can perceive and understand the flow of life itself. And Callum Nova is an empath, who can manipulate the desires of others. Finally there’s Tristan Caine, whose powers mystify even himself.

Following recruitment by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they travel to the Society’s London headquarters. Here, each must study and innovate within esoteric subject areas. And if they can prove themselves, over the course of a year, they’ll survive. Most of them.

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, then bought a copy of my own. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~empathy ≠ telepathy
~let’s stop time
~a criminal mermaid
~wormholes are for grabbing late-night snacks
~if power corrupts, and knowledge is power, what happens when you give all the knowledge to those who are already all-powerful?

It’s really difficult to quantify what it is that makes The Atlas Six work. When I take a step back from it, it seems like it shouldn’t work: for most of the book there is almost no real plot, and most storytellers understand that all-powerful magic users aren’t interesting. There’s a whole lot of telling-not-showing. The worldbuilding fits together until it really doesn’t. And none of the characters are likable, sympathetic, or even especially interesting (even if their powers are).

And yet.

And yet, it does work. The Atlas Six is bizarrely readable; it manages to feel like a fluff-read – by which I mean, easy to read and follow and engage with – despite contemplating the mechanics of time-travel and So Much Ethics and exploring quantum physics. That’s incredibly impressive all on its own – making such intellectual topics flow so smoothly, keeping it all engaging and addictive when it could so easily have slid into heavy boredom. I set aside other books that felt like Too Much Effort in favour of relaxing into The Atlas Six, whose slow pace and deeply introspective storytelling is soothing and hypnotic. It felt escapist, even though nothing about the premise or plot is escapist in any way.

I can’t put my finger on how she does it, but Blake’s managed to create something that balances perfectly between deep dark magic and addictive escapism. I didn’t want to put it down.

So the book sweeps you along like a current, pulling you through the ever-shifting character dynamics and relationships, the pages and pages of introspection, the academic magic and slow, steady investigation into What The Fuck Is Going On Here.

The problem is that when it’s over…you’re kind of left wondering what the hell just happened, and why the hell did I waste my time with that???

Because there’s nothing really there. The Atlas Six is like biting into a beautiful pastry, and finding that it’s all air instead of delicious treat. Although I enjoyed the reading experience, after turning the final page I was left with the realisation that I had no interest whatsoever in reading the sequel. I felt frustrated with the book, and with myself for spending three days on it, because only in finishing it did I realise there was no substance to any of it.

For example: I have no gods-damn idea why most of the characters are so passionate about joining the Society. Nico is the only one with a really clear motive – he’s in it in the hopes that somewhere in the archives he can discover a way to cure/protect one of his closest friends, which is backed up by the fact that he’s spent the last four or five years of his life running himself ragged looking for a cure/solution out in the wider world.

Reina? I think she just really likes ancient classics and is enjoying reading books the wider world thinks are lost forever?

Libby? Vaguely feels like she has a responsibility to use her power to Advance Human Knowledge, except she’s completely on board with keeping all the discoveries of her research secret because What If Politicians Got a Hold Of It???

Parisa? I don’t know. I can’t even guess.

Callum? I don’t know. I can’t even guess. He seems actively disinterested in the whole thing.

Tristan? He hates his life and takes a gamble that this will be better?

Bar Nico, none of them felt like they were passionate about it; I just did not buy into why they were here at all, never mind why they stayed. Which made it massively underwhelming when the Big Reveal comes: in order for five of the team to advance, they have to kill the sixth. But nobody except Nico felt like they would believably kill for this. Their engagement was so unconvincing I expected them all to shrug, go ‘no thanks’, and walk away rather than commit murder.

Like. Come on. If you want me to buy that someone will murder for a thing, you have to convince me that they really, really care about the thing. And The Atlas Six simply does not do that.

This is without going into the whole ‘we must keep all this knowledge secret because the World Cannot Be Trusted With It’, which. Makes me Tired. Like, I see your point, but also, that means there’s no point in gathering knowledge at all. Instead of building this big magical archive, you should have burned it all, if this is stuff people can’t be trusted with. And this foundational aspect of the premise isn’t really poked all that hard, even if someone in the book occasionally points out that the Society’s set-up is elitist and capitalist in the extreme, and that all this knowledge isn’t doing any good at all locked up behind all these wards where no one can get at it.

But by far the worst part of The Atlas Six is its ending. The big game-changing, dun dun DUN reveal made me absolutely furious – because there was no build-up to it! It’s a gods-damn diabolus ex machina; no groundwork, no hints, no moments that suddenly click into place in hindsight. The book just abruptly starts lecturing the reader on what the characters don’t know has been Going On All Along, complete with Enemy From Nowhere and the most eye-rollingly cliche Evil Villain Plan ever. There’s no way the reader could have seen it coming, or even guessed at it, and that kind of last-second reveal is unforgivable in a story. Blegh!

(The thing with the construct and how it was made? That was clever. I’ll grant Blake that one. BUT THE REST OF IT? NO.)

Despite all the book’s flaws, I did enjoy actually reading it – but the ending blew through all the goodwill The Atlas Six had earned from me up until that point. I probably would have picked up the sequel when it comes out, just because I know Blake writes enjoyably, if not for that stupid, out-of-nowhere ending.

(As a sidenote, I don’t know why this is being hailed as being packed full of queerness. Only one character is clearly bi or pansexual; and there’s one drunken F/M/F threesome, which is from every angle more about the F/M, involving two characters who have each previously only displayed sexual interest in the opposite sex. Nico might be in romantic love with the friend he’s trying to save, but it’s not at all clear; and if you squint very hard Callum and Tristan might be giving off queer vibes, but again, it’s not clear at all. I can see plenty of grounds for fanfic, and subtext that might become text in a later book, but this is nothing like the queer dark fantasy I was promised.)

So basically – a good read, but not a great book, with an ending I wanted to punch in the face. I can’t deny I enjoyed the reading experience, but The Atlas Six is like junkfood; looks good, tastes good, with zero nutritional value…and in this case, left me with food poisoning.

Related Posts