The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation.
Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality - an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.
When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.
Most of them.
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This book was very underwhelming. I had such high expectations but it wasn’t at all what I expected and honestly, if it weren’t for the last 100 pages I would have given 2 stars. This book comes very highly recommended from a lot of book influencers across multiple social media platforms so maybe that was part of it’s downfall. Sometimes it’s hard to live up to such lofty expectations. This book is toted as magic/dark academia, found family, and adventure. In my opinion it’s none of those. All the characters hate each other, the magic system isn’t very well explained, and the academia part is rarely touched on. For it being about the Library at Alexandria, we barley get a library explanation or even a well set scene of said magnificent library of legends. I liked two characters of the six and they’re what kept me from DNF’ing this book. The ending also finally got into the meat of the plot and had me excited, but seeing as it took the entire book to get me there, I was disappointed. I understand it’s a series but that doesn’t mean the first book gets to be boring. I do think the plot this book set up for future novels will definitely be interesting so I’m hoping the sequel can do what this novel didn’t, I’m not writing it off just yet!
I feel like I’m maybe being too harsh on this book but there was just so much that didn’t click. The characters aren’t very well fleshed out and if we’re supposed to slowly grow to love them, that didn’t work, they were selfish horrible people from start to end. Even in The Secret History where every character was problematic, you still grudgingly get attached to them but that didn’t happen for me here. I think the one saving grace on characterizations was how a character shifted while in the viewpoints of others. When reading from character A’s viewpoint, I felt she was strong and confident but then seeing her from character B she seems whiny and afraid, from character C she’s a threat and I found it so interesting how the perception of her shifted around throughout the novel from different viewpoints because that is realistic. Characters are never seen exactly the same through everyone’s eyes, and lots of books with multiple POVs miss that point. I loved it.
The magic system? Not explained at all. We’re thrown into the plot, there’s witches and mediens (special witches?) but the distinction is never clarified. The place they are staying is Alexandria but yet it isn’t? The famous library isn’t really a library but it has a library? I expected a scene full of awe and wonder when they see the missing library with shelves upon shelves of grandeur… but we didn’t get that. Each persons powers weren’t well explained either and left me pretty confused (and I’ve read a lot of high fantasy so it takes a lot to get my head spinning). I get that maybe each character is growing into their powers but we should still have a rough idea what those are. Ie. Libby and Nico control elements? Her specialty seems to be fire but that’s never explored more than once and Nico can cause earthquakes? But yet he can also visit different dimensions and can shapeshift? Explain it to me like I’m an idiot because none of this makes a lick of sense. I think, if the magic system of this world was actually explained it would have made the magic within each character so much more interesting but as it was I was spending so much time trying to rationalize or make sense of it that I couldn’t enjoy the wonder of it all.
Overall, wasn’t a huge fan, the last 1/4 of the book was great, however it shouldn’t take that long to get us into it. I do want to see what happens with these characters so admittedly I’ll probably slog through the sequel when it appears but it was definitely a slower, more scientific text like book than anything fantasy that I’ve experienced. 3 stars. (The ending bumped it from 2 stars to a 3).