All right... I'll admit, I did get influenced by BookTok with this one. I saw this novel on Goodread's most popular books, and once I read the summary, I was intrigued. Most of those who are as chronically online as I am have probably already heard the premise of the book, so I'll keep it brief.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake features six prodigious medeians - those with prolific magical abilities - to come and be a part of the Alexandrian society, which is a lost library of vast knowledge that only a select few know about. If these six magicians make it through the initation, they're pretty much set for life - they'll have money, power, glory. What else could you want? Unfortunately, there's a catch - after a year of training, only five can make it to the end. Tensions run high in this read, definitely.
In my opinion, there was a pretty even mix of characters and plot that made this story enjoyable. I've seen a lot of people talk about how flat the characters are, but in my opinion, they're all pretty decent people with human intentions (despite the fact that they're all extremely strong magicians). Below is one of my favorite fanarts of the six main characters (all of which have POV chapters):
art credits: @arminarlxrt on twitter
The characters are Libby Rhodes, a slightly cliche academically-focused and rule-following "physician", which basically just means she can control physicalities, Nico de Varona, the charismatic and pragmatic also-physician, Parisa Kamali, a slightly unsufferable and antipathic, if not ingenious, telepathist, Callum Nova, a super-rich and annoying empath with the ability to wrap you around his little finger, and Tristan Caine, a moody boy with a dark family, who also happens to be able to see truth.
Oh, right! I forgot Reina Mori, a naturalist and also the most invisible and forgettable character out there. She is perhaps, the only character I had no opinion on, because she is so flat. I completely forgot she was there for the entire first half of the book, and it wasn't much better later. Seriously, what was her purpose (apart from her ability to control life and all)? Her POV was one of those where, if I were to start at a random page, I wouldn't be able to tell which character was narrating unless by process of elimination.
But Reina-rant aside, this novel had a pretty slow and confusing plot. The entire first 150 pages of the book were spent acquainting us with the characters, and in no subtle ways either. After that, there was a whole lot of nothing going on - characters talking to each other, tensions, romance, introducing new characters, and lots of theoretical fluffs that had to do with abstract concepts like time and space. Also, there is this slight "plot twist" - which is not really much of a plot twist.
Anyway, after this plot twist, things pick up a little because they need to decide who they are going to eliminate. One plot point I found interesting was that only one person needed to be eliminated - the other five can stay. In most novels, it's like, only one can survive. So this way, it basically forced all the five other characters to work together against one character, which I liked. All of the characters have reasons for wanting to become initiaties - however, personally, I only found two of these reasons particularly compelling and well, reasonable. That was Nico and Tristan, and I guess I can empathize with Reina's reason even if it wasn't really important. The problem is, most of these reasons were only mentioned once - as were most of the character's personality traits, making their motives and characteristics a little choppy and inconsistent. I do recall what Caleb said about Tristan's reason -
"Callum could smell it on him: the ambition, the hunger, the drive. It was on the others, too, but not nearly so strong, and certainly not so close to longing... only Tristan truly wanted it, with his whole being. It was salty, savory, like salivation itself.
Now, I will say, the world-building was quite good, but it left me confused sometimes - what world are we even talking about here? I know this is the future, but how far in the future? Is this a different reality entirely (which is very much a possibility, considering the themes this book touches on)? What's going on? I guess I'll have to do some research.
And about the romance - because I'm a sucker for a good sub-plot romance - I really didn't understand what was going on in this book. Seems like all of the characters were interested in each other, and they all had unrealistic amounts of chemistry with each other. I feel like some ships started out interesting and then just got dropped then abruptly picked up again throughout the book. It lacked consistency. For example, Nico and Libby, with their whole enemies-to-lovers thing. For me, it only worked for a little while. And then Callum and Tristan - and then Gideon and Nico - and Parisa and Dalton? My gosh, too much for my little brain to keep track of. At some point, I shipped all of them together.
All this is good and well, but what about the plot twist? You ask. Is it good? Well, I heard people raving about it - but honestly, I didn't get the hype. The plot twist was too complicated, or at least too over-explained. I feel like Blake's twist may have been more effective if it was kept vague in this book and explained more thoroughly in the next book. It also would have felt like a drag. Anyway, I already predicted the last chapter and all the people involved in the plot twist (not the twist itself though), so I didn't really feel much.
Well, it's no secret that Olivie Blake is definitely a talented author, and she somehow seamlessly manages to incorporate scientific theories and various philosophies into her writing, opening up interesting ideas like wormholes and the concept of "luck" and "unluck". So, the characters, if not the plot, captured by interest enough to read the next book - however, from me it only earned three stars.
⭐⭐⭐
I did enjoy this read, and will be reading the sequel shortly. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the book and see if you would like me to do a book review on the sequel! If you're interested, I did this for a video for my YouTube channel where I read popular BookTok books (including Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter, etc.), and I post more book and lifestyle content, there, so go check it out.
Comments