SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake: https://t.co/IrWKxoG56v
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 23, 2022
Short Review: 5.5 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): A tale of six magicians invited into a society - where only five will survive to be initiated - is hampered by too many unlikable characters and a plot that teases revelations that either don't come or just don't land, and instead tease for a sequel.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) February 23, 2022
2/3
Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's updated release on March 1, 2022 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
The Atlas Six was a self-published novel by author Olivie Blake that apparently somewhat of a hit on BookTok and other social media, leading to it and its future sequels being picked up by Tor Books last year. As a result, Tor is releasing a revised edition on March 1, 2022, and I managed to be granted a copy on Netgalley to check out (ironically I had my request granted after I already had a copy of the original version from my eLibrary).
And well......I did not like The Atlas Six, as it manages to combine a plot structure that I absolutely hate with a set of main characters who I largely did not care for. The story features six main characters, two of which are largely unlikable throughout, and one of which never gets almost any redeeming features - and yet he's also not really meant to be an antagonist either so it doesn't really work. Nor are the other four particularly likable as a generally incredibly jaded bunch who just are miserable to follow, with them often keeping secrets for no reason that just further keeps them separated. And the story seems clearly to be leading to a major point, to some big revelation....except that revelation is either a bust or just really pushed off to the next book, making it all just seem like such a letdown.
The result is a book I can absolutely not recommend and I really don't get where the buzz came from here.
-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
In a world with magic of all kinds, there are those whose powers and talents are greater than others, such that they can do wondrous things. And for the secret Alexandrian Society, the keepers of lost knowledge for centuries dating back to the secret survival of the Library of Alexandria, those rare talents are the ones they seek to induct into their ranks, with rewards of wealth, powers, and prestige for those chosen among all the magicians of the entire world.
Well....for most of them.
Six magicians from around the world are chosen by the Society's caretaker, the mysterious Atlas Blakely, to be the next potential initiates:
Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, rival masters of physical magic who both can't stand and can't get away from each other;
Reina Mori, incredible naturalist, able to draw power from and speak to all living things, such as plants;
Tristan Caine, a boy with the strange power to see through all illusions such that he always sees the very truth of reality;
Parisa Kamali, a jaded telepath able to discern the thoughts of everyone around her on a whim; and
Callum Nova, an Empath of such incredible power that he's able to alter the emotions of others, who is largely bored with what he finds in others.
The Six of them will spend the year learning together in the Society's archives. There the six of them will learn far more about their powers, and themselves, than they ever could have learned elsewhere. In the process, the six of them will have to reconsider everything they know about their own lives.
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The Atlas Six takes place in a world where magic is a well known part of the world, such that there are universities featuring it, magicians of all different types and stripes, and even magical creatures of various kinds poking in and about (sorta). That said, it's not a world all too different from our own, with greedy people in power taking advantage of others, with wealth and power making a big deal of difference in how hard some have to work, with one's past being nearly impossible to escape from despite how much one may want to do so, etc. And so, as the book alternates between the perspectives of our six protagonists, it's often easy to see where their views on the world come from.....at least for some of them.
And it's that caveat there that leads to my first big problem with the book: too many of the characters are unlikable, and their actions towards each other don't help the matter - moreover, while they each (well all but one of them) have redeeming traits in their backstories to explain themselves, the book's split of their point of view perspectives doesn't really give us enough time with each of them individually to really get to know those redeeming traits, especially when the book can often go long stretches before we re-encounter a specific character's perspective, with Callum suffering most notably from this (he also gets the least # of chapters). And here's the thing: the book could be trying to show an utterly crapsack world that its heroes will just make worse, or one that they will make better, but it doesn't really go in either direction, and so their being unlikable never really achieves any particular purpose.
So you have Libby, who's probably the most likable of the crew - a girl with physical talent who mourns her lost sister and feels she's had to fight and scrap her way for every magical award or achievement she deserves, who always has a chip on her shoulder.....and who 2/3 of the other characters in their perspectives constantly think about as being useless due to an inferiority complex and easy to break mentally, which just is ugly to think about. You have Nico, the boy who is Libby's counterpart and privileged aside from that...but who really wants to help a magical being friend/boyfriend (maybe?) keep safe from that friend's dangerous mother....except Nico never tells anyone about this basically, so this rarely goes anywhere since none of the others can willingly help him. Nor are any other such creatures ever shown elsewhere in the story, leaving it bizarre that they exist only seemingly in 1/6th of the story.
And these are your best characters. Reina's indifference to anything and hatred of being used is understandable but just makes her feel cold and hard to care about, as is the case with Tristan's cynicism and own inferiority complex that makes him just frustrating especially as he keeps getting manipulated. And ugh there's Parisa and Callum - Parisa at least gets a backstory that explains why she's a manipulative telepath who uses sex to find out secrets, but Callum is just a sociopathic manipulator of emotions who never gets any redeeming traits whatsoever, and whose actions are just sort of.....cuz. For a dude who's so used to others' emotions he's entirely cynical about them and yet has always restrained his abilities such that he didn't become a world leader or monster, he has no compunction about being a monster here, and basically no interest it seems in actually uh achieving any goal other than surviving.
So yeah you have six main characters, the most likable of which is constantly belittled in the others' chapters, and its just like why should I care about any of this. And the plot isn't any better, with the story clearly hinting early on that the Alexandrian Society and Atlas are up to no good with their own agendas at play, with the sacrifice of one of the six going to be something devastating....and none of that is really revealed here. There are secret societies that want to destroy the Society, but do we really get to know those here? Nope, other than done-before claim that the Society hoarding knowledge instead of spreading it is wrong, which well....is never really sketched out. You keep waiting for events to play out into a big reveal to take our characters somewhere, to make them have to cooperate or to fight each other.....
And well there is a reveal, but the reveal is so vague and so frustratingly non-answering any of the questions that it might as well say "Come back next book to find out why all this matters!" It's the worst kind of plot, the one that teases answers and then tells you to come back next book to get them, giving you no satisfying payoff whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong, The Atlas Six has a well done prose that's easy to read quite quickly, and its setup is done well enough. But there isn't really any interesting story here, or themes being discussed, or plot, or characters.....It's just an utter waste. I don't really get what people see in this....like I guess it's sort of like the popcorny thrillers that I sometimes deride modern Scalzi for, but those are at least fun and entertaining, and this just isn't really fun or entertaining at all.
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