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, our-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 is more about the F/M. 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.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The beginning hooked me. I enjoy the dark academic plot. Fans of The Umbrella academy, The Magicians and even Doctor who would like this book. The writing was beautiful. The ending definitely took a turn I wasn’t expecting. I look forward to the next in this series. I was fortunate to get a copy of the indie paperback a while ago and I understand completely why this has been picked up for a republish. I will be adding the special edition to my shelves. This book is going places.

The Atlas Six is an AWESOME fantasy. As I was reading it, I was reminded of my favorite fantasy series; Lev Grossman's The Magicians, Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Cycle, and Naomi Novice's Scholomance series. The Atlas Six created a world where I imagine the graduates of Brakebills College or the Scholomance might end up living. The book was exciting, interesting, and I couldn't put it down! Definitely next level!

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Thank you NetGalley, Olivia Blake, and Macmillan-Tor books for approving my request for this book.

This was just kind of disappointing. This book had everything I love and yet it just fell a little short. The writing was fine. The story was fine. The whole thing was fine. I can't help but feel that this book, for me at least, fell victim to overhyping. The insane TikTok hype around this book just got me so so so excited to read it, and it built expectations in me that it simply did not live up to. Instead, The Atlas Six felt to me a sustained tension with no release. I hope to revisit this book in a few months' time when my mind has had time to press the soft reset button and forget all the raving reviews I've heard, and I will update my review if opinions change.

3.5 rounded up to 4

CONTENT WARNING: violence, blood, murder, suicide

This is a tough one for me to review. It's one of those super-hyped books, and I honestly cannot see why.

Let me start with the characters - each and every one is incredibly unlikable in different ways. And not in the good way, where I can eventually warm up to them. The premise of the story is that the characters work to form a cohesive unit, but this doesn't exactly occur anywhere that we can see - eventually we're basically told that the characters that have been bickering and backstabbing for the entire story just somehow become a cohesive unit. However, this is probably the worst case of telling not showing. To be honest, the whole book is showing not telling.

There's so much pretentious conversation that occurs during the book, and much of it centers around some vague physics concepts that were relatively difficult to follow for someone with nothing more than a basic education in physics (aka ME).

The POV jumps between characters, which worked to give me a little bit of insight into what they were each thinking and hiding, but unfortunately, each of the character's voices were incredibly similar, to the point where I'd have to double check who the POV was from as I read.

Normally, I would have DNF'd this, but since I was reading an ARC, I pushed through. While the story got marginally better towards the end, it wasn't what I would call an enjoyable read. It just felt like I was reading to get it done, rather than enjoying any part of the story. Once again, I find that I'm an outlier to the hype.

Booktok sensation! This story has been reprinted due to 3 million views!
In the Atlas Six we are introduced to six very different young people who all have unique magical abilities (medians) and have been recruited by by Atlas Blakely for an exclusive group. This group would be part of the Alexandrian society, the keepers of all of the world's lost knowledge

WE follow the 6 through the initiation process knowing that one person will be eliminated - who will it be and can they ever work together?

I enjoyed this story quite a bit. I love a good dark academia and the "society" is a perfect example.. The story is told through multiple view points which brings more energy and action.. The novel is more YA than adult and there are the dramatic feelings, emotions and attractions to deal with within the story. It's a great first entry however, and if you like dark academia, exclusive competitions, magic and mayhem then #TheAtlasSix is for you! #booktok #Macmillan #Tor #Forge, #Netgalley #netgalleyreads

Although the premise was very interesting and the dark academia atmosphere was on point, I felt like the plot was all over the place and there was too much telling instead of showing.

“It was a secret buried inside a labyrinth, hidden within a maze.”

This sentence best feels like the synopsis of Olivie Blake’s book. Secret societies, talented magicians, and the latest candidates with unusual powers full of promise and thirst for knowledge.

When 6 candidates are selected for possibility induction, they are told they have a year to qualify. Six will begin but only five will be chosen. And so the competition begins. They know the keys to knowledge will open wide with induction, but it’s what they don’t know that’s worrisome deeper into the book.

It’s a slow build as we learn the background and talents of the candidates. And by slow, the reader has to stick it out for half the book before action ensues. My thoughts are since the book is labeled #1, there’s a lot of character development and world building inside. It is worth trudging through for those who read on but my concern is many will not and they will miss out.

The ending is spectacularly interesting, definitely making me wonder when book 2 will be released. This for me is the sign of a good read, one that makes me think one way and then surprises me. Ethics, morality, greed, power, science and manipulation all are found inside these pages. The twist at the end while not entirely surprising is a fantastic lead up to book 2.

Many thanks for Olivie Blake, NetGalley, and McMillan-Tor for this ARC. It was surprisingly thought provoking. In the words of Blake, “Knowledge is carnage. You can’t have it without sacrifice.”

I love Olivie Blake. This was another example of her excellent ability to handle multiple characters and really give each of them life.

The Atlas Six is a character-driven story of six magic-users, five of whom will be initiated into The Alexandria Society. The characters can come off as pretentious jerks at times but ultimately they are lovable pretentious jerks.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ok, wow, this book. Definitely worth the hype (in my opinion, of course). Did anything really ever happen until like... right at the very end? ...Not really? Did I have a hell of a fun time anyway? Absolutely yes!

Very character-driven, and I like that the primary characters all get POV chapters so you can see how they're experiencing and reacting to things, so you can relate to them all on some level (yes, even Callum. Ugh.).

I am DYING for the sequel.

Secret society sign me up! I cannot wait to get my special edition of this book -it feels like a window into an alternate universe rather than a work of fiction. I can’t wait to find out what happens next!

The Atlas Six is about a secret society of medeians (people with unique magical abilities) that has a competition to initiate new recruits. Within this world the library of Alexandria still exists but is kept secret only to be accessed by the secret society. Of the six recruits only 5 will be initiated, The Atlas Six follows the recruits and the recruitment process they go through.

While reading this, I found the world with its connections to ancient Rome very interesting and the concept of the story was unique. I’ve been hearing about this book everywhere, it’s gone viral on booktok and every other social media. However, I unfortunately was not amazed by this, I found the characters to be undeveloped and very tropey, and also pretty annoying. Unlikeable characters are not something I’m against in books, but there is typically something that still makes you want to read about them but I didn’t find anything really interesting about them. The characters of Nico, Libby, and Reina I found to be okay, but the others, particularly Callum, were annoying to the point that I wanted to skip over their point of view.

However, the plot was interesting and wanting to find out who wouldn’t make it is what kept me reading. I like the idea of a secret society and the magic system was unique. The challenge was not something I had really seen before. It took a long time to actually pick up (almost halfway) but once it did it had me interested. I definitely didn’t see the twist coming at the end, but I don’t know if that's necessarily a good thing. It didn’t feel very deserved, there was no foreshadowing or build up so it didn’t really make sense to me. It definitely left me curious about the sequel though, I might check it when it’s released.

While the plot was interesting and I can definitely see it really being some people's thing, the writing style was something that I unfortunately didn’t care for. I found it to be very wordy and often over explaining parts. It felt a lot like big words were thrown in just to make it feel more clever, often while reading I felt like it sounded as though a thesaurus was used to find a synonym to every other word. The dialogue as well had this problem, the characters were often saying things in a very faux intellectual, very artificial way, often saying things in metaphors or being very vague. It often felt like they were trying to be quippy but I kept finding that I literally just didn’t know what they were talking about. It felt pretty pretentious to me, but not in a way that made sense to connect back to the characters and everything but more just trying to be overly clever. I think that this was the main thing that brought it down for me, it just slowed down the pace and was what made the characters annoying and artificial.

Despite all my problems with it, I do think the story has a lot of potential which I’m hoping to see expanded on in the sequel. While I didn’t like the characters a lot I do think that Nico and Reina just need some development for me to like them. The side characters as well, like Nico’s roommates I thought were interesting and I’d love to see more of them in the future. I also enjoyed the more political parts of the society and the ability the story had to point out the flaws and make observations on topics such as classicism within education. I hope to see that expanded on, especially with the events of the ending.

While I personally found the story to be underwhelming, I think that it has a lot of potential and think that it would definitely be something that a lot of people would really enjoy. I’m hopeful for the sequel and recommend to everyone who’s interested to check out the Atlas Six to form their own opinion.

This was just not good. The first 10 chapters I was really intrigued. I love meeting the characters! Sadly, after that I was just bored. I think I was expecting a lot about the library of Alexandria, but we hardly got anything about it. Sadly, this one wasn't for me.

(4.5) Okay I LOVED this and cannot stop thinking about it. sometimes the wording felt incredibly dense but that could be me just having the working brain power of a goldfish some days. The story was great and I loved the complexity to the characters. The fact that each character has a different power/focus while all being thrown together into the same group is just *chefs kiss*. By the end, I was so desperate for more. This book made me fall in love with dark academia and I cannot wait for the next one.

The Alexandrian Society is made up of the worlds best medeians set to protect the vast archives within the walls of its secret library. Every few years, the six best are selected to study within its walls and work toward being initiated into the society itself. Libby and Nico, who can control physical elements, Parisa, a telepath, Callum, an empath, Reina, a naturalist, and Tristan, who can see through illusions, are all selected as the newest recruits. None of them grasps what they’re being invited to or the challenges they’re about to face. They’re going to be pushed beyond what they deemed possible in order to make it to initiation which almost all of them will face… almost all of them.

WHENS THE NEXT ONE ?!

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan- Tor for access to this one.

Holy binge read! Every single character in this book is amazing. Such a well thought out concept and properly executed. A modern day classic.

Amazing!!! This is one of my favorite books of 2020. The characters are so unique and the internal prose is beautiful. Everything is written so well and I cannot wait for the next installment!

I'd heard about this from BookTubers and I knew it was a big thing on BookTok, so I was intrigued when I saw it on NetGalley. The premise here is that magic is real, there are different magical specialties, and there's a secret society that periodically recruits a cohort of six magicians to study together for a year at a magically cloaked Library of Alexandria (that part was a little confusing for me) and then they get officially initiated into that society. I liked the alternating perspectives between the six recruits, some of whom are very unreliable narrators, and I liked the slow revelation of various conspiracy types of situations, but this did feel a little long to me. Of course, at the end I was like "nooooo but what's next" so that may not be a particularly fair criticism now that I'm thinking about it. This reminded me a bit of The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, and was definitely dark and sometimes very violent.

Every ten years, the Alexandrian Society invites six young magicians of astonishing ability into its unparalleled archives for a year of training and study. The latest crop includes: Reina, who finds her knack for plants annoying. Nico and Libby, whose abilities to warp physics are so similar they detest each other. Tristan, who sees through illusions to the shape of reality itself. And Callum and Reina, an empath and a telepath whose strength is matched only by their callousness. At the end of the year, five will join the Society and one will . . . not be going home. This book's strength lies in its deft character building.

This books was such a good read I could not put it down! I love how we got POVs from all the characters so we could get inside their heads. You get to see how all of them aren't perfect which makes them human and allows you to fall in love with their imperfections. Out of all the characters my favorite would be Libby and I'm so excited to see what happens in the next book!