The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake is a dark academia sci-fantasy and the second book in the Atlas series. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at eighteen and a half hours and is narrated by a full cast. This version also contains the short story prequel to the series, "Sacred Hospitality," at the end of the audiobook.

Six mages were invited to a prestigious magical society though only five remain at the Archives. A rival society is gaining in power. What will they do with all of the knowledge contained in the Archives? Will they preserve the current world order, or burn it down and rebuild?

This book felt like it had a lot less of the academia that permeated the first book. Is it still dark academia if the academics aren't the focus? This book follows their second year in the Alexandrian Society and they're mostly focused on their individual research projects. They'll theorize together every so often, so I guess the academia is still alive.

It also starts a little slow but once we got about a quarter in I was hooked. I listened to the back 65% in one day.

This story is yet again mostly character-driven. So if you like these characters, you will probably enjoy following them through another book. Libby especially has growth here, in dealing with the scenario she was left in at the end of book one. However, some of the choices she makes here won't really have impact until book three it seems. I'm very excited to see what she does and how she reacts to things in the next book.

We gain additional POV characters as well in Gideon, Ezra, and a few others. We get a lot more Gideon in general in this installment. I was glad to learn more about our favorite cinnamon roll dream walker. This also includes more Nico/Gideon time which always warms my heart.

I need the next book to see what my fav dumpster fire mages do next.

Tropes in this book include: time travel

CW: violence, death, alcohol abuse, depression

The publisher provided a audio galley of this book for me to review. All opinions contained herein are my own.

Ok friends... I think I have to succumb to the fact that this series is just not for me. I know it's widely loved by many and I wish I loved it, but I just do not. I'm not invested in any of the characters and the plot is all over the place. Very unlikely I'll continue with this series but we'll see.

Be warned, this does end with another cliffhanger of sorts.

To note, I thought the audiobook itself was good.

Picking up immediately after the first book, this is a book written to be a movie. Not always a bad thing, but not my cup of tea. Good characters and pacing help a lot with the book.

This book was an absolute rollercoaster, and it was an expierence. I loved the Atlas Six with its magic and the characters and the Atlas Paradox futhered my love for certain characters. Yes folks, I mean Libby & Parisa ( I aboslutely love these girls ).We had some character development along the way, and the alliances that were formed were interesting to say the least. The beginning of this book was extremely slow which felt super odd considering how TA6 pacing was. And then there was the matter of the plot, it felt all over the place in some parts. I knew what was happening and then the next minute I didn't and I was overall confused.
The ending of the book tho!!! I'm excited for the next book because I have to know how this is going to end.
Thank you Netgally and Macmillian for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review

🕰 THE ATLAS PARADOX by Olivie Blake 🕰

🥤Drink Pairing: An old fashioned coke! (grabbed from the gas station…. You’ll understand once you read 🤫)

Huge thank you to MacMillan Audio and NetGalley for the audiobook ARC! 🎧

✨ Review: The day is finally here! Happy pub day to “The Atlas Paradox” - one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year!

I can’t get into all of my feelings on this one since it just came out and of course I can’t spoil it for everyone - but all I can say is that I love Libby and she will always be my fav part of this series. Seeing her journey in this book was truly the highlight of the story for me!

I listened to this one as well as the first book on audio, and the narrators do a great job encompassing the characters they play. I love that it’s a full cast and it brought me right back into the story right away. Highly recommend listening to this one!

Happy reading, and Olivie - see you on Sunday in Brookline!

This audiobook turned out incredible. Each character in the story has their own narrator and this detail brings such life to the story. The narrators do an amazing job putting emotion into the scene and making the story come to life. I’m so impressed with this audiobook and highly recommend it.

Happy Pub day to The Atlas Paradox and thank you to @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for the audiobook ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review!

First of all, the narration of this series is stupendous. It’s a full cast performance, so each of the characters is distinct and easy to tell apart and has their own fully developed role.

Which is really vital in this series because we have 6+ main characters depending on how you count, and at least as many perspectives. This has been consistent throughout the series, though, and wasn’t just the author getting overconfident in the middle book of a trilogy.

This series continues to be incredibly cerebral, but the focus on book 2 shifts from the being primarily focused on research topics and becomes much more psychological. There’s a lot of exploration of moral beliefs and the purpose of life, etc. this is definitely a series for a certain TYPE of reader. If you need a well-defined plot with a linear narrative describing action that takes you from point A to B, this won’t be for you. If you enjoy a lot of thought-provoking questions and theoretical supposing… welcome to the mother ship.

There’s less interaction between the characters is book 2, so it loses even that bit of extra action where scenes were at least conversations between characters. Book 2 mostly features these same moody geniuses going internal and doing the most damage to themselves.

I felt the internal rambling and philosophical bickering dragged more in this book, as it just feels like instead of moving toward tying up loose ends… the loose ends frayed and created more ends. There wasn’t much sense of progress.

The weird sensation I’m left with is that Blake has maybe been leaving more bread crumbs than there are trails? These characters are mostly unlikable, so the appeal of the books is trying to guess what each of their end goals are and who is really pulling their strings. By the end of this book, though, I was more left wondering if there even are strings or goals at all. This felt fairly directionless in the sense that I still can’t see the horizon from where we’re left standing.. She’s got a lot to pull together in book 3, and I think I’ll mostly be reading to see if/how she manages it.

“Destiny is a choice”

Happy Pub Day! Thank you Olivie Blake, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for this audiobook ARC in return for my honest review!

Six Magicians. Two rivalries. One researcher. And a man that can walk through dreams. All must pick a side: do they wish to preserve the world or destroy it? The cost of knowledge is steep, but the price of power demands each character take a side.

Just like the first book, this book has multiple POV’s from the view points of our morally grey characters (my personal favorite). I loved getting to see more Gideon and am hoping that means we will get to see more of him in the next book! While this book gave us more insight on the characters and revealed answers to questions I had from “The Atlas Six”, it definitely felt like this book was a little bit of an info dump to set us up for the next book. I’m not mad about it though, because I am so excited to see where this leads us. The ending of this book? Absolute chefs kiss! Olivie Blake has skill when it comes to cliffhangers that leave you wanting more! Since this was an audiobook, I want to mention that Macmillan Audio did a great job casting the narrators. “The Atlas Paradox” is narrated by a full cast, and the narrators did a fantastic job! I really enjoyed this book and am so ready for the next one and gave this book 4 ⭐️‘s!

I was very thankful to receive an early copy of this book because I absolutely loved the first book, the Atlas Six! I enjoyed the plot of this sequel, the character arc’s/development, and the research that must have gone into writing this book. However, I found that at times it read like a philosophy lecture and I wasn’t very keen on that. I also found some of the inner dialogue of the characters (particularly Tristan) to be repetitive at times. I think these things combined made for a slower paced read at times and I tend to prefer fast paced reads. Overall, this is still a good book and I did like it, I just wanted to mention a few of my thoughts.

UPDATE: 20/10/2022

The Atlas Paradox

Well, I revisited and finished this book. I think I know what my problem was the book (for me) didn’t pull me in until the last 30/25%. Those last bits of the book are truly what I enjoyed and also yeah I kinda hate all these characters but in a way that I enjoy. I’m not sure I’ll be actually waiting impatiently for the third book but I will read it eventually just to see where it all goes

So if reading a book that only got interesting in the last 30% doesn’t sound like a fit I suggest reading other reviews and deciding if it’s a boo to add to your TBR

I could not get into this and I really enjoyed book one but I have not been able to connect with book two at all

Myth: 4/5

The Atlas Paradox takes us into the year of independent study with the society. As the characters original motivations shift or evolve, we get a glimpse of what this journey into dark academia will do to each of them. Power continues to be a predominant theme throughout the story, power, and fate. Given Libby’s predicament we also get a bit of destiny which is always fun.

Magic: 4/5

The magic builds from book one as each character continues in their fields of study. I also particularly found Dalton’s story to be fascinating as we learn more about the man in the castle. Shrouded in mystery and their own motives, the current society members start to unravel the motivations of the past.

Overall: 4/5

Diving back into the The Atlas world was as rich as I remembered. I listened to the audiobook for this, and while the narrative cast was great, I found it more difficult to track the character’s intentions and motivational complexities through audio. I think I’ll enjoy a read of the text version after release to be able to savor the language a bit more.

This is a fun edition to the series. I liked the beginning. The middle felt choppy and a bit disconnected. Because of the tropes used, which are some of my favorite (in keeping this spoiler free I will not mention said tropes in this review) it felt like we were missing a lot. So much was happening off page and it didn't feel smooth and pulled me out of the story unlike book one. However by 75% I was back in the flow and really enjoyed it. The new characters were fun, and creative. I LOVED the ending. The character arcs are super interesting right now. This series is unique, and incredibly well thought out. Very good overall. Very excited for book three 🙌🏼

Olivie Blake's sequel to The Atlas Six picks up exactly where its predecessor left off, with Libby still missing, and the others completely in the dark about the whole situation.

The first bit of this book was quite slow, but it picks up about a quarter way through. As with the first book, my favourite thing about this novel was the characters, Nico, Libby and Callum being my personal favourites. I don't think I enjoy these books quite as much as the majority of BookTok seems to, but they are definitely worth the read and I'll be picking up the third novel.

First, I would like to add I read the first edition of The Atlas Six, which was self published in 2020. It was then republished in 2021 & changes were made! The biggest thanks goes to the YouTube Channel Manda Lyn Reads for making a video explaining the difference between the two editions. I took their advice & reread the section titled “Death” of the second edition! It is quite a changed ending, which showcases different character motivations. I’m glad I reread it!

The audiobook has a brilliant full cast, which I thought was neat. Each character has their own voice & I love when books do that, especially when there are multiple point of views.

I am constantly in just awe at the unimaginable intelligence that is Olivie Blake’s writing & storytelling. The flushed out, complex multiple character stories are just brilliant. & then the way the author intertwines all the characters’ tales into this magnificent braid of a book is just stunning.

I feel like this is a book that might not be as exciting as the first book but I think the information is vital to the story. There’s a lot of internal monologue in this book. I struggled a bit with the pacing in the middle. However, it picks up quite a bit during the end. While I may not have loved this one as much as the first book, I think it’s going to prove crucial to the overall series & I cannot wait to see where everything goes. The Atlas Paradox is full of phenomenal writing & important information that pulls together for a good second book in the series.

Massive thanks goes to NetGalley & Macmillian Audio for the audiobook arc, which I voluntarily read & reviewed. All thoughts & opinions are my own.

Trigger warnings: This book mentions &/or contains kidnapping, alcoholism, grief, murder, death & violence.

Okay so.... I'm not going to lie, the first 45-50% of this book had me so confused, wondering what the hell was going on and what was the point of all this information.
Welp..... there was a point and holy smokes..

The attention to detail was superb. the smallest detail is something you need to keep tucked in the back of your mind because its coming later, sometimes subtley and sometimes in your face. This is a book you really, really need to pay attention to. The writing is phenomenal and just like book 1, it's intellectual and philosophical.

Overall this book did not disappoint. I did enjoy book 1 more for the holy cow, omg what?! factor but this was still a great read that contained a few holy shite, yessssss moments. I'm still excited to continue this series and see where their stories go in book 3.

Just gonna jump right in: I still didn’t find the characters to be that compelling. In fact, in this work they became even more simplified (down to x is good, y is bad), and they became relatively one-dimensional. Though I did grow to appreciate Libby more, and her storyline saved this entire book.

This work felt disjointed – everyone was off doing their own research or pairing together to help each other even when they didn’t want to, which meant that new topics were being rapidly introduced. There was no real connection as to how these new topics were supposed to be relevant to the plot or were supposed to move the plot forward, so it made large chunks of the book feel irrelevant.

Similarly, since it was still told from multiple POVs but everyone was off doing something different, this added to the disjointedness of the book. This book’s pacing, especially the first two-thirds, was incredibly slow, and if it hadn’t been for Libby’s storyline, it would have been almost impossible to get through. The last 30% of the book is where things finally became interesting to me, but there was a lot to slog through to get to this point.

Since I listened to the audiobook I didn’t have to deal with the painfully overabundant parenthetical statements, which already increased my enjoyment of this work significantly. However, the purple prose is still a major problem. It’s all well and good to write lyrically and weave together beautifully complex descriptions and feelings, but when that slows down an already slow book, you’re going to lose me.

I know I’m going to be in the minority here, so I recommend that you read this if you enjoyed the first one and stay away from it if you disliked the first one. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t for me. My thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for allowing me to read and review this book, which will be published tomorrow (25 October 2022).

I was not a huge fan of book one, but it still left me wanting to know more at the end. I contemplated on whether or not to request this.

I feel lucky to have been approved for this book. I know how sought after it is and how many people are looking forward to it. UNFORTUANTELY I did not love this one any more than the first. I feel like there is not a lot of plot for such a big book. The audiobook is 18 hours + long and I don't really feel like I got what I wanted out of it.

I do LOVE the different narrators though. It's what kept me going while listening.

I just think this series is not for me. I know it's loved by so many others. I'm just trying to fill the void in my heart for an adult Harry Potter type series.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the chance to review this ARC in exchange for a review!

3.5 stars
The premise of this series is so good, I just got so bored with all the scientific stuff and rambling. Storylines would go off on a tangent for so long and I just totally lost what was happening in the story. We would either get this rambling on one subject forever, or jump months in a single sentence. The pacing was just so weird.
None of the characters really stood out to me in the first book, and none really stood out to me in this one either. I think my favorite character is Gideon and he isn't even one of the 6 main characters.
At the end of the first book, Libby gets kidnapped by her ex boyfriend which is what really made me want to pick up this one. Her storyline was my favorite by far. I feel like everyone else's storylines were jumbled together and a little hard to distinguish.
Like I said, I really like the premise of this story, but I feel like there is a lot of unnecessary information. I love the secret society, but the point of it is confusing. These 6 people research a specific topic for a year and then go on their merry way after donating their research to the archives. It just seems not very gratifying. I loved how each of them had a different magical ability and how they could use them together in specific ways to create something new.
I did like the full cast, I think it really helped me distinguish between some of the characters. There was one female narrator I liked the least, but overall the full cast was awesome!
I haven't decided if I want to continue the series, but I probably will because it kind of ended on a cliffhanger.

Another series that I jumped right in the middle not knowing who the characters and what is their back story. I started to enjoy doing because if you can not keep me hooked as a stand alone book, there is no way I'm going to care for series

6 kids with unusual capabilities are about to graduate from this secret society where graduation means having access to incredible library this society has been keeping. Imagine Vatican's hidden libraries with stuff from the dark ages. God knows what they have in there that have already been proven yet we are trying to figure it out now not knowing it's already there. So stakes are high for these 6 because imagine the power that comes with knowledge

But also you need to think about the age long ethical dilemma that comes with such power and inherent capabilities of these six. How to use that power? How to change course of things that are deemed set in stone? I feel incredibly sad for one of the characters (assuming she is a new addition) who experienced how the 6 react to that dilemma. I'm not 100% hooked but I don't mind reading the 3rd book when it comes out

I think maybe I missed too much having not read the first in the series.

I couldn't get fully invested in the characters or care about the plot point.

Overall there are six young adults with powers who've joined a secretive group. They're still working on their education or training, but with one of them missing and presume dead - they're getting a sense something isn't quite right. A group of others with similar power are also trying to bring down this group as they believe they have to to save the world.

The inner worlds of the characters, their pasts and how it shaped them was the most interesting part of this book for me.

Also I absolutely hated the narrator's voice for Parisa. I ended up skipping her chapters because of it.