The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)

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 the 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.

Reviewed by lessthelonely on

4 of 5 stars

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[READ THE SELF-PUBLISHED VERSION]

OK, this one was a long time coming. Thanks, BookTok for the recommendation.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was skeptical of it - and you might think it's because the book is self-published, but nope! -, mostly because the chapters weren't tagged in the contents of the eBook, somehow, so I assumed that the book only had 8 chapters. I was delightedly surprised it wasn't true.

I actually went beyond wanting to read this book to actually reading it only because many people raved about it being MLM, WLW, and also having heterosexual relationships. I get why that was said, but I was highly disappointed to know that the LGBTQ+ content was mostly a sex scene and an I love you scene that was really intense but felt kind of flat for me: I believed this book was going to go a very certain way, with 3 pairs of closed emotional and romantic relationships but with added openness, as in... polyamory.

I was all in for that, and the thing is I was sort of right? There are very defined relationships here, but I don't think any of them actually reached what I was hoping, which is fine if the sequel takes it from here. I guess I was just hoping to feel highly depressed about these 6 blaring attractive characters that were painfully my type (Nico de Varona, I'm especially looking at you, you little shit; Callum, you're second) just be happy because their flaws could make me feel loveable, which is something I haven't been feeling a lot.

This book is PACKED with text. And I'm usually awfully skeptical of books that go for the mysticism and pretty words, but this book does it right. It's a lot of information and a lot of wandering, but it's always beautiful. One thing I noticed is that many chapters happened to follow a certain technique: we start at point B, and right at the beginning the character focuses on something that happened before B, so A, after which they go back to point B and finish that little thread. I noticed it being used quite a few times, but it never deterred from the experience.

Another thing I feel like I must say is that even though I loved all these characters, some felt a bit lacking at times, namely Reina, whose flaws weren't as explored as, for example, Libby's, Parisa's, Nico's, or even Tristan's. Secondly, Tristan's problems seemed highly convoluted, and there's a scene that basically leaves him totally bare. I suspect that this was done to tell us there's more to him than this. If that's not the case, I'm going to be extremely sad.

Finally... Callum. I really liked Callum but he caused me severe emotional distress because No way you're that cynical without it having some real toll on you. I'm expecting that Book 2 will go into his actual flaws because it didn't seem like we saw any flaws or vulnerability from him in this book: what I got from what he's been through is that he's a victim and product of his own environment which... ouch, that hits close to home, but at the same time, I was always on constant edge reading his thoughts and feelings. It was highly distressed because it seemed like he's always on the verge of letting himself feel and be a bit truer to his own humanity, but that didn't really happen, not in this book.

Either way, that's the only reason I won't give this book 5 stars. Read it. It's dark, it's mystic, it's absolutely fantastic and it deserves the hype that follows it. Ms. Olivie Blake, thank you for your service.

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  • 14 August, 2021: Reviewed