Reading BookTok’s Most Popular Fantasy: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake – Review

First things first: I don’t actually have BookTok. Yet it is impossible not to know which books are currently trending on the platform. Every book store has at least one “popular on BookTok” or “BookTok recs” (what do they call it in your book store?) table. The Atlas Six is already over three years old and still the first book that comes to my mind whenever BookTok is mentioned. Staying very true to my reading personality, I just started it recently and finished it as my first book of 2024! 🥳

I had very high expectations for the book and it sounded exactly like my cup of tea: dark academia vibes?? a randomly (maybe not so randomly) selected group of people joining some kind of secret society?? magical, out of control, powers?? It sounded perfect. Turns out it may have sounded a little bit too perfect.

What was the saying? With great hype comes great responsibility?

The Atlas Six
by Olivie Blake
book #1 in The Atlas Six series
published January 31, 2020
genre: fantasy, mystery, ya/adult

my rating:

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

sypnosis:

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.

More interesting than the game is always the players, you know.

By now, I think it’s no secret that The Atlas Six is an extremely character-driven book. “Extremely” being the key word here. It is one of the reasons this book – for me – could not live up to the hype: While characters are an essential part of every story and I really appreciate it whenever authors put a lot of thought and dimension to them, you can’t do much a when in a book, you know, nothing happpens at all. Olivie Blake spends time introducing the world of these magicians to the reader. It turns out to be a kind of parallel world where, as far as I’ve understood, magicians live alongside and with humans. There are these magical corporations, universities, famous families and so on. Magic in this world is a science to be researched and understood. The world-buildung to me was not really an issue. But the action was: Our chosen ones get selected for the Society, go there, study and that’s pretty much it. It is only in the last 20-50 pages that the plot moves forward which is why I had a really hard time with the last portion of the book. The last 100 pages were a battle indeed.

In terms of plot The Atlas Six is like wanting to play “The Sims” but only for customizing the characters, not for actually building their houses and running the game.

I don’t think that there is a problem with that per se. For me though it is one of the main reasons why this could not reach the four or even five star-mark. If only the characters could make up for it:

They were binary stars, trapped in each other’s gravitational field and easily diminished without the other’s opposing force.

I genuinely believe that all of the characters had potential. It was a diverse group with interesting powers and back stories. It’s just that as a reader I felt that it was very hard to actually care for them. Several times they are asked what their driving force is. Why are they here? What are their aims? Their dreams? They tell you but just as other reviewers stated I found that to be rather pretentious. As for characters, I don’t really have a favourite but I think that the relationship between Nico and Libby had a lot to offer but it was kind of neglected halfway through the book. A real shame! I felt neutral about the others. Parisa for sure is a controversial one and I also see why. I wasn’t really a fan of hers and how her appearance was emphasized so much. Again, the blueprint was there but the execution had flaws. I feel as if after finishing the book you don’t really know the characters much better compared to the first chapters. Also the proportion of how much “POV-time” they get varies a lot. Parisa, for example, has more chapters proportionwise. Callum, on the other hand, what is he doing in all that spare time??

The characters see themselves confronted with the academic offer of a lifetime. It keeps the reader guessing what they are willing to do, which borders they are prepared to cross, for knowledge and power. It all comes down to what it means to be human.

What I did enjoy about the book was the concept and the overall vibes of it. The Atlas Six is such a prime example for dark academia fantasy books and I partly think that is why so many enjoyed it. The characters are all flawed and untrustworthy which makes you questions their actions and thoughts a lot. The questions of “Who is going to team up with who?”, “What actually is the Society?” and “How can we become stronger?” were interesting to me too. Being a fan of switched POV’s, I also had no issues with that in the book but I caught myself looking forward to certain ones.

The problem with knowledge, is its inexhaustible craving. the more of it you have, the less you feel you know.

All in all, I am very conflicted about The Atlas Six as a whole. As mentioned, I wanted this to be a five star read but was let down by it. I wasn’t really sure what to rate this either, so I pinpoited it to three stars. You can totally read The Atlas Six, it is a solid fantasy book but comparing it to other books of this gernre: I have read far more sophisticated ones with better pacing, plot, etc. by now. For me, unfortunately (!), it cannot live up to the extreme hype it received and still does. If I’ll continue to read The Atlas Paradox and The Atlas Complex? Maybe? I am going to leave that question unanswered for now and prioritize other books on my tbr first.

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What are your thoughts on The Atlas Six? How did you stumble upon the book? In what way did the massive hype this book received influence your reading experience? Feel free to let me know!

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