Title: The Atlas Six
Author: Olivie Blake
Synopsis (from Goodreads): 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.
Most of them.
Rating: 4/5
This review will contain SPOILERS
CW: death, illness, death of a sister, strained relationship with parents, excessive drinking, blood, violence, attempted suicide, gore.
“The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.”
I’ve had my eyes set on this book for quite some time now, and I was very eager to read it. It was quite a journey, but as you can see from my rating, I completely enjoyed it. I think October is the perfect time to read a Dark Academia novel, and if this is something that may interest you, I think you should go for it.
As you can see from the synopsis this book talks about a group of young people with special abilities that are invited to take part to the Alexandrian Society, where the caretakers of knowledge reunite. They have to earn their place in the Society, and to do so they will have to take a very hard decision.
I usually prefer Dark Academia books where magic is not involved but this was quite good, and it explained very well the system and the abilities that these people have. Sometimes I found the explanations to be quite hard to understand, but that’s only because some topics like physics laws and stuff like that are very difficult for me to grasp, so that’s totally a me thing.
I also think one of the strongest traits of the book is the atmosphere and the setting. Like the kids say, “the vibes were immaculate”. I very much liked the school setting, and for the most part I really did not get the feeling that the book was set mainly in a single place, something that sometimes can be suffocating in a novel, but that was not, in any way, a thing that undermined my general enjoyment of the book. If so, it only increased it. Blake has a way of describing situations and places that transports the reader right in the story, I highly appreciated that.
Do I think that this book is a mix of various Dark Academia tropes? Yes, yes I do, but I also think that that’s exactly what I was looking for, and for me it delivered in every aspect.
As in every good Dark Academia novel, the strength of this book were its characters. This is definitely a choral book, and I have to say some characters took much more space than others, but I was okay with that. Maybe it was because some of my favourites had more space, so I’m a bit biased, but in general I think it was an okay balance of points of view.
We have so many different personalities, and while sometimes I think they are a bit of a walking Dark Academia clichés characters, like I said, it was quite fine by me.
I believe that the character that resonates the most with me is Libby, I have not liked a character this much for a very long time, she’s everything I could want and more in a story like this, and I truly believe I would not have liked this book quite as much without her. And for this reason, I just want to see her safe, which means that if in the second book we will not free her, I will be very mad. Like, so mad, don’t even let me begin.
Also, as in every Dark Academia book, the characters live on the thin line of a constant undercurrent of sexual tension among one another. And even between themselves and people outside of their close group. I think it’s a concept well established in this genre and it probably comes from the hedonistic and lust infused way of living life that these books tend to convey, and I’m all for it.
But let me just say, I live for Nico and Libby’s relationship. May they will remain friends, may they will get together, I don’t care, I strongly believe theirs is the purest and realest relationship in the whole story. I mean, they were binary stars. What are we even talking about? And yeah, I guess there’s also the fact that probably Nico is in love with Gideon and their polyglot way of speaking and I’m completely fine with that, let’s see how this will turn out in later books.
Because there will be other books, and I can’t wait to read all of them. I always find myself completely mesmerized by these types of stories, there’s just something about the search of power and greatness and the utter carelessness and later madness that come with it (please don’t try this at home) that fascinates me beyond compare.
So that’s it guys, this was my review of this book, if you want to discuss it with us you can do so on our Goodreads group!
Also, if you want to join us, our November read is going to be “The Love Hypothesis” by Ali Hazelwood, a romance book that everyone seems to love, about a fake dating/hate to love relationship that is supposed to give everyone the butterflies.
Thank you so much for reading this review, see you next time,
Books Real When Shared 