The Atlas Six

Points of reference for this title are The Magicians and The Book of Skulls, two vastly superior novels. Six talented young magical adults are given the chance to join a secret mystical society that maintains the Library of Alexandria, but only five can do so, the other must die. What a stupid way of doing things, killing 16.7% of the most talented young magicians on the planet. Is this a society of cretins? No matter, once you start reading, you'll be hoping all six of these boring and obnoxious brats are killed. And do you know what? It will be a release for them; freedom from having to utter the stilted, trite and pretentious words the author forces into their mouths. I've watched plays written and performed by young farmers' societies with better dialogue. Blake makes George Lucas look like William Shakespeare. The world building is practically non-existent; how do all these magical folk interact with the mundane world? Are there regular human janitors and secretaries at the New York University of Magical Arts? How does magic work here? How can Nico be the scion of Cuban investor capitalists living in Cuba? Where are all the society members? Part of the problem is that the book is very claustrophobic - it's the six candidates interacting with each other with few outsiders, so it's lots of dialogue and interior monologues with little action (there is an action sequence in the first half of the book, but it's not well written (shocker!). And when will anything actually happen in this shitty novel (answer: not until the last twenty pages, when the author dumps a series of events upon us - the pacing is somewhat lacking). Libby and Nico make a nice couple and I hope they hook up in book 2. Oh and it's only adultery if you're married.

What a ride.

I've never read dark academia before and I don't think I've ever read a book with only anti-heroes. I'm used to root for the main characters and like them, but that was very hard here.

The Atlas Six is about six extraordinary powerful magicians, who are invited to join the secret Alexandrian Society (you know, the one from the lost library). They have to live and learn for one year, until the initiation ritual happens and they can become members. They need to become a team and work together, which is already the first big problem, because they don't like each other and certainly don't trust each other. The fact, that only five of them can be initiated in the end, doesn't help.

So in this book (the first one of a trilogy) we follow the group during that first year. Each chapter is written from the POV of one of the characters and very slowly, we learn more about their backgrounds and motivations, which makes them, at least for a few pages, a bit more likeable.

It took me several chapters to get into the book. The language is heavy, and even some native speakers complained that they felt too stupid. I don't know, if the later chapters were less academic or if I just got used to it, but after a while, I found the flow and enjoyed the story.

But to be honest, without my book club, I wouldn't have started the book at all and if, I might have DNF'ed it at some point during the first quarter of the book. Glad I didn't, because in the end, I really enjoyed the story and was quite surprised by some of the turns.

So my final conclusion is 3,5-4 Stars, and the rest of the trilogy is now on my TBR.

What world building! What a magic system! What a premise, & setting, I can't wait to find out more!

...and after the book just sort of fizzles out & ends, I'm still waiting.

The characters are all disappointing, particularly the women. The (annoying) Madonna, the (annoying) Whore, & the one who is also there. The fellas aren't a lot better. I feel like The Atlas Six could have been The Atlas Two, which would have made for far more interesting & complex characters to have boring conversations with each other.

Why though, why have daily classes that are never involved in the story? What's in them? Do the characters sit frozen & silent until later that evening when a boring conversation between two ppl happens?

Still, there's a bit of fucking & definitely some Gay Yearning ™️ so I didn't hate it. Love a bit of YA magic academy, wouldn't read any more in the series though.

Well I guess that answers that question. TikTok does indeed have bad taste. The premise of this book was so promising, and there really were hints of greatness in here. But damn if I wanted to waste hours upon hours of one-dimensional characters talk to each other, I would have started watching Passions again. For a book about the most magical people in the world in the most secretive society filled with magic and lost information, we sure don't see literally any of it. I think I picked up about 3/4ths of the way through that this was actually just serialized fanfiction of X-Men, but if I would have realized sooner, I wouldn't have bothered with it.

The markings of serialized fan fiction structure were all over this. Mindless subplots that don't seem to go anywhere, loose continuity between chapters, and a distinct lack of character development because we don't really spend a lot of time with any one character. This tried extremely hard to be philosophical, scientific, and mysterious but fell short at each, ending up being largely a mess of unrealized relationships and a slapped together mystery. Because 90% of the book was just interactions between the 7-8 characters of the book, there was a comical amount of "tell not show." Characters are TELLING us about how other characters are manipulating other characters. They're TELLING us how characters think about themselves and each other. They're TELLING us about the secretive actions of the shadow society. But NONE of it is shown, which made it all utterly unbelievable. This was a slog all the way until literally the last 20 pages where there was actually action that happened, which led to a ridiculous amount of info dumping in the final 10 pages. This really could have been great with some editing, and it may end up being great in the next one. But I'd be hard pressed to continue with it.

Review first posted at: www.curiositykilledthebookworm.net/2022/01/the-atlas-six/

In the world of The Atlas Six, magic is power, and that magic is what you are born with. There is very little to challenge this elitist attitude in the story. Briefly an organisation called the Forum pops up and suggests that maybe knowledge should be shared but this doesn’t go anywhere. None of the characters seem to have much self awareness of how wrong this all is.

Nico wants to help Gideon who isn’t classified as human and cannot get work because of that but I’m not sure if he wanted to work to make things better for everyone. As long as those in his immediate vicinity are looked after, that’s what matters.

I got the feeling early on that I wasn’t reading about the good guys. Which is fine, I don’t mind reading about villains but I do need some kind of motivation to cheer them on. There isn’t a lot of character development beyond what their magical abilities are. So it’s hard to tell if they are mulling over their life choices or just eager to push everyone out their way in their quest for power.

I mean Libby is about to become a venture capitalist when she’s approached by the Society. If you had the power to manipulate matter the way she does, you could do anything. Libby and Nico are rivals at college and she’s portrayed as lacking confidence, something which the others are mean about constantly.

Reina has the ability to do actual good in the world, but she doesn’t want her power drained by corporations. Which seems OK…but she’s fine being a battery for her fellow society medeians? She seems like all she cares about is access to the books and their knowledge and people don’t matter.

Parisa is the horrible stereotype of a beautiful woman who doesn’t need to be nice to anyone because she’s so beautiful everyone just wants to have sex with her. There is one scene where something is revealed which maybe suggests there’s more to her than this, but again the character development isn’t there to support that and make her likeable.

Callum is interesting in the fact he is an empath who acts like a sociopath. Did his magic make him that way?

Tristan is the son of some crime boss and he’s trying to escape his family, by marrying into money. He thinks his magic is useless, but he can see through illusions. One thing that puzzled me when they were suggesting that what Tristan can do is unique, if Parisa can read everyone’s minds, I don’t see how she would not notice that illusions aren’t real people either.

I had to double check that this was the edition that was edited by Tor, because this feels like it needed more work to get to a finished product. Maybe they didn’t want it to move too far from the self published version which has apparently been a hit on Tiktok. I rolled my eyes every time something was described as “so British”, like we’re all wearing tweed and sleeping in four poster beds.

It has potential and I’d consider reading the next book, especially if it addresses the inequality. I was getting into it by the end, but it took a long time talking about not a lot before it got there.

I don’t think it’s as original as I’ve seen some readers claim. There’s a typical dark academia set up and the stuff about the physics of magic reminded me a little of Vita Nostra.