Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six can be described as no less than magnetic, with the tone of Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House and Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. It lends itself both to the avid reader and the budding one, having an atmosphere so surreal and a voice so observant that I could barely put it down. And, with it starting off as self-published, only to acclaim so much fame on BookTok that Tor itselft—a publisher I personally consider the near-monarch of speculative works—picked it up, I can say for near certain that The Atlas Six is a true example of the fast-paced, exponential change that the publishing world is seeing.
The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few: Libby Rhodes and Nicolás Ferrer de Varona, inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds; Reina Mori, a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself; Parisa Kamali, a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched; Tristan Caine, the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe; Callum Nova, an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask. When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.
I don’t enjoy rereading books often, not unless I’m on an analysis kick, but the moment I closed The Atlas Six I found myself instantly wanting to turn back to page one. I loved everything about this book, from its thoughtful omnipotence to its breathtaking character developments to its callbacks to the structures of classical academia. But, before I begin to gush over this book in full, I was to preface: it’s not a smooth ride the entire way through the story. I wasn’t a fan of the combat scenes, which were too flashy to follow in a written format and held little tension, and struggled to understand the magic system for a good portion of the story. It, at times, can get very abstract, using various philosophies and academic theories as metaphors for different characters. It left me just kind of stuck sometimes, having to reread sections, or, worse, force myself to continue on whilst not fully understanding what I just read.
Most importantly, it does fall into some slightly concerning stereotypes: the hypersexual Desi woman and the punk, anti-social East Asian girl. While the story evolves, and the characters with it, both Parisa and Reina become more than just the archetypes they’re introduced as, but that still doesn’t make up for the way they’re used. All this being acknowledged, I’d like to talk about the things I enjoyed.
What amazes me so much about The Atlas Six is that I struggled with getting into it in the first place, sloughing through the first quarter of the book, so much so that I genuinely was thinking of dropping it. But I was proven wrong. From the complex relationships (I’m holding out for a formation of a polycule at the end of the series) to the plot twist (the real one, not the first one we all predicted), everything about this book made me giddy, it’s just that there was necessary work to get there, something not seen often in trade media nowadays, let alone bestsellers, let alone BookTok books.
My initial hesitance has everything to do with the set-up of the first section of the book: the introductions. This is the aforementioned work the reader has to do to get to all the good. The Atlas Six, as its name suggests, follows six major characters, plus the titular Atlas and a variety of other supporting cast members, all of whom quickly grow in plot relevance and general importance. Some books like this jump in right away, introducing one or two of the main cast to everyone else, who already know each other (ex. Six of Crows or The Raven Boys). Olivie Blake took another approach, one most often seen in pop culture films such as Suicide Squad (2016) or Mean Girls (2004), where everyone is introduced with their own vignette chapter, each involving their meeting with Atlas and initial hesitance to accept his offer into the Society. This isn’t a technique that easily lends itself enough to writing, especially in long-form works, but as I rounded the corner into a quarter-way through the book, it hit me like a ton of bricks just why Blake chose this technique: it emulates the development of new academic relationships near perfectly.
This quickly became one of the parts I loved so much about this book, the way the narrative begins with each character’s background and their first impressions of those around them, only to build off those and slowly give each of us more information about each initiate. The book essentially spends the entirety of its plot rewriting personality through different characters' POVs, reminiscent of the first few semesters of college where, in the end, the individual you met on day one is not the same ‘person’ who becomes your best friend, or your worst enemy.
Olivie Blake is the pseudonym of Alexene Farol Follmuth, a lover and writer of stories, many of which involve the fantastic, the paranormal, or the supernatural, but not always. More often, her works revolve around what it means to be human (or not), and the endlessly interesting complexities of life and love. Olivie has penned several indie SFF projects, including the webtoon Clara and the Devil with illustrator Little Chmura and the viral Atlas series. As Follmuth, her young adult rom-com My Mechanical Romance releases May 2022. Olivie lives in Los Angeles with her husband and new baby, where she is generally tolerated by her rescue pit bull.
You can learn more about Blake at her website, https://www.olivieblake.com/. Her next book, The Atlas Paradox, releases on October 22, 2022. Her newest book, My Mechanical Romance, is out now.
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