Title: The Atlas Six
Author: Olivie Blake
Publisher: Pan Macmillan/Tor
Publication date: 2021
Genre: Fantasy
Source: Library
Description: When the world’s best magicians are offered an extraordinary opportunity, saying yes is easy. Each could join the secretive Alexandrian Society, whose custodians guard lost knowledge from ancient civilizations. Their members enjoy a lifetime of power and prestige. Yet each decade, only six practitioners are invited – to fill five places.
Contenders Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona are inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds. Parisa Kamali is a telepath, who sees the mind’s deepest secrets. Reina Mori is a naturalist who can perceive and understand the flow of life itself. And Callum Nova is an empath, who can manipulate the desires of others. Finally there’s Tristan Caine, whose powers mystify even himself.
Following recruitment by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they travel to the Society’s London headquarters. Here, each must study and innovate within esoteric subject areas. And if they can prove themselves, over the course of a year, they’ll survive. Most of them.
Review: Told with multiple narrators, The Atlas Six is a really interesting book to look at love in. I thought a lot of the tension throughout the story came from head hopping and not immediately knowing what a particular character thought or did at a particular point. Right at the start, each character is introduced with their clear motivation for wanting to take up a spot at the Society, with Libby and Nico in particular being driven by love for their friends and family.
Their relationship is fascinating. It’s clear early on that they’re the sort of frenemies whose powers complement each other, but for the vast majority of the book, the two of them are still stuck in the phase of thinking they don’t like the other, and that the other person is always out to push them down or get ahead. I think it’s pretty clear to readers, though, that Libby and Nico could achieve so much more if they worked together. They also don’t really get, until very late in the story, much of the ‘friend’ part of ‘frenemies’. They work together reluctantly, not quite fully willing to trust each other. I’m really looking forward to seeing what changes for the two of them in the second book, The Atlas Paradox.
Everyone understandably starts out very distrusting of everyone else, and there’s a lot of distrust which stays throughout the story, but despite this lots of fragile friendships do form between the group members. It’s all very fledgling though, undermined by the fact one of them won’t make it to the second year of their programme. Then there’s the *ahem* physical interactions that crop up between some of the characters. Parisa is clear from when she first appears on the page that for her, sex is a means to an end, a way she can use her mind reading more efficiently and make people more persuadable. But there’s a spicy little threesome in the book that completely took me off guard. I have a feeling that’s going to lead to more internal conflict for those characters who were involved when we get to book two. (And also hopefully more scenes together, because that was fun.)
Overall, while a lot of things happen in this book, when it comes to the interpersonal relationships I think a lot of it is setting up for great things to come in the rest of the series. Those enemies to lovers, rivals to allies, relationships which I’m sure are on their way will be all the more enjoyable for a slow burn beginning in The Atlas Six. I listened to the audiobook, which has a multi-narrator cast, and it was great; it’s one of my top books of the past year. Bring on the rest of the series!
Find it on Story Graph here.
