The Atlas Six

4.5 stars. This book was a strange mixture of a lot of things I may not have liked in other books but somehow when it came together in this one, I found myself pretty entranced. This is, I think, a must-read for those who enjoy the dark academia trope/subgenre.

I'm not usually a fan when books name-drop other titles or authors to sell themselves, but I feel like it might be warranted in this case. This book reminded me strongly of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and The Magicians by Lev Grossman. In short, basically everything dark academia. Now, I haven't had a really good experience with dark academia - I DNF'ed two of the above titles and didn't really enjoy the third - but for some odd reason, I was pretty sold on this one. I was engrossed from start to finish.

There was something about the writing style that was entrancing. It was sometimes confusing, sometimes infuriatingly opaque, but there was a rhythm and a style to it that I could get behind. Some may diagnose a mild case of purple prose, but for me it trod the line between annoying and lovely, and more often than not inclined towards the latter.

This sometimes worked to its disadvantage sometimes though. Blake has a tendency to leave things unsaid but in a way that feels like when someone starts a sentence and then stops halfway just before they got to the crux of the statement. Another thing I found that Blake tended to do was describing something happening out of nowhere, and then only explaining it later on (if ever). For example, halfway during a conversation, a character is described as blindfolded without explanation. We only realise a page or so later that they are attempting to play darts without seeing. On a smaller scale like this, it could already get annoying, but this also happens on much larger scales, on plot points that span many Parts of the book.

Two things stood out to me positively in this book: the characters and the magic system.

I won't say the characters are likeable. Honestly, I would be hard pressed to give you a character I even remotely liked, much less have a favourite. But they were all so wonderfully complex and you get such a deep character study into their mental states and how much trauma they've each gone through, both because of their unique powers and outside of it. All of the characters we have here are either annoying, morally gray, or both.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the magic system. Superficially, their powers would be considered pretty “basic” in the realm of fantasy: physical manipulation, telepathy, empathy, nature magic, and anti-illusion. However, Blake really leaned into fleshing those powers out to its fullest extent. So many of us have grown up with Professor X from X-Men but he doesn't seem to hold a candle to just how dangerous Parisa could be. Empathy has always seemed “useless” magic in combat but damn, what happens when it falls into the hands of an actual psychopath? So many possibilities here to explore and I loved everything that Blake did with it.

Also the ending was not in any way an ending! There was really barely any resolution and it felt like a lead-up to the sequel at this point, but I don't really mind. I enjoyed having all that time and space to really flesh the world out so I wouldn't mind if the plot spilled over to another book.

Overall, this book may not be to everyone's tastes and I can absolutely see why. I could wish that its storytelling was just a tiny tad simpler and less needlessly convoluted. Ultimately though, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, was engrossed by it, and I'm glad that it's getting a sequel.