Reviews

I would say that I enjoyed greatly the majority of the book for what it was. The relationships between the characters and their personal arcs were greatly entertaining and amusing.

Now to the critique because I feel all of us hold a bit of it:

While seeing into the heads of the people that Ezra chose was a very interesting idea, I dare say that the execution was quite poor and by the end of it we just learned barely enough for some characters that either didn’t appear again or failed to deliver anything interesting to the plot. Perhaps the only exceptions here would be Belen and Nothazai, who by the end of the book also disappointed a bit.

Talking about disappointment, the whole build-up between Callum and Tristan straight up killed me. Their moments and chapters were my favourite, so you can imagine how let down I was when it all ended with one bullet to Callum’s chest. It was so very unnecessary to me to kill the one character that had so much personality and rediscovered hope for life. Perhaps the only saving grace here is that we got to see Callum and Tristan got quite a few happy endings in other universes and I choose to live believing in them instead.

Libby is another character in whose arc I was really invested and expectant of her possibilities. She became but a narcissistic murderer. The fact that she not only killed Nico but then had the audacity to say she didn’t regret it but then went on to feel bad for herself was too much for me. She went from a favourite character to one that I absolutely cannot stand now. I wouldn’t say her arc was done badly, in fact, it was very well written. I simply am not a fan of what she turned into, who she sacrificed and the fact that she faced ZERO consequences at the end.

I also feel there could be more expansion on Reina in general. Her arc felt very rushed and incomplete by the end and only left me with more questions than anything.

All in all, I would still say this was a very enjoyable book that developed in a pretty much expected ending when one considers the ideas the whole series conveys. I would also have rathered a different ending, but I believe Blake handled well the story she wanted to tell. To me, it was a story of hope, corruption and inevitable failure at redemption. I would say this was suitable in spite of my personal bias.

leslie_mg's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

allisonhollingsworth's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

2.0

“It was waking up every fucking morning and deciding to keep going. A tiny, unceremonious, incomparable miracle of making it through another goddamn day. The knowledge that life was mean and it was exacting, it was cruel and it was cursed, it was recalcitrant and precious. It was always ending. But it did not have to be earned.” Well this was… something. Disappointing, mostly. I did not enjoy it, sadly. The Atlas Complex picks up after the events of the Atlas Paradox, in which the six are separated mostly from each other. Nico and Libby and Gideon are in Paris, Tristan stayed to work for Atlas, Dalton and Parisa are in Osaka, I can’t remember where Reina and Callum are but they are away too. But then Libby and Nico return to Tristan and tell him Atlas is trying to open to another world and that because none of the six actually died for the sacrifice, they may end up dying if one of them doesn’t die. Or one of them isn’t killed. And throughout the book they are kind of just threatening to kill each other and there are outside influences pushing them back together again. For example, Parisa’s husband — I forgot she had a husband for a while — is killed and that puts her on edge in figuring out what happened there. Also Libby isn’t the same anymore after what she went through in the past and then killing Ezra. She is really close to Tristan and is like sleeping with him but one of the things that is really hard for me to figure out in this book is who likes who? They all seem to be getting with each other in one way or another. At one point even Libby and Nico talk about how they I guess are soul mates but that might not mean like romantically? And Nico is like well I basically would get with anyone in the six and also I’m in love with Gideon? I’m not sure how I feel about it but at this point I was just rolling with it. But it really just made me disconnect with the characters because nothing felt true or real. Things started to take a turn for the worst when Libby agrees to do an experiment with Nico to open the multiverse, which atlas had been trying to do, but she backs out halfway through and pushes all the power onto Nico, which kills him. This was such a disappointing death, let me tell you. There seemed to be no resolution for Nico as a character in my opinion, and Libby can wax poetic all she wants about how she lost her other half when she killed him, she still killed him. At the same time, one of the things I did think made sense was Libby’s fall from grace into this sort of murder-y character after all of her morals in the first book, but I just feel like if Nico was going to die it should have been handled better. We kind of get a happy scene where Gideon finds Nico in a dream world of his and they go and be happy but like it’s not real? Anyway Atlas also dies and I was so confused about how; did Libby also kill him? I was confused. Still am. But Callum also dies when he’s shot by Tristan’s father. Also sad considering his apparent strong connection to Tristan. I don’t know man, the whole ending just felt messy. A random guy takes over for the society (I mean he’s not random; it’s Nothazai, but it felt random in that he wasn’t a main character and we only learn his backstory really at the end) and he asks for resources from the library and they deny him, much to Libby’s amusement because it had done that to her for so long, but the book ends with her finally being granted a book that will tell her if she could have saved her sister (who died from an illness, we learned in the first book). Except OB decides to end it there and we don’t find out the answer. Which is fine because at that point I just desperately wanted the book to end so I could be put out of my misery. I know that sounds harsh but again I just felt like the ending of this book was all over the place and I didn’t understand some of the decisions that were made. For example, Atlas died with what felt like very little fanfare and his name is literally in the title of every book and his whole experiment was the reason the story went on for god’s sake. Who even knows what happened to Reina and Parisa. It’s not that I don’t like OB books — I really, really liked Alone with You in the Ether — but I think honestly this series was just not for me. It felt like it was stretched into something it didn’t need to be stretched into, and I’m glad to wipe my hands of it.

kim_conrad's review against another edition

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5.0

I’ve discovered that the most important part of a story, for me, is the characters in it. I love these characters so much. The ending ripped my heart out and it’s not what I had hoped for, but I get it. In an alternate universe, there is a version of the story that ends exactly how I want it to

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