Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

85 reviews

rinku's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective 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

2.0

I decided on a 2.5 rating for The Atlas Six. The world and the characters had so much potential, but this potential sadly wasn’t fulfilled. Instead, we get characters that feel flat, even though they’re supposed to be #deep, an uneventful story, and an irritating writing style. I can see why this is a book TikTok would hype since I probably would’ve loved it when I was 13 and in my edgy anime phase. 

For the first third, I was still intrigued with the novel and the premise, even though it’s not the most innovative one: All ten years, the best six magicians of their generation get chosen to become part of the Alexandrian society that takes care of the Alexandrian library. We follow those six characters as they navigate this new task. I normally like those stories where different characters with different goals battle each other for one thing. We naturally have some between the characters here, but it felt a bit artificial for me because the characters are barely fighting with each other seriously. Still, I was interested in what would happen. 

But after this first third, nothing happens anymore and there is no plot at all which got boring. Most of the time, the characters just talk to each other which wasn’t interesting either. Also, the things that did happen were quite predictable, like the fact that

Libby would break up with Ezra or that she wasn’t really dead, and that Ezra was her kidnapper

. Another big problem the novel has is its pacing which is really off. Weeks or even months pass in the course of few sentences, and in-between are mostly only dialogues. Add to this a confusing and often not chronological timeline where scenes are interrupted by others and the story gets slowed down even more.  

The whole moral behind the novel is a bit weird as well. Why exactly do we need to keep all this knowledge a secret? The author made some anti-colonial and anti-capitalistic jabs here and there, but she never follows through with these ideas. If we do this, I come to the conclusion that everyone should have access to the library. From what we’ve seen this far, there isn’t any dangerous knowledge that is stored there and needs to be hidden from the public. An organization exists that criticizes this, but they do nothing besides introducing themselves to the main characters. 

The ending really irritated me as well, and it’s literally just a chapter of a character telling us their backstory which was so boring;

we learn that Ezra can travel through time and once was part of the initiation with Atlas and faked his death to survive it, or something. Furthermore, it was not really surprising that Atlas is the villain and his plan of wanting to reset the world and create a new one was so cliché

. What I also dislike about the ending is that there’s just no feeling of closure because there was no story arc there that could’ve ended, besides

Libby’s kidnapping

, which is not remotely resolved. 

Coming to the world building, it was quite different from what I’ve expected. I actually thought that the book would be a high fantasy one, and I think that this would’ve been more interesting. Still, I always like magic in modern settings and seeing how it’s used there. But this is all that is interesting about the world. We barely know anything about the place they’re staying at besides that it “looks British”, whatever that means. Other things aren’t explained enough and hence didn’t make sense, like the mind wandering or the different dimensions. 

I also had a huge problem with the way the story was written, and I think that Tor should’ve edited the book more. Like others said, the writing is quite pretentious and tries to be complex and deep but lands more on the cringe side. There’s additionally so much talking about what happened and how the characters supposedly are, but we barely see any of it which was again boring. What really bothered me as well was how the author would write dialogue with no action beats in-between and simply write “(Name.)” behind dialogue lines. This just felt lazy to me, just like some of the info dumping throughout. 

The story is very character-driven, but a problem is, like other reviewers said, that the characters are not as interesting as the author think they are. After spending over 500 pages with them, I just don’t have the feeling that I know anything about them. What was their life like before they went to the library? What about their families? What are their interests? I personally think that it would’ve been more interesting if there were other people/visitors at the library and not only them, but oh well. The characters I liked the most were probably Reina and Libby. The rest of them is just too edgy for me, and I especially disliked Callum. I also found it so terrible how mean they all were to Libby without any reason. What I did like was Parisa x Dalton, but their scenes together were honestly boring as well because the forbidden part of the forbidden relationship was barely there. Talking about relationships, I have the feeling the author really hates monogamous relationships, seen in the way she portrays the relationship between Libby and Ezra. This honestly made me cringe a bit. 

There was still something about The Atlas Six that I can’t say that I disliked it. This something was probably the dark academia atmosphere and the general premise. I’m not sure if I’ll read the sequels or not since I don’t know if I can stand the pretentious writing style and characters again. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Suicide, Toxic friendship, and Infidelity

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Blood, Violence, Kidnapping, Murder, and Sexual content

booksemmahasread's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Murder, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Death, Child death, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, Child abuse, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Grief, Gun violence, Cancer, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

itsheyfay's review against another edition

challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Suicide attempt, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Kidnapping, and Suicide

Moderate: Death of parent, Gun violence, Infidelity, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, and Child death

Minor: Terminal illness

mydelyn's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Gun violence

aliyachaudhry's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Classism, Confinement, Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Infidelity, Mass/school shootings, Toxic friendship, Death, Murder, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Alcohol

booksthatburn's review against another edition

I was initially drawn in by the premise, a group of magicians brought to the Library of Alexandria have a year to decide which one of them will be eliminated and which five get to stay for another year. The cast of characters is pretty diverse (though a bit of that initial feeling of diversity was dampened when I realized all of them seemed to have English as their first language, which instantly shrunk the practical candidate pool. Part of the story questions the validity and methods of the entire enterprise, so that leaves some wiggle room for explaining why the candidates aren't actually very diverse (only six total, and two are from the same school in the USA?). Additionally, this could have been the library of Atlantis or Boston and it would have had just as much relevance to the plot. The latest incarnation of the "Library of Alexandria" is physically located in London, in the UK. It became clear pretty quickly that "Alexandria" is just a name, and an indication of thousands of years of whatever this thing is (or at least a claim to that long legacy). There are vague descriptions of the category of study and experiments which the candidates are pursuing, but most of the story is actually a very intense and complicated web of power plays and personal dynamics between the six candidates and the two Alexandrians who oversee them (mostly one of them). There's a pretty intense sex scene about halfway through which I actually didn't mind, but it felt like a sudden shift in tone from the rest of the book. 

The characters seemed initially pretty interesting, but there's very little description of how their powers actually work. There are discussions of magical theory which I enjoyed, but they were usually couched in ways where the magic is actually secondary, which made them feel unmoored from the world being built. 

It's six (sometimes eight) people in a house, talking to each other and slowly changing how they feel about one another, which is not what I was expecting in a book about "magicians living in the Library of Alexandria".

Ultimately I stopped because it became clearly stated that the whole thing is a slow burn trolley problem, and I don't like trolley problem situations.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Classism, Murder, Emotional abuse, Sexual content, and Suicide

Moderate: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic friendship, Cursing, Grief, Sexism, Violence, and Gun violence

Minor: Child death and Fire/Fire injury

lokiwii's review against another edition

challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Blood, and Alcohol

Moderate: Child abuse

Minor: Gun violence and Murder

thaliareads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Really interesting concept and a diverse cast of characters. I do sort of wish I had read it as a physical or e-book the first time instead of listening to the audiobook. It was a bit tough for me to separate the characters at first since the way I listen to audiobooks while I'm doing other things I sometimes missed when a switch in character was announced. However, this is my personal experience and overall I really enjoyed the narration of this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Gun violence, and Death of parent

Moderate: Grief, Terminal illness, Murder, Mass/school shootings, Violence, Death, and Torture

Minor: Alcohol

The main plot does involve the six initiates protecting the society which does involve fairly detailed fighting with enemies who try to break in

this extends to torturing and killing some of those who made it through the wards.

. Minor spoiler

one of the initiates had a sibling who died from an incurable terminal illness.

Large spoilers

One of the characters had to watch his mom die in a mass shooting and relive that day over and over again. Additionally, the initiates realize that while there are six of them - they won't have to pick one of them to leave - they have to pick one of them to kill. There is some graphic sexual content in multiple instances. Some is a M/F pairing, the other instance is a M/F/F threesome.

bookleafcrow's review against another edition

mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

in the couple of days that have passed since i finished the atlas six, my rating has dropped down from a 4 to a 3.75 stars. i still enjoyed it and look forward to the sequel, but this book's divisiveness is very understandable; the plot is divided up in the perspectives of the six main characters, and if you don't like a character's POV (im looking at you, callum) then the chapters can kind of drag. also, it is an incredibly pretentious books at times. in my opinion, it could've been about 50-100 pages shorter because there were times where the author explained a concept across three pages when it really didn't need that much depth. the writing style can come off as a bit holier than thou at times?

however, it was a really enjoyable concept with an interesting take on the dark academia genre. the shock twist that

the elimination is quite literally a ritual killing

didn't feel like much of a shock because of how the book is advertised; literally, the tagline "knowledge is carnage" gives it away, so i'd forgotten that it wasn't known by the characters by the time it became relevant information. the setting was a lot of fun in terms of the low/urban fantasy world-building, and i really liked atlas in particular, especially towards the end.

nevertheless, i still enjoyed it a fair amount and will pick up the sequel when it's available in paperback. if you can stomach the writing style, definitely give this one a shot.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Blood, Emotional abuse, and Murder

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders

the characters (for the most part) are all awful to each other for most of the book so if you don't wanna read about six adults struggling to get along then skip this one lmao

erinfitzharris's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder

Moderate: Gun violence, Infidelity, Suicide, Violence, and Death

Minor: Sexual content and Alcohol