Reviews

”This was just the world. You trusted people, you loved them, you offered them the dignity of your time and the intimacy of your thoughts and the fraility of your hope and they either accepted it and cared for it or they rejected it and destroyed it and in the end, none of it was up to you. This was just what you got. Heartbreak was inevitable. Disappointment assured.” Okay, listen, I struggled with this one. Maybe i just wasn’t in the right headspace for it but it felt like such a slog to get through and at times felt pretentious. This story picks up after the events of the Atlas Six; Libby is still missing, or being held captive by Ezra, and Nico is trying to figure out where she is with the help of Gideon, who can sense that she is somewhere. Meanwhile the others have officially been initiated because technically Libby is gone so there are only five of them and she was the sacrifice, is what I’m taking from that. One of the things they had to do was this initiation ritual where they had to fight this projection of one of the other initiates. For example, Nico fought a fake Reina and Callum fought his own fake projection. It was supposed to reveal more about these characters I’m sure but honestly I was bored. I just wanted to get back to Libby’s POV or whatever weird powers struggle Ethan and Atlas were having. And eventually we do get there — Libby manages to fight back Ezra and escape but she realizes she’s stuck in 1989. Gideon is the only one who can really reach her. And Atlas appears to know that Ezra is up to something. Ezra is meeting with all these other sort crime syndicates who appear to want to take down Alexandria, or at least open up its knowledge to others. Ezra also is trying to stop Atlas from putting his plan in place to open a portal to this world he believes exists. The others are able to kind of make contact with Libby and they tell her in order to get back she needs a ton of energy and there is like an explosion back in that time that she causes and then used to propel herself back. I liked Libby’s plot line definitely the most; following the others felt boring and just like they were being angsty and kissing each other. I’m being dramatic but that’s just what it felt like the me. I also thought the power struggle though between Atlas and Ezra was interesting and how in the end he was killed by Libby when she returned. Ezra also made it so that people knew the six’s identities and that’s why they were being hunted and had to separate and hide away again at the end. The pairings were interesting — I think Gideon and Nico are a thing now since they kissed at the end? Parisa is with Dalton? Tristan and Libby maybe? Or I thought maybe Tristan had something with Callum? Honestly I don’t even know. But overall, again, I just had a tough time connecting with this one. I am going to try to finish the series with the Atlas Complex just so I can be done and hopefully things pick up in the next book.

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