Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - The Atlas Six

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

99 reviews

sea_sea's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.0

Great read! The story was so intricately written, with loads of mysteries and interesting subplots. All the characters were so unique and facetted. They were so well written! The magic was a little confusing sometimes, I think I only understood towards the end of the book what ‘wards’ were. Sometimes the book also dragged a bit, but I didn’t mind that. I definitely look forward to the next book!

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tomas_lw's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective 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

4.5

Fun premise, exceptional characters, pretty good execution.

The plot is simple and fun. Six magicians with exceptionally powerful specialities are selected to join a secret society. But only five can actually join at the end. Cue intrigue, sex, betrayal, magic weirdness, love, hate, death and other fun things.

Over all the book was a great read.

I do have som complaints though.

First of all the author seemed to almost forgot entierly about Reina for almost the entire book which was disapointing since her opening chapter made me really attached to her. I really hope she gets more to do in the next book.

And the ending of the book is very out of left field and exposition heavy. It felt like the author at the last time decided to turn the book into a trilogy and rewrote the ending to set up the sequels. It's a bit heavy handed and not entirely satifying. So lets hope it pays of in the next books!

Also, the book could have had a bit more things happening as most of the book is either characters talking with or thinking about the other characters. Don't get me wrong, I love all these characters and the talking and plotting is terrific, but the pacing of the book could probably have been better with some more action in the middle.

Overall, a great read as I said above and I'm definitely getting the rest of the series ASAP.

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caseymac's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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kryskross's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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jadorelecafe's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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eule's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-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

4.5

A book that I surprisingly enjoyed even though it was heavily focused on the character dynamics (multiple povs). If you love a scientifically based magic system, diverse characters and a mysterious plotline this book is for you. Sometimes it seems slow-moving but it is all worth it for the cliffhanger in the end. All in all, we can agree that all of the characters are extremely hot (Parisa!!!) and we need to support Nico x Gideon. I cannot wait to read the sequel (sadly my friend will have to read it first :()

Ps: Thank you to my friend Tyler for recommending and lending me this book. Love you ^^

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miaaa_lenaaa's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Hm i said id be annnoyed if u did that didnt i

Minor spoilers?

‘How long would it have taken you to start a war, do you think? Or to end one?" He paused, and Callum said nothing. "Five minutes? Perhaps ten? How long would it have taken you to kill someone? To save a life? I admire what you have not done,"

‘What a relief it was, being a cog in something that actually turned for once.’

‘“Are you less guilty simply because you've been the one to unravel more?"’

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alicelalicon's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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rinku's review against another edition

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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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bookswithmaia's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-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

4.5

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