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A review by kivt
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
3.0
Pretty disappointing. Felt like a solid second draft that needed another 2-3 rounds of edits to smooth everything out. Best example is the intro, which explicitly explains to the reader what The Society is and why it exists. In the next few chapters as the story gets going, it’s clear the characters know none of this. This doesn’t create tension, because the information in the intro doesn’t really matter to the plot. But there’s still a boring wait for the characters to catch up on exposition before anything can happen.
The second half of the book really falls apart. It feels much longer than it needed to be, and fragmented. Multiple characters give long monologues in which they work out their motivations. It felt like Blake did some solid writing exercises to flesh out characters, but left the exercise in the text, without coming back to edit it to work as a story. The character explorations & exposition dumps needed to be worked into the text throughout the book, and delivered more naturally.
None of the characters were compelling to me except Reina. She had the most distinct voice as a character. She seemed as over everything as I was.
The second half of the book really falls apart. It feels much longer than it needed to be, and fragmented. Multiple characters give long monologues in which they work out their motivations. It felt like Blake did some solid writing exercises to flesh out characters, but left the exercise in the text, without coming back to edit it to work as a story. The character explorations & exposition dumps needed to be worked into the text throughout the book, and delivered more naturally.
None of the characters were compelling to me except Reina. She had the most distinct voice as a character. She seemed as over everything as I was.