deepaksrini 's review for:

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

4.5

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Starts off very deceptively with a procedural run-through of all the familiar YA tropes - the casting, the initiation, the friends, the foes. However, from thereon, Atlas Six refuses to advance it's plot using big, explosive events or bombastic characters moments; rather, it descends mercilessly into the twisted, infinitely deep psyche of it's cast, leaping with great effort and jarring effect from one disparate mind to another, then violently blurring all mental boundaries in a forging of an antagonistic collective of monstrously flawed humans. When the trial by fire arrives, you can almost feel the scorch on your own skin, you feel the psychological shock and moral tremors in your very bones because Olivia Blake is able to describe in deliciously dark, visceral detail the collective's moral degeneration, their descent into an occult darkness where magic violently dissolves conventional morality. The psychological warfare, the intellectual jousting can get so intense (high point was definitely the chapter after the interlude, absolutely riveting, brilliant writing) that you can feel chills running down your spine.

My only gripe with this book is, without spoiling much, that it decided to go full X-men in the last 20 pages when it could've been a nice, depressing dark academia with a dash of occult horror in the vein of Midsommar.