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A review by nikogatts
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.75
Infuriating and disappointing. There are interesting ideas in this book, but they're undercut by the story, which is constructed like a Jenga tower with half of the pieces missing. I lost track of how many times a character knew a secret without being told or did something with no motivation other than a need to move the story forward.
Likewise, there are interesting characters and arcs to be explored -- particularly in the case of Reina, who resents her immense magical power and sees it as a way for both nature and society to take advantage of her -- but these are sacrificed in favor of chapter after chapter of Callum, the Wish.com version of Patrick Bateman, toying with sad boy Tristan.
The most painful of this book's failures was the worldbuilding, which led me to create this non-comprehensive list of things that went un- or underexplained, in ascending order of how angry I get when I think about it:
-General story bits that weren't described well and/or weren't believable.A sample: How exactly do two twenty-somethings (one fighting one-handed due to an injured arm) take out half a dozen trained and armed military operatives? Atlas's plan is...what exactly? How is it that no one over the centuries managed to figure out how to magically stop time or magically create a wormhole, but this specific group of people manages these feats on their first attempts?
-How magic and magical people interact with and impact the rest of the world.In the book's alternate Earth, magic users are a minority (about 5 million people out of 10 billion), but they have massive economic power, own international tech and finance companies, and hold high-ranking government positions. There are wealthy magical families and universities specifically for magical study. Magical items are commodities and "mortals" can buy everything from magically enhanced weapons to appearance-changing illusions to contraception charms.
There is no information given on non-magical people, even though they're 99.9995 percent of the world. One of the book's (attempted) themes is the exclusivity of information and whether world-changing (albeit dangerous) knowledge should be kept siloed instead of available to populations who could benefit from it. This theme would have been much more powerful if there had been any perspective from the have-nots of this world. (I think it was a missed opportunity to not have Ezra, Libby's boyfriend, be non-magical, or to have a more prominent presence from the Forum, the magical-info-for-all organization.)
Oh, and magical creatures exist, but they're only mentioned in relation to one character, so they're barely relevant.
-How the magic system works.The main characters each have a specialty, but the story also mentions summoning charms and illusions. Around page 250, curses and hexes are introduced and then barely mentioned again. Specialties range from very straightforward, like telepathy and animation, to concepts that could have used more explaining. Two characters are "physicists," meaning they can affect matter around them by manipulating the laws of physics. This is a tremendously broad skill and its limitations aren't ever discussed, nor is there a primer on which laws are being used. (Heat transfer and gravity are easy ones to guess, but what law deals with earthquakes?) It feels like the author just wanted these characters to be able to do a bunch of cool things, like create fire and increase the force of a punch, and the easiest way to do that was through vague physics powers.
I'm not even going to bother getting into Callum's empath powers, which often transcend sensing emotion and go straight into full mind-reading. Commander Deanna Troi >>>>>> this asshole, always and forever.
There are also overlaps in "rare" types of magic and casual magic that is done with little fanfare. One example is when two characters use physics magic to create a wormhole (for the first time ever, apparently) that can be used to teleport across physical space. But throughout the book, the characters travel internationally via magical portal, and the difference (if any) between this and the wormhole is never explained.
-Anything about the library.The author had the opportunity to imagine a modern-day Library of Alexandria -- both the physical structure and its contents. This was a chance to go all-out with imagination, to take inspiration from legends and history and architecture and fiction, to create a place that justifies the characters being willing to kill for continued access to it.
And what do the readers get? About a paragraph and a half about a big room with some pneumatic tubes, and some scattered references to ancient texts. That's it. That's fucking it.
New rule I'm setting for myself: If a book sounds interesting but got a lot of hype on certain social media sites with consistently poor track records, I get it from the library.
Likewise, there are interesting characters and arcs to be explored -- particularly in the case of Reina, who resents her immense magical power and sees it as a way for both nature and society to take advantage of her -- but these are sacrificed in favor of chapter after chapter of Callum, the Wish.com version of Patrick Bateman, toying with sad boy Tristan.
The most painful of this book's failures was the worldbuilding, which led me to create this non-comprehensive list of things that went un- or underexplained, in ascending order of how angry I get when I think about it:
-General story bits that weren't described well and/or weren't believable.
-How magic and magical people interact with and impact the rest of the world.
There is no information given on non-magical people, even though they're 99.9995 percent of the world. One of the book's (attempted) themes is the exclusivity of information and whether world-changing (albeit dangerous) knowledge should be kept siloed instead of available to populations who could benefit from it. This theme would have been much more powerful if there had been any perspective from the have-nots of this world. (I think it was a missed opportunity to not have Ezra, Libby's boyfriend, be non-magical, or to have a more prominent presence from the Forum, the magical-info-for-all organization.)
Oh, and magical creatures exist, but they're only mentioned in relation to one character, so they're barely relevant.
-How the magic system works.
I'm not even going to bother getting into Callum's empath powers, which often transcend sensing emotion and go straight into full mind-reading. Commander Deanna Troi >>>>>> this asshole, always and forever.
There are also overlaps in "rare" types of magic and casual magic that is done with little fanfare. One example is when two characters use physics magic to create a wormhole (for the first time ever, apparently) that can be used to teleport across physical space. But throughout the book, the characters travel internationally via magical portal, and the difference (if any) between this and the wormhole is never explained.
-Anything about the library.
And what do the readers get? About a paragraph and a half about a big room with some pneumatic tubes, and some scattered references to ancient texts. That's it. That's fucking it.
New rule I'm setting for myself: If a book sounds interesting but got a lot of hype on certain social media sites with consistently poor track records, I get it from the library.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt and Suicide
Moderate: Blood and Murder
Minor: Colonisation, Terminal illness, Death, and Classism