Book written by Olivie Blake, published 2020.
The Alexandrian Society is the most secretive society in the world, with the greatest collection of knowledge known to man. The Society is so exclusive that openings for new initiates only come about once every ten years, and only six of the best magicians in the world are offered such an invitation.
This year’s initiates come from a variety of countries, backgrounds, and educations, but all possess incredibly powerful talents, a rarity in this universe of magic and spells. Each of these magicians accepted this opportunity for their own reasons, but it becomes apparent that the Society isn’t all it claims to be. Will these six initiates be able to band together, or is it every magician for themselves?
I’ll admit, I didn’t care for this one much—okay, I didn’t even finish it. I know that this one is getting a lot of hype, and I can understand why many readers like it, but here’s why I didn’t like it: Right from the very beginning, I wasn’t getting along with the writing style. Blake uses a large vocabulary in this novel, so the language sounds very technical and quite unlike how we speak in our day-to-day language. This is not necessarily a bad thing (it makes Blake’s voice fairly unique), but it did make it difficult to relate to the plot and the characters. These initiates are all very academic, so it made sense that they would speak technically when they’re discussing their studies with each other, but even in casual conversation between them, this wasn’t toned down much. Whenever they’re bickering with each other or sharing moments of vulnerability, the dialogue was overly analytical. I had to reread many sentences just to make sure that I was actually reading things correctly and that I knew what was going on. Now, just to clarify, it’s not necessarily the word choice itself that threw me off, but the flow in which those words were strung together. Without the flow of realistic language, it was difficult to get lost in the plot and relate to the characters.
The other reason why this one wasn’t really for me was all the sex. First off, one of the characters is a telepath, and she uses sex as a way to kind of disarm people so she can get a better read on them. But it wasn’t just this one character. All of the initiates have some sort of sexual agenda with each other, and it comes up a lot. This is how a lot of information about the plot gets revealed and it’s also a resource for how the characters form alliances and sabotage each other. Overall, it was just too much, and it was the primary reason why I decided to stop reading. Sorry, Blake. It’s just not my thing.
Apart from the sex, this book also contains innumerable f-bombs and violence (an empath forces someone to shoot themselves, to give you an idea). A definite rated R if this were a movie.
There’s still more I want to talk about, even though I didn’t finish The Atlas Six. A spoiler warning is in effect from this point on.
"The promise of your talents is nothing compared to whatever you ultimately prove to be."
Out of all the things that disinterested me about the actual novel, I was actually intrigued by Blake’s conceptualization of time, mainly the different ways in which time travel could be possible. On the physical side, I liked the idea that time is a vibration that helps make up our physical world, and how, with Tristan’s help, Libby could actually isolate this vibration and alter its movement. I thought that was cool. I also liked Parisa’s rather pragmatic reasoning that time travel is easy on a mental level. All one has to do is travel through memory. So looking at these two ideas, I was curious about how they would come together, which is why I cheated a little bit and looked up the ending online.
And the ending I found was . . . confusing. Apparently, time travel has been a thing from the beginning. The whole plot was about taking over the Alexandrian Society and then the world, and Atlas and Ezra started that journey together. Atlas changed his mind before they could finish what they started, so Ezra time-traveled to the future where he had a greater chance of success to finish the plot on his own. In terms of the initiates, Libby was eliminated. Did I get my facts right? I hope so; otherwise, the rest of this is going to be rather futile on my part.
First of all, I didn’t like this plot twist. Atlas being involved in some secret way makes total sense, but Ezra seemed to come completely out of left field. When I read about that online, I went back through what I had read about Ezra in the book, and I just couldn’t see it, like the pieces and hints of his involvement weren’t even there. I did read through the part where Tristan kind of saw through time (?) and saw Ezra, which was a hint, I guess, but there wasn't anything before that to hint that maybe Ezra wasn't all he seemed. Again, I didn't read the end, so I don't know how all of it came together, but it wasn't a plot twist that got me excited again about the book. I've been thinking about it quite a bit since then, and I think it might have been better if Atlas’ partner had been one of the six initiates. That could have been a lot of fun.
In conclusion, nothing I came across online gave me any clues as to how Ezra actually managed to travel through time. Could someone try and explain that to me? That’s ultimately what I was curious about and what I didn’t find an answer to.
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