The Atlas Six: A Review

Image taken from https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/science-fiction-and-fantasy/which-atlas-six-magician-are-you-quiz

“The problem with knowledge is its inexhaustible craving. The more you have it the less you feel you know.”

The Atlas Six is a dark academia written by Olivie Blake and is the first of the atlas trilogy. It follows the journey of six magicians who were selected by Atlas Blakely, caretaker of the Alexandrian library, and their quest to be inducted into the Alexandrian society. But before they can qualify for initiation, they must spend a year together to choose one to eliminate, thus causing conflict to ensue between them and allows us to understand more about the significance of their powers.

Regardless of the vast number of good reviews and its high rating of 3.8 on Goodreads from over 85 thousand ratings, I was constantly trying to drag myself past the finish line, asking when this would end every two pages or so.

A big problem I had with the book was the fact that it tried way too hard for a second book. It would have been perfectly fine having only one book but it seemed as though the author decided mid-way that they needed to write a sequel and had to make a bunch of plot holes that didn’t make sense in the context of this one. But, the book was not terrible. The writing was arguably good with characters that develop well over the course of its main plot lines, but it just never clicked with me. Maybe it’s because I had too high of an expectation built up in my head with the endless TikTok videos I’ve seen discussing the book, maybe it’s because the copy I had was so unnecessarily large that I complained about it all throughout reading it, or maybe dark academia just isn’t for me the same way that I didn’t enjoy The Secret History by Donna Tartt —either way, it just isn’t my thing.

Despite what this whole review implies, I did buy the second book to the series (which was printed in the same obnoxious size) for reasons I don’t understand myself, but who knows, maybe it’ll get better.

Nevertheless, just because this book wasn’t for me doesn’t mean it isn’t for you. For however much I didn’t enjoy reading it, I still had some kind of hope that it would get better, and at different points, it did. So, if you do decide to go read it, maybe you’ll find those moments too.

Credits

Written by: Solar Lee

Edited by: XinRu Chew