The Biggest Disappointment | Book Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Goodreads Synopsis:

The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation.

Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

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My thoughts:

The writing: Average
Nothing to rave about, nothing to notably criticise either. It was pretty straightforward, simply written. It wasn’t anything special but nothing too much to complain about. My only complaint here is the word *ricochet* – this was so overused?? It was used far too many times by various characters. It was so jarringly used too. It did not fit.

The plot: Slow and dragged out.

The story fell pretty flat.
It starts off being intriguing and exciting but not for long. The ideas were solid, the execution not so much. It took so long for anything to happen, that I rarely wanted to continue. I never reached for this. It was a bore! It just missed every mark for me. I feel like it had so much potential, the concepts and ideas were all there but the execution was not.

It was a very very long read. It’s not a long book, but boy did it feel like it.
Not even the ‘romance’ could save this boring book. Even that managed to be bland or very forced. I feel there was potential for a rivals to lovers subplot but of course, it didn’t do that. The trio that happens… felt very forced. It came out of nowhere. It could’ve had potential if it was a bit more developed.

The characters – Meh
There’s a whole host of completely bland characters.
Honestly, none were that interesting, I struggled to attach myself to anyone much. The best two were definitely Nico and Libby – mainly because they had banter and their rivalry was probably the best part.
Nico carried this novel alone. The others were so boring and uninteresting. I just did not care about them.

Narrators:
I listened to the audiobook, which had a full cast narration.
Not sure this worked for me. A few of the narrators were just not to my taste at all and some were okay. No outstanding performances.
I feel like there was too much going on with the narration, the constant switch of narrators didn’t work for me. I’d much rather have one masc narrator, one fem, rather than six different ones.
A few of the narrator’s voices just didn’t work for the character for me.
I think I would’ve been better with the physical, though I only finished it because it was audio – so who knows!

Overall, I was super underwhelmed and very disappointed. This was very, very close to being a DNF for me. I kept going as I thought it must get better, everyone else seemed to love it. Meh, not for me. There was a whole bunch of nothing going on. I need either plot to drive me forward or well-written characters to attach to. This had neither. It’s a forgettable read that I’ve already mostly purged from my memory.

Rating: 2 Stars

*ALC provided by Libro.fm – Thank you to them for providing the audiobook in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.