The Atlas Six

Dark academia fantasy novel about a secretive, deadly society

This was the set book for my fantasy book club (we managed to squeeze in quite a few meetings in the second half of last year!). I didn’t get around to reading it in time for book club but did listen to the audiobook as a gardening book.

“The Atlas Six” by Olivie Blake is a dark academia fantasy novel set in a world where magic is studied at university levels and top magicians vie for competitive corporate jobs. Six young magicians are invited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely to join the secretive Alexandrian Society that protects knowledge from lost civilisations. However, while there are six recruits with exceptional talent and potential, there are only five vacancies. The six magicians must make the most of a year of study prior to initiation, because acceptance into the society is a question of life or death.

This is a complex, character-driven story with six very different personalities thrown together in a closed and highly competitive community. Rivals Libby and Nico study at the same university and have very similar powers in the control of matter; Parisa is a telepath; Reina has an exceptional affinity for plants; Callum is an empath, and Tristan’s powers are mysterious – even to him. The key focus of the book is on the relationships, trysts, alliances and enmities between these six characters, however for those who are interested in magic theory, Blake puts a lot of thought into the physics and practicalities of each character’s powers as well. The story is told from multiple points of view, and I felt that the narration by a cast of different voice actors in the audiobook really helped to give each character their own distinct personality.

I think my fundamental issue with this book is that it is a character study, with deep psychological analysis of each of the six recruits and what makes them tick, but that all six of them (with perhaps the slight exception of Nico and Tristan) are really quite unlikeable. Usually when you have a book with multiple perspective, a favourite will emerge and you can look forward to their upcoming chapters if you’re finding others a bit laborious. However, I didn’t have any favourites in this book. None of the characters really resonated with me and I found the setting artificial and the extremely high stakes a bit inexplicable. Atlas was one of those Dumbledore-style puppet masters who, instead of being frank, is deliberately opaque without any good reason for why that type of manipulation might result in better outcomes.

A book for those who love the dark academia aesthetic and high character drama, but not one for me.