A review by storyorc
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I LOVE the version of this book that has no prologue and 3 more drafts:

  1. First extra draft is to hammer out the magic system. We need to hire scientific consultants or drop the magic-as-science angle because it's currently baffling for anyone with a grain of scientific literacy. Two characters are 'physicists' who control 'forces' and 'molecular structures' - aka EVERYTHING - yet their power level is wildly inconsistent. In a fight for their life, one limits themselves to adding a little zap of electricity to their punches then later for a lab exercise, they open a wormhole. Keywords from high school physics are thrown in - Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, quanta - but after someone described time travel as 'seeing and controlling the quanta', I realised they are there for aesthetic, not explanatory purposes. (This is kind of like saying "he can see and control the centimeters!"). The book already alludes to some schools of magic - illusionists, empaths, etc. - which could make for a system more forgiving of metaphysical mechanics. These metaphysical explanations of the magic do have thought behind them, including some interesting ideas about the human mind and emotion, but they are not scientific. Readers need some rules and limits if we're going to be able to make predictions of what characters are capable of and be delighted when said rules are pushed or limits circumvented in clever ways. Instead, before each new magic scene, we get a nebulous, buzzword-laden paragraph of explanation and have to rely on the character's reactions to understand if what we just saw was impressive, taboo, or normal for this world.
  2. Second draft is to move the plot up before the last 20 pages. Academic rivalry in an X-rated Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted has great potential; I devoured the glimpses we got of how these six unpleasant people attempt to play each other to avoid elimination. However, we needed more tests like the installation or powerplays like Parisa's during Christmas break to crank up tension. Instead of events, we got reactions upon reactions upon reactions, often to things that happened off-page. The first lesson, the wormhole, and a major ritual toward the end are all summarised in a few sentences! By the time the second half of the plot finally comes knocking, it does so similarly summarised, and carried by the least interesting characters who
    admit they don't even have an end goal in mind
    . I wouldn't mind a novella about those two, but it felt abrupt and tacked on here. In order to earn a cliffhanger as big as this one, you need SOME self-contained story and payoff within the book itself. With a clear stakes and motives, all that beautiful interpersonal drama will sharpen into focus as we'll be able to follow the why of what's happening as well as be delighted by the what.
  3. Third draft is to de-Potter the manuscript. Well before I discovered the author originates from award-winning Dramione fanfic, I felt Libby was Hermione in her anxious OWL-taking state and Nico's friend group were reskinned marauders (minus Wormtail, of course). One is a dog animagi! They also necessitate the existence of mermaids and satyrs which are only relevant in one place that could easily be swapped for Tristan's father so all those mentions of him can come to some fruition. (It also made me realise how little we understand this world's aesthetic. Are there dragons flying around London while Parisa is cornering Dalton in the library?) I would have merged Gideon and Ezra or dropped that subplot. I love Gideon as much as the next hopeless fixer but it's a different book. On a related nit-picking note, Parisa, Tristan, and Libby passed that absinthe around at fanfic-speed. Finally, conversely, I would take a leaf out of JK's now-questionable book and give the setting more of an identity, as Hogwarts got. 
  4. Bonus final draft: CTRL+F 'bruv' and delete. I know full well people in the East End do say this but just have this character say ain't and alright? a few times or something less obtrusively cringe.

Things that made me laugh out loud:
  • Libby Rhodes.... Library Rhodes Scholar.
  • Reina's plants talking to her like the meme of cats talking to their owners like Victorian children. Mothermothermother you are so smart please helpushelpus. This is fantastic and Reina and her plants deserve so much more to do.
  • Nico hand-to-hand fighting MI6/CIA agents because in uni he was good at capture the flag.
  • How many pages the characters could talk without saying anything. X-Files move aside.
  • Hard cutting from the most tense moment of the book to a cancel culture joke that deflated it faster than a whoopee cushion.
  • In this world, global warming was deleted by the privatisation of magic. That's right - all those companies pumping out pollution and guzzling oil as I type, once the government allowed them superpowers, healed the planet.

Things I loved:
  • Callum.
  • Letting Callum be a monster.
  • Letting Parisa be a bit of a monster (still has room to expand here, I hope).
  • Letting everyone be power-hungry and awful, with consequences.
  • Not letting the narrative 'give up' on any of the main six to the point that they are too monstrous to root for.
  • A platonic, highly intimate bond between a guy and a girl.
  • Any configuration of the main six is shippable, including all six. Especially all six. This also made is refreshingly hard to guess endgame pairs. (Though boo for the only gay sex scene - if it even was that? - to occur off-page when the rest took place right in front of my salad.)
  • The character drawings! Although labelling would have helped because I mixed two.
  • The telepathy mechanic of needing to distract or shock someone to make an opening to get at their deeper thoughts.
  • Twisting the typical Dark Academia close-knit friend group into primarily political alliances, lust, and hatred, yet making it even more intimate than usual by having a telepath and an empath around. 
  • Basically inventing found dysfunctional family.
  • How everyone has to deal with and strategise around said telepath and empath instead of giving them Magneto helmets or something like a coward.
  • "Knowledge is carnage."
  • How the Forum appears ideologically in the right. Will the initiates defect? Schism? Remain complicit? I want the drama this will bring, but I would not read a sequel without professional editing.