The Atlas Six

The Atlas Six ended up on my tbr pile because it’s a dark academia/magical society novel, which I usually like, but I really didn’t find this one as compelling as the tiktok fan club seems to believe it is.

Atlas is the “caretaker” of the secretive and exclusive Alexandrian Society tasked with recruiting 6 competitors for 5 slots in the Society. There’s a dark secret about the process for selecting the 5 who will go on, and once the competitors understand their place in the society they have to reckon with their morals and the promises held by the society. Over the first few chapters, we meet Libby - an anxious perfectionist driven by the need to prove she is good; Nico - Libby’s rival in school, a natural talent, and one of two characters I like; Parisa - a mind-reader who knows she’s hot and uses it to her advantage, and the other character I liked; Tristan - a guy trying to run away from his family’s reputation and gain power however he can; Callum - the absolute worst person I have ever even considered; and Reina - a quiet woman connected with plants and extremely powerful though she doesn’t want to be.

Each of them accepts the offer to join the class of society initiates for their own reasons. When they arrive, they start to question if it’s really what they wanted and who they’re willing to use or betray to get what they want. “A self-perpetuating cycle, really, that knowledge begets knowledge just as power begets power — generationally, institutionally.”

While I found the idea behind this book intriguing, the characters were not super well-developed, the magic felt like a side note that wasn’t really thought out, and there were a lot of attempts to make it feel intellectual and philosophical, but that ended up just feeling unrelated to the story. I did not like most of the characters, and that’s fine if you’re still interested in what they do and why, but that was not the case here. Also, there was chemistry and tension developed between characters but then it just wasn’t followed up on. Ultimately, I was just kind of disappointed with this book. I was also left with a bunch of questions about the plot, but no real desire to read the second one to figure it out.

“You want to believe your hesitation makes you good, makes you better? It doesn’t. Every single one of us is missing something. We are too powerful, too extraordinary, and don’t you see it’s because we’re riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal — that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn.”