This was great. I'm not obsessed with it by any means, but I did really like it and look forward to reading the next one.

This book is one of the best examples of character driven plot I can possibly think of. Each character and their POVs are so easy to differentiate while reading, which is so refreshing when you feel like you’ve read some of the same characters multiple times in multiple novels. I love the relationships between each character as well. We get to see in their mind and exactly what they think of everyone else.

The magic system in this novel is also fairly unique and quite diverse. There are any type or level of magic you can think of, and then even ones you couldn’t have possibly thought about.

Another one of my absolute FAVORITE parts was the twist at the end. I won’t give away any spoilers but it was definitely worth it, and it really felt like every aspect of the book was building up to the climax.

I won’t complain that absolutely everything wasn’t tied up, that’s the reason for the sequel of course. I think the novel felt like it’s own story that will perfectly flow into the sequel.

This author truly has a talent for feelings, ideas, and descriptions and I cannot wait to see more.

Thank you Netgalley for this book, in exchange for an honest review!

The Alexandrian Society has been hoarding knowledge from the magical world. The picks to be part of the
Alexandrian Society is the most talented magical user in the world. However, to be part of the Society, the nominees will have to be tested, and their morals will come into question.

This is a dark academic book with all the characters working to improve their knowledge of what they can do with their powers and figuring out what they're willing to do to stay with the knowledge. All six characters are their own people with their own personal demons. In a sense, they do grow into a team, which is a good thing because it ends on a cliffhanger.

This review is based on a review copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

Ok, so I've now been introduced to all of the character, but I haven't loved it so far, so am taking a breather. Each character getting their own introduction has made me impatient for some plot to start, but not so impatient that I had to keep reading. I've seen some great (spoiler-free) reviews that seem to suggest most of the hype might be solely about the second half of the book, so I'll revisit this review when I get the rest finished. For now, though, feeling like it's pretty slow and none of the characters have felt interesting or relatable so far, possibly due to the repetitive style of introduction(?)

(giving it an average 3 stars, just because Netgalley requires a rating)

The Alexandrian Society protect the lost knowledge from the ancient civilizations of the world. Those who earn a place in this secret society secure a life of wealth, power and prestige. Each decade, six uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation. They must fight to survive the next year of their lives to see who will prove themselves worthy to enter the Society.

First off, I have been hearing about this book all over social media and it has been lauded by so many on Bookstagram and TikTok. Had to request it when I saw it available on NetGalley, but all I can say is that for me it was a huge disappointment. I found it really frustrating to read and was often left bewildered about what the hell was going on. I just could not get into it or feel any sense of connection to the protagonists.

The characters in The Atlas Six are completely unlikeable. They don’t seem to have any redeeming qualities and they all come across as pretentious and arrogant, so I found it extremely hard to connect with them. The dynamics between the characters threw up lots of red flags for me and I wanted to scream in frustration at them. Written from the POV of all six of the initiates, I just found the chapters long-winded and boring. They all come across as obnoxious individuals who I didn’t feel deserved to be a part of the Society!

As this is the first book in a trilogy, I knew that it was going to be only an introduction into the story, but I’m afraid I won’t be reading the rest of the series. It’s too much of a slow-burner and there’s such a lack of action. A disappointing read for me and I generally love all things Dark Academia and magical.

I can only give this book 2 stars. I just don’t get the hype (maybe I’m too old, I don’t know!).

Thank you to NetGalley and publishers for the arc. The Atlas Six is out now.

While there is a lot here that's good and even occasionally rather engaging, the disparate parts didn't coalesce for me. I'll likely spend the time between now and the publication of the second book deciding if I really want to put myself through more.

As a general rule, every fictional book I pick up, I read purely for entertainment. To turn my brain off for a while and escape into other realities. Which is precisely why I tend to skirt around overly complicated or convoluted books. If I wanna expend brain power, I have plenty of academic texts to read, and so I reserve other types of work for my times of leisure.

That is why I think this particular book didn't work out for me. It was too wordy and grandiloquent. As a non-native English speaker, my vocabulary level is a point of pride for me, and while I understood what I was reading, it required no small amount of mental energy to interpret and comprehend what was going on. In that sense (and at the risk of sounding ridiculously snobbish), I don't know how easy-to-read or appealing this book would be for your garden variety, casual fantasy reader.

As someone with a very analytical mind, heavily geared towards the oftentimes more black and white STEM universe, endlessly circular philosophical quandaries, the psychology of human nature and existentialism in general are largely exhausting and quite frankly boring to me. And those topics weren't at all something I would have expected to be featured so prominently in this book. I thought it'd go the route of mystery, deception, magic and betrayal. More about action and adventure than introspection. I'd describe this book more as contemplative and brooding than anything else.

However, while the execution wasn't particularly to my taste, I have to admit that the premise of this story was very solid and quite interesting. The existence of people with preternatural abilities, the link between real life scientific and historic events and discoveries and how they could be magically explained away. I particularly loved the particularly scientific and methodological approach to studying the magic present in this fictional world. And the idea that the Library of Alexandria survived and became a sort of secret, super exclusive club. This universe was positively bursting at the seams with possibility.

I also appreciated how ethnically diverse the main cast of characters was. Not only that, but they were all also so profoundly and unapologetically flawed. It was refreshing, really, how they all had at least one grating or unlikable quality.

All in all, while I didn't much enjoy this book, I can't help but encourage everyone to read it. Perhaps what I found to be boring will be incredibly appealing to you and you'll end up loving this story. At the very least I'll admit I'll keep an eye out for the next title in the series to see what unexpected path this saga will take.

**I received an e-ARC of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

The Atlas Six had a lot going and the world developing was very impressive. I don't think I was in the right mindset for this book so I will definitely go back and read it again!

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an arc for an honest review!

What a cast of brilliantly diverse and morally grey characters. I absolutely LOVED this dark academia. It's smart and unlike anything I've read before. I was sucked into the mystery and suspense of it all, but then began to care what happened and who's secrets would come out. I was completely in it all the way, the whole time.

For more book reviews, follow me @literaturewithalatte

✨The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake✨

Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 383
Series: The Atlas Sox, Book 1

📚 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 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,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. Callum Nova, an empath who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation. Five 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.

Most of them.

📝 The setting of this book is pretty awesome: dark academia, the Alexandrian society and archives, unique magical powers. The first chapter of the book was gripping, setting the ominous mood up nicely!

The cast of characters are powerful magicians that are morally grey, flawed and unlikable. However, they are written in a way that still made me interested in their stories and their powers.

The majority of the book was spent introducing the initiates and their powers, so the plot picked up towards the end. I’m looking forward to book 2!

💫Thank you @netgalley and @torbooks for my galley💫

Overall I am intrigued enough to want to read book two. Having said that there were definitely slow parts and I wanted a bit more character development. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars.

Wow! What an incredible story this turned out to be! I was not sure what to expect when reading this, other than the fact that I was tremendously excited because I felt like the plot description had tremendous potential. I am so happy to report that, not only was this reading experience just that, but it was exciting and interesting and highly entertaining as well. I loved the way I could never really guess or predict what would happen next and found myself absorbed not only in the characters themselves, but in the plot that was driving this incredible story as well. Thank you for this delightful reading experience. I cannot wait to get this into the hands of many readers!

The Atlas Six, a new novel by the prolific Olivia Blake, left me perplexed, and unsatisfied. The whole was not the sum of its parts. It had some wonderful parts. I read a review copy of the book courtesy of the author, NetGalley and the Macmillian Publishing. I’m sorry, I just didn’t like the book.

The mysterious and secret Alexandrian Society recruits the six most talented, most powerful magicians once every ten years The positions are highly desirable. Fortunes can be made. Dreams can be realized. There is one tiny catch. Of the six recruits, only five will survive to join the Society, and the recruits must do the choosing of who dies.

The premise is intriguing. The six young magicians are well fleshed out, but rather uninteresting. I lost interest in the book about a third of the way through when conversations delved into such sophomoric questions as the meaning of life, the nature of time and the universe, the existence of God, multiple simultaneous realities, and does anything really matter.

All the time allocate to these conversations and interior monologues could have been better spent on such topics as where were this six chosen; why does someone have to die (couldn’t they just have easily recruited five); what is the actual purpose of the society and what will the remaining five be required to do? What are the stakes???

I will never have the answers, assuming there are answers, as I do not intend to read Part 2, except maybe out of morbid curiosity. After reading some reviews, it seems I may be in the minority, as many readers regard the book as the second coming of the Messiah.

The world that Olivie Blake has created is interesting and the dynamic of six POVs, all selfish in their own ways, is a different style from the normal fantasy book. The Atlas Six is about six magicians in a modern day world, who are brought together to learn about and hone their skills academically for one year. Once that year is up five of them will be inducted into a very secretive society called the Alexandrian Society, said to have protected the long lost Library of Alexandria and more. Each character is uniquely talented while have their own qualms throughout the training and beyond. There are some big twists revealed throughout, but this is a character driven plot, so it is sometimes a slow burn.
I am interested in this world, but I did find the language and writing to be too much sometimes. I actually read the self-published version of this book previously and Blake did clean up a lot for the edition from Tor and added details throughout. Also according to Tik-Tok, this book was spectacular and spicy, but this is not the case in my opinion. I was underwhelmed after all the hype I had seen. but I still enjoyed The Atlas Six. I look forward to more installments, I will probably just gauge my expectations differently.

Amazing dark academia book with magic. The story is very character driven. I am very curious to see what happens in the next book.

I hate to be a party-pooper. I know a lot of people really love this, and I think its journey from self-published book discovered by tiktok to bestseller is a marvelous success story and I truly congratulate Olivie Blake on getting a book deal out of it all! And in a certain sense, I understand why this book has succeeded — it is perfectly poised to appeal to young people who have grown up with the magical academia of Harry Potter and the ancient mythology of Percy Jackson and are ready for something darker and sexier.
Unfortunately, I could not get through this. The writing is not offensively awful, but it is noticeably junior and amateurish. This is not always enough to bring down a book, but the tedious, bloated narrative style obscured its own essential world-building details and character development.
I could easily see being an agent receiving a query with this pitch and being thrilled by the premise, then losing interest within the first few pages of the actual manuscript.
Like I said: I hate to be a party-pooper. I don’t think it’s nice to attack an author’s writing when taste and personal preference and sensitivity to the written word are all such subjective things. Maybe I just don’t understand what the secret ingredient to a popular tiktok book actually is.
But this is unfortunate to me: I am very clearly the market for this book. Adult fantasy, dark academia, ensemble casts of unlikeable characters. So it’s disappointing that I find it completely unreadable.
But then again, this book has been hugely successful, first in the self-published edition and I assume, in the (truly gorgeous) hardcover edition as well. So it has certainly found its market!

I just finished The Atlas Six
This book was awesome! If you're looking for something intriguing and thought provoking, look no further. Magic, mystery, spice, this book has it all.
The first half was a little slow. That said it was still interesting and very much necessary to really set things up and make you care about the characters and what was happening. This story was set up beautifully. I'm so invested. Once it picked up, I couldn't put it down. Highly recommend. It's out now! I can't wait to read more!
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

- THE ATLAS SIX shouldn't work, but it does. Does it? It does. I liked it. I was sometimes bored? But I kept going? Yeah, I have no idea how I feel about this book.
- It's definitely very clever and keeps you hooked, unspooling plot twists and major actions slowly, between all the long conversations about the nature of time and whatnot.
- I think my main reaction is that this is what THE MAGICIANS should have been.
- Also, that Parisa realllllly verges on the trope of the insatiable bisexual (yet also unclear if she's actually queer or just slept with some women for power reasons? Why is this book hailed as full of queer characters?), though the reasons why she is who she is are laid out in the text, it still felt weird.
- I dunno, I'll probably read the sequel? Have you read this? Tell me what you think.

This book was originally self-published. It became ridiculously popular on Tiktok and was picked up to be traditionally published by Tor, while being newly edited and revised with new illustrations. I have not read the original version so I cannot compare the two, and my ebook version sadly did not contain the illustrations.

This is an intelligent, dark academia fantasy novel. It is very much character-driven and I enjoyed seeing their relationships and alliances grow. I did have a hard time keeping the characters and their abilities straight in my head for awhile but eventually that worked itself out. I loved seeing their magic evolve and how they would team up to accomplish things they thought were impossible.

The fight scene was awesome. It really gave a better insight into their abilities and their ability to work together. I really wanted more of that action.

The plot moved too slow for my personal liking and left some things unanswered or not quite clear enough. This is the first book in a trilogy, with the second and third books due to be traditionally published in the future as well. Now that the characters are established I'm curious to see how the plot moves forward and if some of my uncertainties are resolved in future books.

Thank you to @netgalley and @torbooks for the gifted digital arc in exchange for an honest review!

I had some high hopes for this ones. I love dark academia and magic so it sounded like it would a great read for me. The main issue I had was how slow this book is. It stretched on forever and I just got bored. The other issue I had was the characters. Most were unrelatable and I found a good portion to be irritating. I wouldn't want to hang out with them so reading about them wasn't much fun. I did like the writing style and the magic system has a lot of potential. Hopefully book two will be a bit better.