What do you think?
Rate this book
The Atlas #3
The Atlas Complex
Only the extraordinary are chosen. Only the cunning survive.
An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment.
Old alliances quickly fracture as the initiates take opposing strategies as to how to deal with the deadly bargain they have so far failed to uphold. Those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, while elsewhere, an unlikely pair from the Society cohort partner to influence politics on a global stage.
And still the outside world mobilizes to destroy them, while the Caretaker himself, Atlas Blakely, may yet succeed with a plan foreseen to have world-ending stakes. It’s a race to survive as the six Society recruits are faced with the question of what they're willing to betray for limitless power―and who will be destroyed along the way.
An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment.
Old alliances quickly fracture as the initiates take opposing strategies as to how to deal with the deadly bargain they have so far failed to uphold. Those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, while elsewhere, an unlikely pair from the Society cohort partner to influence politics on a global stage.
And still the outside world mobilizes to destroy them, while the Caretaker himself, Atlas Blakely, may yet succeed with a plan foreseen to have world-ending stakes. It’s a race to survive as the six Society recruits are faced with the question of what they're willing to betray for limitless power―and who will be destroyed along the way.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 9, 2024
About the author
Olivie Blake
34 books14.7k followersOlivie Blake is the pseudonym of Alexene Farol Follmuth, a lover and writer of stories, many of which involve the fantastic, the paranormal, or the supernatural, but not always. More often, her works revolve around what it means to be human (or not), and the endlessly interesting complexities of life and love.
Olivie has penned several indie SFF projects, including the webtoon Clara and the Devil with illustrator Little Chmura and the viral Atlas series. As Follmuth, her young adult rom-com My Mechanical Romance releases May 2022.
Olivie lives in Los Angeles with her husband and new baby, where she is generally tolerated by her rescue pit bull.
Olivie has penned several indie SFF projects, including the webtoon Clara and the Devil with illustrator Little Chmura and the viral Atlas series. As Follmuth, her young adult rom-com My Mechanical Romance releases May 2022.
Olivie lives in Los Angeles with her husband and new baby, where she is generally tolerated by her rescue pit bull.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,551 reviews
August 12, 2024
i am tired and disappointed, but above all, i am angry.
the time has finally come for me to put this series to rest so i will never have to remember about the horrendous calamity this was. those who are on my bookstagram would know how bad i was FUMING from rage when i finished this, so let's talk and be done with this bother.
and before everything, i want to excuse myself for the crude language. this will not be a normal review, this comes from my rage and disappointment because i have loved the atlas six ever since its first self-publication. if it is to drag me on booktwt and send me death threats like the last time with TAP, PLEASE, CLICK OUT.
if you had told me two years ago, right after my read of the TOR edition of the atlas six, that one day, i would hate this series with my whole entire being, i wouldn't have believed you, but unfortunately, this was one of the worst author fumble i have ever witnessed. when i wrote my reveiw of the atlas paradox, despite hating it, i still had so much hope for this one, because, above all, i trust olivie blake and she is one of my favorite writers of all time. i loved her dramione fics (despite being a dramione anti) and most of her books, i just couldn't think that she would fuck up what started as one of my potential favorite series of all time. for all it matters, after this review, i will pretend that the atlas six is a standalone.
objectively, the whole series was a mess in every aspect of the writing. the first book was criticized (not by me because i was partial to it) for its long, laborious descriptions of physics and philosophy. fine, most gave it a pass since it's the first book and it somewhat served the concept of the series. in the atlas paradox, the second book in a trilogy, as i have reread it recently, it is mostly description and no action, as if the whole plot was built from tenuous descriptions only and nothing else. after all, i would rather suffer through 400 pages of olivie blake's word vomit rather than another author's, and at least, her loooooong paragraphs about physics and morality are somewhat interesting. okay fine, however, i expected from the third book the explosivity promised by the marketing campaign, the violence, the clashes of moral conflicts, the eruption of endless suffering and anger. instead, what i got was another 500 pages of word vomit, recycled over and over. yes, i get that atlas is A, B, C, that his stances on the subject are D, E, F, but i DO NOT need those things repeated to me ten thousand times through ten different POVs. enough, really. reading this felt like sitting through a two-hour-lesson from your least favorite professor in your least favorite subject, except they are high on drugs and drunk on vodka. seriously, THREE BOOKS of endless descriptions and it boiled down to the what happened??? be so fucking for real for god's fucking sake. also, i don't ever want to read about politics in that way again, if olivie blake wants to express her political point of view, please write a manifesto and move on. what is the point of writing about politics in fiction if it's to write it like that?
when i started this series and particularly this book, i didn't expect the six to come out alive and well. i expected it to be a carnage, to be a heartbreaking event for the readers but a necessity to the plot. imagine how angry i am when i reached the first death, and then the second, like ?????????????? what was the point of building characters, assuming that was the intention because it was in no case successful, if it is to end it all like this? bsffr. i do not comprehend what has gone through the author's mind while writing this for her to say "hmm this might me an excellant ending". in the end, the characters who were killed make sense, but the way they died? criminal. if you have read the burning god by r.f. kuang, you would know that the way to effectively write a forseeable character death is definitely NOT whatever shit happened in this book. olivie blake does not know how to write a tragedy, if that was the goal anyway. the characterization (if we can call it that) went COMPLETELY off the rails, which render their death completely obselete and senseless. i swear, in the first 20% of the books, i thought this was going to get at least a 4-star-rating for the characters alone, because they were so good, so funny, so rightfully despicable like in the TA6: libby's villain arc makes sense, tristan's unreckoning makes sense, parisa's scheming makes sense, until that 40% mark where nothing does. call me biased, but for me, this is character assassination from beginning to end, and don't get me started on the shippings. everything i loved from TA6 was crushed in TAP and thrown into a firepit in the one. i can't believe i spent three years of my life anticipating and caring for this series only for it to end this way.
bottom-line: i love gideon, i love book 1 nicolibby, i love callum in this book. the rest can burn in hell for all i care. what a tragic waste of time.
follow me on instagram: @loverssrequiem
---------------------------------
pre-review:
imagine writing a wonderful first book then turning it into complete dogshit. couldn't be me. rtc
---------------------------------
currently reading:
i am just saying, no matter what happens, nicolibby will always have my heart and soul. i respect others' ships (i don't) but nicolibby is the blueprint 🥰 let it be known that i have loved them since the publication of the very first version of TA6/
pre-reading:
nicogideonlibby throuple defender against any, *gesture vaguely*, new alliances/relationships olivie blake has in mind for nico
the time has finally come for me to put this series to rest so i will never have to remember about the horrendous calamity this was. those who are on my bookstagram would know how bad i was FUMING from rage when i finished this, so let's talk and be done with this bother.
and before everything, i want to excuse myself for the crude language. this will not be a normal review, this comes from my rage and disappointment because i have loved the atlas six ever since its first self-publication. if it is to drag me on booktwt and send me death threats like the last time with TAP, PLEASE, CLICK OUT.
if you had told me two years ago, right after my read of the TOR edition of the atlas six, that one day, i would hate this series with my whole entire being, i wouldn't have believed you, but unfortunately, this was one of the worst author fumble i have ever witnessed. when i wrote my reveiw of the atlas paradox, despite hating it, i still had so much hope for this one, because, above all, i trust olivie blake and she is one of my favorite writers of all time. i loved her dramione fics (despite being a dramione anti) and most of her books, i just couldn't think that she would fuck up what started as one of my potential favorite series of all time. for all it matters, after this review, i will pretend that the atlas six is a standalone.
objectively, the whole series was a mess in every aspect of the writing. the first book was criticized (not by me because i was partial to it) for its long, laborious descriptions of physics and philosophy. fine, most gave it a pass since it's the first book and it somewhat served the concept of the series. in the atlas paradox, the second book in a trilogy, as i have reread it recently, it is mostly description and no action, as if the whole plot was built from tenuous descriptions only and nothing else. after all, i would rather suffer through 400 pages of olivie blake's word vomit rather than another author's, and at least, her loooooong paragraphs about physics and morality are somewhat interesting. okay fine, however, i expected from the third book the explosivity promised by the marketing campaign, the violence, the clashes of moral conflicts, the eruption of endless suffering and anger. instead, what i got was another 500 pages of word vomit, recycled over and over. yes, i get that atlas is A, B, C, that his stances on the subject are D, E, F, but i DO NOT need those things repeated to me ten thousand times through ten different POVs. enough, really. reading this felt like sitting through a two-hour-lesson from your least favorite professor in your least favorite subject, except they are high on drugs and drunk on vodka. seriously, THREE BOOKS of endless descriptions and it boiled down to the what happened??? be so fucking for real for god's fucking sake. also, i don't ever want to read about politics in that way again, if olivie blake wants to express her political point of view, please write a manifesto and move on. what is the point of writing about politics in fiction if it's to write it like that?
when i started this series and particularly this book, i didn't expect the six to come out alive and well. i expected it to be a carnage, to be a heartbreaking event for the readers but a necessity to the plot. imagine how angry i am when i reached the first death, and then the second, like ?????????????? what was the point of building characters, assuming that was the intention because it was in no case successful, if it is to end it all like this? bsffr. i do not comprehend what has gone through the author's mind while writing this for her to say "hmm this might me an excellant ending". in the end, the characters who were killed make sense, but the way they died? criminal. if you have read the burning god by r.f. kuang, you would know that the way to effectively write a forseeable character death is definitely NOT whatever shit happened in this book. olivie blake does not know how to write a tragedy, if that was the goal anyway. the characterization (if we can call it that) went COMPLETELY off the rails, which render their death completely obselete and senseless. i swear, in the first 20% of the books, i thought this was going to get at least a 4-star-rating for the characters alone, because they were so good, so funny, so rightfully despicable like in the TA6: libby's villain arc makes sense, tristan's unreckoning makes sense, parisa's scheming makes sense, until that 40% mark where nothing does. call me biased, but for me, this is character assassination from beginning to end, and don't get me started on the shippings. everything i loved from TA6 was crushed in TAP and thrown into a firepit in the one. i can't believe i spent three years of my life anticipating and caring for this series only for it to end this way.
bottom-line: i love gideon, i love book 1 nicolibby, i love callum in this book. the rest can burn in hell for all i care. what a tragic waste of time.
follow me on instagram: @loverssrequiem
---------------------------------
pre-review:
imagine writing a wonderful first book then turning it into complete dogshit. couldn't be me. rtc
---------------------------------
currently reading:
i am just saying, no matter what happens, nicolibby will always have my heart and soul. i respect others' ships (i don't) but nicolibby is the blueprint 🥰 let it be known that i have loved them since the publication of the very first version of TA6/
pre-reading:
nicogideonlibby throuple defender against any, *gesture vaguely*, new alliances/relationships olivie blake has in mind for nico
January 8, 2024
I think my problem with Olivie Blake’s writing is that she tries so badly to be profound and complicated and it just fails miserably.. Every character in this book is like oh I love this person but also this person love is insurmountable and immeasurable Blah Blah which is good in the first book but after hundreds and hundreds of pages you’re just left thinking man can these people have an orgy and just shut the fuck up already
March 30, 2024
i can’t tell if this is bad but it makes no sense
March 18, 2024
got my nicogideon endgame but at what cost
January 9, 2024
IM FREEEEEEEEE WORST EXPERIENCE OF MY FUCKING LIFE
January 12, 2024
Yeah, you probably shouldn’t read this review if you’ve not yet read the other two books. I won’t be spoiling this as such, but it won’t make sense.
I feel like a lot of people seem to have missed the whole point of this series as a whole. It’s not a love story. It’s not just a campus novel with a magical twist. This is a series about what would happen if you gave six of the most powerful human beings on the planet, none of whom have even reached the age of thirty, access to infinite knowledge, infinite power, and the possibility of making their wildest dreams come true. It’s a story about obsession, love, hate, and privilege. What would it cost you to achieve greatness and how far are you willing to push the boundaries to get it?
By the time this book takes place, none of these characters truly know what they want anymore. They’re lost, confused, afraid, and have most definitely lost their minds a little. They’ve seen all they’re capable of. They’ve been told it, promised it even. Led to believe they’re invincible, until they’re not. The possibilities, the outcomes, the future and the past. But they still don’t understand each other. Who to trust, who to like, who to want to understand. One of them has to die still, those are the rules of the game. So who are they picking? Reina thinks she’s a god, Callum thinks he’s invincible, Parisa sees too much, Libby’s not Libby anymore, Nico is a kid in love with his best friend, Tristan has seen alternate dimensions we couldn’t possibly even comprehend.
And then you’ve got Atlas, Dalton and Gideon. One is so incredibly tired, one is utterly insane, and one might not even be real. Take your pick at who I’m describing.
But they’re not just that though, are they? They’re geniuses, they’re frauds, they’re incredible actors. Reina sees the world from afar, she knows it’s evilness and the capability of human beings, and she has the power to change that. Callum has flown too close to the sun with his obsessions and he’s falling apart, but nothing a smirk and a pair of aviators can’t fix, right? Parisa is tired, she’s ‘growing old’, her vanity is so profound it hurts, but she’s self aware, she’s seen it all, she’s never trusted anyone but herself, so now is the time to change that, she thinks. The old Libby didn’t really know what she wanted out of life. It was a simple one, she just wanted to be happy. Then she was thrown back in time and saw and experienced things she would have never thought possible, and now she’s back and she is not the same person she was. She thinks she knows what is right, she thinks she’s made the right decisions, but in the end, has she? What did she gain? Nico has too much trust and faith in people. He’s too kind, always trying to keep up with everyone else. It’s a flaw and a strong trait all at once. He doesn’t understand the complexity of all the different forms of love and how they choose to present themselves, but he wants so badly to prove he ‘gets it’. He’s so real. So human. So raw. He would do anything for the people he loves. He’s seen the infinite outcomes and believes they’re worth a try at grasping. Oh, and Tristan, oh Tristan. He just wants to try, to see the true extent of possibilities. He wants more than one world, one scenario, one life to exist in. He wants everything at once and knows he can get it if he really tries. But can he?
Character studies aside, if you look at them as a whole, you just see kids meddling with things they will never be able to comprehend. They could have had so much. They just lost their way a long time ago and none of them realised it before it was too late. But they were set up from the start, the Society, the Archives, the Forum. It was happening long before Atlas, it will happen long after the end of this book. It’s a vicious cycle with no escape and no end. Just like everything in life.
This series is a study into human beings and what it takes to make or break us.
It’s a series about what ifs, whys and hows.
You’ll laugh, you’ll scream, you’ll smile, you’ll cry.
It makes perfect sense, it makes no sense, it’s insane, it’s a masterpiece.
What would you do for everything?
I feel like a lot of people seem to have missed the whole point of this series as a whole. It’s not a love story. It’s not just a campus novel with a magical twist. This is a series about what would happen if you gave six of the most powerful human beings on the planet, none of whom have even reached the age of thirty, access to infinite knowledge, infinite power, and the possibility of making their wildest dreams come true. It’s a story about obsession, love, hate, and privilege. What would it cost you to achieve greatness and how far are you willing to push the boundaries to get it?
By the time this book takes place, none of these characters truly know what they want anymore. They’re lost, confused, afraid, and have most definitely lost their minds a little. They’ve seen all they’re capable of. They’ve been told it, promised it even. Led to believe they’re invincible, until they’re not. The possibilities, the outcomes, the future and the past. But they still don’t understand each other. Who to trust, who to like, who to want to understand. One of them has to die still, those are the rules of the game. So who are they picking? Reina thinks she’s a god, Callum thinks he’s invincible, Parisa sees too much, Libby’s not Libby anymore, Nico is a kid in love with his best friend, Tristan has seen alternate dimensions we couldn’t possibly even comprehend.
And then you’ve got Atlas, Dalton and Gideon. One is so incredibly tired, one is utterly insane, and one might not even be real. Take your pick at who I’m describing.
But they’re not just that though, are they? They’re geniuses, they’re frauds, they’re incredible actors. Reina sees the world from afar, she knows it’s evilness and the capability of human beings, and she has the power to change that. Callum has flown too close to the sun with his obsessions and he’s falling apart, but nothing a smirk and a pair of aviators can’t fix, right? Parisa is tired, she’s ‘growing old’, her vanity is so profound it hurts, but she’s self aware, she’s seen it all, she’s never trusted anyone but herself, so now is the time to change that, she thinks. The old Libby didn’t really know what she wanted out of life. It was a simple one, she just wanted to be happy. Then she was thrown back in time and saw and experienced things she would have never thought possible, and now she’s back and she is not the same person she was. She thinks she knows what is right, she thinks she’s made the right decisions, but in the end, has she? What did she gain? Nico has too much trust and faith in people. He’s too kind, always trying to keep up with everyone else. It’s a flaw and a strong trait all at once. He doesn’t understand the complexity of all the different forms of love and how they choose to present themselves, but he wants so badly to prove he ‘gets it’. He’s so real. So human. So raw. He would do anything for the people he loves. He’s seen the infinite outcomes and believes they’re worth a try at grasping. Oh, and Tristan, oh Tristan. He just wants to try, to see the true extent of possibilities. He wants more than one world, one scenario, one life to exist in. He wants everything at once and knows he can get it if he really tries. But can he?
Character studies aside, if you look at them as a whole, you just see kids meddling with things they will never be able to comprehend. They could have had so much. They just lost their way a long time ago and none of them realised it before it was too late. But they were set up from the start, the Society, the Archives, the Forum. It was happening long before Atlas, it will happen long after the end of this book. It’s a vicious cycle with no escape and no end. Just like everything in life.
This series is a study into human beings and what it takes to make or break us.
It’s a series about what ifs, whys and hows.
You’ll laugh, you’ll scream, you’ll smile, you’ll cry.
It makes perfect sense, it makes no sense, it’s insane, it’s a masterpiece.
What would you do for everything?
January 9, 2024
now why tf would u do that
February 16, 2024
UPDATE: Adding one more star to this, because, after multiple people pointing it out to me, and re-reading certain sentences, I think it's obvious that This doesn't change the mediocrity of the rest of the book though.
No words, just pain. I did not expect this at all.
I knew the ending of this trilogy would be bittersweet, I knew people would die, and I knew there wouldn't be any "ride off into the sunset" for any of our characters. But that?
I don't think this book deserves the time needed to write all the arguments in my head that would support the fact that it simply, utterly, absolutely sucks.
pre-release: nicogideon and novacaine endgame please at least give me ONE OF THEM 😭😭😭
No words, just pain. I did not expect this at all.
I knew the ending of this trilogy would be bittersweet, I knew people would die, and I knew there wouldn't be any "ride off into the sunset" for any of our characters. But that?
I don't think this book deserves the time needed to write all the arguments in my head that would support the fact that it simply, utterly, absolutely sucks.
pre-release: nicogideon and novacaine endgame please at least give me ONE OF THEM 😭😭😭
Want to read
November 5, 2023PLEAASE 😩 im literally on my knees begging
come on waiting a year for this book is absurd and unreasonable i need it now
also hardcore manifesting nicolibby to be endgame
come on waiting a year for this book is absurd and unreasonable i need it now
also hardcore manifesting nicolibby to be endgame
Want to read
January 9, 2024 11.05.22
lack of gideonico defenders has me so sad PLEASE olivie give me this just ONCE i NEED THEM. they are my genuine everything.
lack of gideonico defenders has me so sad PLEASE olivie give me this just ONCE i NEED THEM. they are my genuine everything.
January 11, 2024
Unsatisfactory in all ways. The ending left me with few questions and a pounding headache. It tried too hard to be intellectual but came off as confusing and vexing to follow. The addition of other characters didn't help. Any interests I had when I first read ta6 has watered down which didn't help my read. Occasional moments that I had been waiting for months were overshadowed by other events. I feel a bit robbed and lukewarm about the couples I was rooting for.
Caricature like characters and token representation of genz. The fall of DA "cult classic tt favourite" to whatever mess it is. The character motivations and relationships were so vague. Whatever outline OB had I bet she panstered after she got hit post book 1 success.
You want to save the world ? Destroy the world ? Childish whims and lacking any reasonable depth. What matters to their characters ? Is it the act of death or a revenge on world ? You didn't drink your coffee right so u wanna cease your existence BFFR.
Rather than wasting our time creating throuples she should have built solid believable character sketches. Dropped a few hints, could've added a domino/butterfly effect of small events and then could've tied upto the rigid Society and their fucked up rules. What a waste.
The usage of "like" and the excessive need to prolong the sentence by not using conjunctions made the writing even hard to follow. So many pauses and dramatic phrases and expressions. As a reader it is a chore for me to sort through what is written even. Makes me question what was I really expected from a series that borrows it's concepts from TSH.
--------------------------------
Enough of being pretentious, I want a faceoff between the people from the society including Atlas against the six. For the last time, get it together!
Team #nicogideon or else you're fricking delusional to have any other ship.
Caricature like characters and token representation of genz. The fall of DA "cult classic tt favourite" to whatever mess it is. The character motivations and relationships were so vague. Whatever outline OB had I bet she panstered after she got hit post book 1 success.
You want to save the world ? Destroy the world ? Childish whims and lacking any reasonable depth. What matters to their characters ? Is it the act of death or a revenge on world ? You didn't drink your coffee right so u wanna cease your existence BFFR.
Rather than wasting our time creating throuples she should have built solid believable character sketches. Dropped a few hints, could've added a domino/butterfly effect of small events and then could've tied upto the rigid Society and their fucked up rules. What a waste.
The usage of "like" and the excessive need to prolong the sentence by not using conjunctions made the writing even hard to follow. So many pauses and dramatic phrases and expressions. As a reader it is a chore for me to sort through what is written even. Makes me question what was I really expected from a series that borrows it's concepts from TSH.
--------------------------------
Enough of being pretentious, I want a faceoff between the people from the society including Atlas against the six. For the last time, get it together!
Team #nicogideon or else you're fricking delusional to have any other ship.
January 12, 2024
you almost have to respect the extent to which this ending is guaranteed to make absolutely no one happy lol
Currently reading
January 8, 2024give me nicolibby endgame or give me death.
update: ITS HERE!! NO ONE TALK TO ME UNTIL I'M FINISHED READING
update: ITS HERE!! NO ONE TALK TO ME UNTIL I'M FINISHED READING
January 14, 2024
I really don’t know where to start with this review, but I do know that it may be the most difficult one that I’ve ever had to write. It’s been a few days now since I finished reading, but my thoughts are still all over the place, so please forgive me if this review is a bit of a mess. Also, If you’re trying to avoid any kind of spoilers, then you might not want to read any further!
Firstly, I want to start off with what I loved about this book which was of course, the characters. The Atlas series has given me some of my all time favourite characters, and I will always be so grateful for that. Callum and Gideon are two of the greatest characters I’ve ever read about, and this book just continues to prove why I love them so much. I always looked forward to the Callum and Reina chapters, and I of course loved every single second that we got with Nico and Gideon, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, the texting chapters between Callum and Tristan (which, let’s be honest, were the peak of the entire book) sent me absolutely feRAL! But unfortunately, as far as enjoyment goes, that’s about where it ends.
For the first half or so of this book, I was so sure that it was going to be five stars, but the more I read on, the more my rating began to decline. When Nico said “maybe all this fun would have to eventually end”, he was right, because the fun did in fact- end. It was around the point of the first major character death when this book started to go downhill, and that’s not to say that I hate character deaths, because if you know anything about me, you know I love a good depressing ending! I want a book that makes me cry! I want a book that rips my heart out! But this… this wasn’t like that, this just felt so unnecessarily cruel. Even after all the trauma, I hoped that the ending would be satisfying, I hoped that it would make me understand, but alas, It didn’t. Maybe I’m not clever enough, maybe I missed the whole point, but I really just didn’t get it. So, when I closed that last page, instead of leaving with a sad, yet life changing existential crisis, I was left only with disappointment, and rage. There’s so much more that I could say, but I’ve talked so much about my feelings, that I kind of just want to move on now.
Even though this wasn’t everything I hoped it would be, I will still be picking up any of Olivie Blake’s future books without hesitation (well, maybe a little hesitation). If you’re planning on reading this conclusion to the Atlas trilogy, I can only hope that you get something more positive out of it than I did.
Anyway, I’m off to an alternate universe to find an alternate version of this book that doesn’t leave me utterly devastated x
Thank you so much to Book Break for sending me an ARC, even if it has caused some slight irreparable damage :’)
Firstly, I want to start off with what I loved about this book which was of course, the characters. The Atlas series has given me some of my all time favourite characters, and I will always be so grateful for that. Callum and Gideon are two of the greatest characters I’ve ever read about, and this book just continues to prove why I love them so much. I always looked forward to the Callum and Reina chapters, and I of course loved every single second that we got with Nico and Gideon, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, the texting chapters between Callum and Tristan (which, let’s be honest, were the peak of the entire book) sent me absolutely feRAL! But unfortunately, as far as enjoyment goes, that’s about where it ends.
For the first half or so of this book, I was so sure that it was going to be five stars, but the more I read on, the more my rating began to decline. When Nico said “maybe all this fun would have to eventually end”, he was right, because the fun did in fact- end. It was around the point of the first major character death when this book started to go downhill, and that’s not to say that I hate character deaths, because if you know anything about me, you know I love a good depressing ending! I want a book that makes me cry! I want a book that rips my heart out! But this… this wasn’t like that, this just felt so unnecessarily cruel. Even after all the trauma, I hoped that the ending would be satisfying, I hoped that it would make me understand, but alas, It didn’t. Maybe I’m not clever enough, maybe I missed the whole point, but I really just didn’t get it. So, when I closed that last page, instead of leaving with a sad, yet life changing existential crisis, I was left only with disappointment, and rage. There’s so much more that I could say, but I’ve talked so much about my feelings, that I kind of just want to move on now.
Even though this wasn’t everything I hoped it would be, I will still be picking up any of Olivie Blake’s future books without hesitation (well, maybe a little hesitation). If you’re planning on reading this conclusion to the Atlas trilogy, I can only hope that you get something more positive out of it than I did.
Anyway, I’m off to an alternate universe to find an alternate version of this book that doesn’t leave me utterly devastated x
Thank you so much to Book Break for sending me an ARC, even if it has caused some slight irreparable damage :’)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 9, 2024
1.5/5
(bear in mind that this is my first impression after reading the book for the first time. it may change after re-reading the whole trilogy)
—
as the rating shows, i did not like this. i wasn’t a huge fan of the previous books but i’d enjoyed them, overall. throughout most of this one, though, i was in a constant state of both confusion and annoyance. i expected it to get better, gave it the benefit of the doubt, or rather, just my nonexistent expectations as an opportunity to surprise me. even having no hopes in it, i was still disappointed. i really don’t know how to put it all into words so i will just list out my main issues:
- the end: what the fuck was that. terribly developed, rushed (probably because nothing had happened the rest of the book) and clumsy.
- the whole plot in general: most of the book is basically the same— 80% is that and the other 20% is trying (and failing) to close it decently, making even more of a mess of it.
- the writing: even if partially it’s because blake’s style is just not my taste, it is particularly messy in this book. how it switches from action to internal monologue and the useless contradictions that end up nowhere (which makes them simply confusing) drove me insane as i read it.
- THE AMOUNT OF POVS: so many useless povs. SO MANY. there’s a point in the book where there’s more povs than actual plot going on.
—
in summary, it was too much and not enough at the same time. nothing was cohesive, there was no strong objective going on and it was all pure chaos in the worst way possible. the ending is just as meaningless as the rest of the book. it had truly so much potential with the characters, to close their arcs and the trilogy as they deserved— it all got wasted in unnecessary povs, and senseless monologues that had no actual impact or point in the general narrative.
(bear in mind that this is my first impression after reading the book for the first time. it may change after re-reading the whole trilogy)
—
as the rating shows, i did not like this. i wasn’t a huge fan of the previous books but i’d enjoyed them, overall. throughout most of this one, though, i was in a constant state of both confusion and annoyance. i expected it to get better, gave it the benefit of the doubt, or rather, just my nonexistent expectations as an opportunity to surprise me. even having no hopes in it, i was still disappointed. i really don’t know how to put it all into words so i will just list out my main issues:
- the end: what the fuck was that. terribly developed, rushed (probably because nothing had happened the rest of the book) and clumsy.
- the whole plot in general: most of the book is basically the same— 80% is that and the other 20% is trying (and failing) to close it decently, making even more of a mess of it.
- the writing: even if partially it’s because blake’s style is just not my taste, it is particularly messy in this book. how it switches from action to internal monologue and the useless contradictions that end up nowhere (which makes them simply confusing) drove me insane as i read it.
- THE AMOUNT OF POVS: so many useless povs. SO MANY. there’s a point in the book where there’s more povs than actual plot going on.
—
in summary, it was too much and not enough at the same time. nothing was cohesive, there was no strong objective going on and it was all pure chaos in the worst way possible. the ending is just as meaningless as the rest of the book. it had truly so much potential with the characters, to close their arcs and the trilogy as they deserved— it all got wasted in unnecessary povs, and senseless monologues that had no actual impact or point in the general narrative.
January 10, 2024
so. I finished this entire trilogy. and now it kinda feels like a duty to yell about it, just to make the hours I spent reading this book worth something.
probably spoilers for book 1 and 2 incoming. maybe some slight spoilers for book 3? be warned.
first: this isn't a TERRIBLE book. I get why people like these books so much, they seem smart without ever really touching a subject. just mentioning one, afterwards clapping their (metaphorical) hands and continuing to the next. I did like some scenes and a few paragraphs are for sure quotable. some of the characters are really likable (Gideon.). I get why people are invested in the who-dates-who. the whole "who will get killed plot" was interesting, but also... so pointless.
and this is my first big criticism: this book is pointless. the plot does not need to exist. it just exists because the characters chose to do something (for no reason, might I add) and they all know the something is bad and they get told REPEADETLY. they even call it "sinister plot". it's literally just characters making a terrible decision for absolutely no reason or motivation. almost none of these characters have one, by the way. Nico remembers half-way through the plot (according to my notes somewhere around 220) his original motivation to join the Society. and then forgets about it again.
second criticism: I think this entire series would've been so good if the author hated the characters. you can tell while reading that the author thinks some characters are really cool and deserve big fight scenes for no reason (Parisa) and some characters do literally nothing for the plot and could be cut entirely, but are in it, cuz the author thinks they're cool (Reina, Callum) (no, really, Reina doesn't even talk in person to some of the main characters in this).
third criticism: the writing. it wasn't not bad.
did you see that? the author does this thing a lot. it was not not good. it is not not terrible. you get it? okay. the author also thinks using the word dick/cock is really funny and a good joke. some jokes get repeated too often. the characters all have the same humour and make the same jokes which does not give them a unique voice.
for example: one of my friends read the first book and in the Atlas Complex, there is an entire section consisting of text messages between two characters. I send an excerpt to said friends. she could not say which characters were texting.
in general the writing is pretty good though, as long as you like long sentences and some moral/deep/intellecual gibberish that goes nowhere. seriously, I studied psychology and some of the points about psychology in this book make no sense.
I think these are my main take aways. the next points are just very nit-picky, personal and spoiler-y, so, if you just wanted to know whether the books is good, to quote the book itself: yes and no. if you've read the other two, sure, read it. it's pretty much the same. some characters even get an end to their arc.
that being said, I don't think big fans of the series will be satisfied with the ending. it left me, someone who mostly read it to tell my friends who ends up with who, with the "that's it?" feeling.
I once took a writing class where we were taught that pay off is one of the most important things in writing. you want the things that happen to matter in the end. you want the reader to have the feeling of "oh, of course this happens!" or "I see why the character ends up here". I did not get that feeling once during this read. though it does make sense that a book with almost no plot and mostly vibes ends with no real epilogue and mostly vibes.
ANYHOO, nit-picking time. and, I repeat: MAYBE SOME SPOILERS.
fourth criticism: needing new glasses or having grey hair is not "decay" and doesn't make people ugly.
fifth criticism: we get it, all men are pigs, you don't have to mention it so often that they are looking at Parisa's breasts. seriously, is there no ass-guy in the Atlas-Six-Universe?
sixth criticism: the whole Oppenheimer-conflict Libby goes through is really weird. she literally nuked people. I do not feel sorry for her.
eigth criticism(?): on that note, this is just something I've noticed and I am pointing it out not because "thing bad" or "thing good". just an observation: the female/male couples get very long sex scenes and in general scenes where they are touching/being soft with each other. the queer couples do not get that. they do kiss, yes, but (especially in comparison) it's never a long paragraph.
ninth criticism: I know a lot of people read these books because of the ships/pairings. and I just wanted to tell you, if you were disappointed in them in this book, so was I. you are not alone. we are disappointed together.
tenth criticism: this is the last one, I promise. at one point in the book, a character has this thought: You have only one true choice in this life. The only thing no one else can take from you.
the character is talking about death/suicide. I just think this is in general a very dangerous sentiment and in the text, it's presented as a fundamental truth. it is not.
probably spoilers for book 1 and 2 incoming. maybe some slight spoilers for book 3? be warned.
first: this isn't a TERRIBLE book. I get why people like these books so much, they seem smart without ever really touching a subject. just mentioning one, afterwards clapping their (metaphorical) hands and continuing to the next. I did like some scenes and a few paragraphs are for sure quotable. some of the characters are really likable (Gideon.). I get why people are invested in the who-dates-who. the whole "who will get killed plot" was interesting, but also... so pointless.
and this is my first big criticism: this book is pointless. the plot does not need to exist. it just exists because the characters chose to do something (for no reason, might I add) and they all know the something is bad and they get told REPEADETLY. they even call it "sinister plot". it's literally just characters making a terrible decision for absolutely no reason or motivation. almost none of these characters have one, by the way. Nico remembers half-way through the plot (according to my notes somewhere around 220) his original motivation to join the Society. and then forgets about it again.
second criticism: I think this entire series would've been so good if the author hated the characters. you can tell while reading that the author thinks some characters are really cool and deserve big fight scenes for no reason (Parisa) and some characters do literally nothing for the plot and could be cut entirely, but are in it, cuz the author thinks they're cool (Reina, Callum) (no, really, Reina doesn't even talk in person to some of the main characters in this).
third criticism: the writing. it wasn't not bad.
did you see that? the author does this thing a lot. it was not not good. it is not not terrible. you get it? okay. the author also thinks using the word dick/cock is really funny and a good joke. some jokes get repeated too often. the characters all have the same humour and make the same jokes which does not give them a unique voice.
for example: one of my friends read the first book and in the Atlas Complex, there is an entire section consisting of text messages between two characters. I send an excerpt to said friends. she could not say which characters were texting.
in general the writing is pretty good though, as long as you like long sentences and some moral/deep/intellecual gibberish that goes nowhere. seriously, I studied psychology and some of the points about psychology in this book make no sense.
I think these are my main take aways. the next points are just very nit-picky, personal and spoiler-y, so, if you just wanted to know whether the books is good, to quote the book itself: yes and no. if you've read the other two, sure, read it. it's pretty much the same. some characters even get an end to their arc.
that being said, I don't think big fans of the series will be satisfied with the ending. it left me, someone who mostly read it to tell my friends who ends up with who, with the "that's it?" feeling.
I once took a writing class where we were taught that pay off is one of the most important things in writing. you want the things that happen to matter in the end. you want the reader to have the feeling of "oh, of course this happens!" or "I see why the character ends up here". I did not get that feeling once during this read. though it does make sense that a book with almost no plot and mostly vibes ends with no real epilogue and mostly vibes.
ANYHOO, nit-picking time. and, I repeat: MAYBE SOME SPOILERS.
fourth criticism: needing new glasses or having grey hair is not "decay" and doesn't make people ugly.
fifth criticism: we get it, all men are pigs, you don't have to mention it so often that they are looking at Parisa's breasts. seriously, is there no ass-guy in the Atlas-Six-Universe?
sixth criticism: the whole Oppenheimer-conflict Libby goes through is really weird. she literally nuked people. I do not feel sorry for her.
eigth criticism(?): on that note, this is just something I've noticed and I am pointing it out not because "thing bad" or "thing good". just an observation: the female/male couples get very long sex scenes and in general scenes where they are touching/being soft with each other. the queer couples do not get that. they do kiss, yes, but (especially in comparison) it's never a long paragraph.
ninth criticism: I know a lot of people read these books because of the ships/pairings. and I just wanted to tell you, if you were disappointed in them in this book, so was I. you are not alone. we are disappointed together.
tenth criticism: this is the last one, I promise. at one point in the book, a character has this thought: You have only one true choice in this life. The only thing no one else can take from you.
the character is talking about death/suicide. I just think this is in general a very dangerous sentiment and in the text, it's presented as a fundamental truth. it is not.
Want to read
January 8, 2024libby and nico need to sleep together in this im so serious rn.
(libbynico antis do not interact, idgaf)
(libbynico antis do not interact, idgaf)
Read
July 12, 2024Source of book: Bought for m'self
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
---
Welp. I'm honestly not sure where to begin.
So, there's a lot of, um, feelings in the reviews of this book and I guess whether you end up having a lot of feelings about it yourself will depend, to some degree, what you think (or have decided) this series *is.* I suspect if you're looking for coherent plotting or sound thinking as regards the philosophy of physics then you're going to be somewhat disappointed. You may also be disappointed if you were looking for a meaningful resolution to the inherent inequities of dark academia as an aesthetic and a genre. You're definitely definitely going to be disappointed if all you really want is to see two cute gayboys of your choosing hold hands under a rainbow. If, however, like me, you can come to terms with the notion that a bunch of things you *may* initially have found interesting about these books aren't necessarily what the series was ever intended to be about then there's a modicum of emotional closure here.
Is it worth the slog to get there? If you'd have asked me that question at the 40% mark of The Atlas Complex I'd have told you no. If you asked me at the 70% I'd have told you possibly. If you're asking me now, I'm telling you I just don't fucking know.
I should say before I get into it (and spoiler warning for the series and the final book in particular), I do understand why the subsequent Atlas books wouldn't, and indeed couldn't, be like The Atlas Six. A6 was a claustrophobic psycho-sexual thriller with overtones of dark academia and a murder game at its centre. It was full of little mysteries. It had endless leeway to obsessively detail the fucked up interpersonal dynamics of its major characters. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, lightning in a bottle. Literally impossible to follow. And this has nothing to do with Blake's skill as a writer. Once you've done your claustrophobic murder game, you have to expand the world, find another way to up the stakes. And that can be interesting, for sure, but it's never going to be as fascinating, as tense, and as compulsively readable as the initial setup. Again, let me reiterate, this isn't about Blake. I feel the same about The Hunger Games trilogy. The first book gripped me, the second book mildly disappointed me, the third book lost me, even though I fully recognise that what Collins was doing with the second and third books was vastly more ambitious in both scope and complexity than what was going in the original Hunger Games. Or, y'know, maybe I'm just a sick fuck who loves a (fictional) murder game.
Anyway, if we take as read--as I think we must--that neither The Atlas Paradox nor The Atlas Complex was going to be, nor were intended to be, "like" The Atlas Six, I can see that the trilogy as a whole is doing some stuff. It has some shit to say. There are themes. There is even some degree of resolution and catharsis on offer for those willing to take it. Unfortunately--as as ever, this is just my perspective--none of this comes together coherently. Partially by design, I think, given we're playing with multiverses here. But also in ways that, deliberate or not, wound up being ultimately pretty frustrating.
The second book, for example, is almost completely pointless. Or rather, it exists to motivate Libby's actions in the third book, which don't make a whole lot of sense anyway. But I increasingly feel this series could have worked as a duology and perhaps could have worker better as one. And, yes, yes I know all three books are first and foremost a set of intensely intricate character studies, and what actually happens is much less important than the impact it has on the protagonists. Unfortunately this kind of has diminishing returns over the course of two books of stalling, introspection and avoidance, and what started out as as kind of exuberant maximalism in A6 has become undisciplined and bloated by the halfway point of The Atlas Complex.
There's also bit towards the end of The Atlas Complex where Libby thinks to herself: "How ridiculous that Atlas had once sat within these walls reading The Tempest when it had been Hamlet all along!" And I nearly threw the book at the wall, I felt so fucking trolled. Because I'm honestly not the biggest fan of Hamlet, a play about an self-absorbed man who does nothing for three hours, and then murders everyone pointlessly. And this is essentially what we get in The Atlas Complex: a book about six self-absorbed people who do nothing for five hundred pages. And, no, it doesn't help that this was what I was set up for this from the beginning. And, yes, I do understand that it's a book about people, not about events. But it's not until the 50% mark of The Atlas Complex that we get any character development at all, further contributing to my sense that book 2 was little more than water treading.
I'm not saying that an Atlas duology (with the second book consisting of a compressed version of book 2 and the latter half of book 2) would be a better series. But it would certainly make me feel less like my time was being wasted.
Okay, I think that's all I can say without spoiling the book. Time to get into it.
Libby has come back from the 70s thanks to nuclear-powered time travel. This means the archives haven't received their blood sacrifice. The 6 are bodding about doing their own things: Tristram is brooding, Nico is kissing Gideon, Parisa is discovering Dalton is hideously and irredeemably broken, Reina and Callum are trying half-arsedly to influence world politics. The Forum are ... there? As for Atlas, he's MIA, though we learn this is because because Libby killed him in order to prevent him destroying the world. Everyone spends about 200 pages dancing fruitlessly around each other, naval gazing and wondering if they should do Atlas's multiverse experiment anyway. They decide to do Atlas's experiment anyway. Halfway through Atlas's experiment Libby realises this is a bad idea, bounces a graviton particle beam of the main deflector dish, and kills Nico. The Forum try to invade the Alexandrian society. Parisa and Gideon have a big psychic battle with Dalton and the Forum inside Dalton's crumbling mind palace. This is cool but pointless because Callum then shoots Dalton in the head. Tristram's dad abducts him. Callum runs to his rescue and gets shot. Tristram later takes out James Wessex (who is also the guy to whom Gideon's mum was indebted--though she's killed in, like, chapter 2, so add that subplot to the pile of pointlessness). Reina is sad she is maybe not a god and maybe ends up with Parisa. And, yeah. That's it.
Which, you know, to be fair, I think would have been okay had it not taken us the entirety of Paradox and most of Complex to meander our way there. But, also, I don't want my frustrations with the format and the approach to diminish my genuine love for these characters, even though it's a love as complicated as the love they have for each other, in that a lot of the time it feels a lot more like irritation. Parisa is wonderful in this book. Just wonderful. She gets moments to shine, moments to acknowledge her own vulnerability and--best of all--moments to grow. To be fair, most of them do, it's just that, for me, she's the character who has the most cohesive emotional arc. Like, I feel I understand all her actions, even the self-destructive ones (like shacking up with Dalton), and, for me, there was a measurable progression from the Parisa we meet in book 1 to the Parisa we part ways with in book 3. Callum, who I've always had a soft spot for, I also felt had got a fully realised and recognisable arc: the scene before his death, where he's surrendering to the general mortification of love and willing to give it all to Tristram, is gorgeously executed and is so completely Callum:
Although I will note that I felt the impact of this scene was somewhat diminished for me by the fact Gideon expresses very similar sentiments about Nico literally a few chapters later:
Of course, maybe this is deliberate parallelism--a more general statement about the humiliating banality of love's power to overthrow you as a unique and rational being--but it just felt repetitive and diminishing to me in the moment. I mean, you can't get two characters more unlike each other than Callum and Gideon--I literally don't think they have a single interaction across three books--and yet they both characterise the experience of love in almost identical terms? Or are both these sections simply sop for shippers--a forced nod towards romantic conventionality in a series that is otherwise deeply cynical. At this point, I don't even know any more.
And, oh look, I've drifted back into complaining. But please don't mistake me: to return to my original point, I deeply and sincerely adored the moments of true character development that finally unfurled in the second half of The Atlas Complex. The personal revelations. The honest-at-last conversations between Tristram and Callum, Libby and Nico, that really really fucking needed to happen. Was it enough, though, to give shape to a book that is otherwise little more than a pile of themes and ideas? Again, I just don't know.
Thematically, at least, I think you can get something reasonably coherent from The Atlas Complex (though, again, is theme enough to support an entire novel? It feels kind of like trying to build a house on metatext). As I've seen other reviewers point out, ultimately this is a series about damaged twenty-somethings given access to nearly-unlimited power and nearly-unlimited resources, and needs to be understood in that context. In fact, I would go so far as to say The Atlas Complex foregrounds this idea pretty damn explicitly--for example in this scene where Libby and Tristram are talking over wine.
The series, and the final book in particular, is asking questions about power and trauma and responsibility and choice. It doesn't necessarily care that much about the trappings of dark academia or who is kissing whom. Nor should we be expecting sensible decision-making on the part of any of these barely-more-than-children who have the capacity to alter the fabric of the universe but not necessarily the ability to change the world (oh do you see). And, y'know, by the end of The Atlas Complex each of the six have faced some kind of reckoning with their own power and their own limitations (whether that's their limitations as, essentially, magical superbeings or their limitations as humans who can be hurt just as easily as anyone else). Some of these confrontations are more successful than others (again, I mention my hero, my beloved, my queen of queens, Parisa, but poor Reina is shunted into a corner doing her own political thing for the entire book) but they're all, singularly and in totality, at least interesting.
The problem is that when you step back from the charisma of the characters themselves and you think about this as the overriding theme of a three book series it starts to feel a little shallow. I mean, you can ask me "hey, Alexis what would be the consequence of giving a bunch of damaged twenty-somethings access to unlimited power and unlimited resources" and I don't even need to write one book to answer that question for you. I can, in fact, tell you right now: "It would be a fucking disaster." And, once again, credit where due, maybe that's the point (or a point) - but I think, as much as power is given arbitrarily in the world, there tend to be some natural checks and balances applied to most twenty-somethings by sheer dint of their being twenty-somethings.
Like, I do think the books have things they want to say about the nature of power and, more significantly, the value of accepting powerlessness. Of choosing something as banal as love. Of living with grief. Of recognising that meaningful change cannot be violently enforced. Or imposed on the many by the few. I guess from a certain perspective, the Atlas series is, at heart, an incrementalist fable. But, again, is that enough to justify three books? Does it payoff what was initially set up? Is it a satisfying or a meaningful conclusion to, um, anything? Well. Maybe? I guess.
I will say, however, that while some thematic coherence and a few emotionally satisfying moments can be dug out The Atlas Complex you do kind of have to work for them. And I don't mean in that in a "ahh, the book richly rewards your labour" way. More, it is literally hard work to get through it. Because, for every moment of deft, devastating character writing like this...
...there's some, err, arrant nonsense like this:
I'm sorry, I'm not usually one to critique writing or bad science, but this is utter bobbins. It is meaningless. It is just some words. And there are a lot of words in this book that, unfortunately, end up coming across as just some words. To say nothing of some sections that are genuinely stylistically repetitive, as though (and this is pure, and purely unfair speculation, on my part) neither editor nor proofer had troubled themselves unduly with this book as it passed through their hands. On top of the excess of verbiage, there's a bunch of POVs in the Atlas Complex whose relevance and necessity I found myself constantly questioning--especially because we get barely more than a chapter of them so opportunities for either emotional investment or intellectual curiosity were minimal. I get that Blake is trying to expand the world, and increase our understanding of it, but this is book 3 of 3. I need the focus to stay on the characters I've already spent two books with. It's too late for me to give a fuck about, like, Julian? Who the fuck is Julian? (That rhetorical, he's one of the Ezra Six, but it's too damn late to get me care about the Ezra Six)
To be completely blunt, it's also too damn late to be able to get me to be able to care about Atlas and his Sinister Plan to end the world. It doesn't help that he's literally dead for this entire book--killed off page by Libby--and therefore broadly irrelevant. And yet we get multiple sections trying to ... I don't even know what. Contextualise him? Explain him? None of the above? I assume none of the above because there's another trollish-section at the dead centre of the book where we're asked a succession of self-described "book club" questions about Atlas's choices that are, in fact, a set of moral philosophy hypotheticals. Unfortunately, by the time I reached that the point my answer to each and every one was "don't care." So that was either very effective or the opposite of very effective, depending on what you think that section was for, and what you think the book--and the series--are doing as a whole.
I won't lie, there's something fairly relatable to me about Atlas's Sinister Plot. I mean, who hasn't occasionally wanted to access a multiverse in which you personally have never existed. I think that's why therapy exists. But it's also why I didn't need multiple chapters exploring what might lead to someone feeling that way - you can get everything you need to know about Atlas from the nature of the Sinister Plan itself. "I want to erase myself on the quantum level" is depression. It's, err, not that deep. (Though, again, maybe's that's the point. Although if so much of what I'm struggling with is, indeed, the point, could there not have been a way to convey the point less ... annoyingly ... laboriously? ... somethingly?)
(Omg, this review is too long for GR - continued in comments. HELP).
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
---
Welp. I'm honestly not sure where to begin.
So, there's a lot of, um, feelings in the reviews of this book and I guess whether you end up having a lot of feelings about it yourself will depend, to some degree, what you think (or have decided) this series *is.* I suspect if you're looking for coherent plotting or sound thinking as regards the philosophy of physics then you're going to be somewhat disappointed. You may also be disappointed if you were looking for a meaningful resolution to the inherent inequities of dark academia as an aesthetic and a genre. You're definitely definitely going to be disappointed if all you really want is to see two cute gayboys of your choosing hold hands under a rainbow. If, however, like me, you can come to terms with the notion that a bunch of things you *may* initially have found interesting about these books aren't necessarily what the series was ever intended to be about then there's a modicum of emotional closure here.
Is it worth the slog to get there? If you'd have asked me that question at the 40% mark of The Atlas Complex I'd have told you no. If you asked me at the 70% I'd have told you possibly. If you're asking me now, I'm telling you I just don't fucking know.
I should say before I get into it (and spoiler warning for the series and the final book in particular), I do understand why the subsequent Atlas books wouldn't, and indeed couldn't, be like The Atlas Six. A6 was a claustrophobic psycho-sexual thriller with overtones of dark academia and a murder game at its centre. It was full of little mysteries. It had endless leeway to obsessively detail the fucked up interpersonal dynamics of its major characters. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, lightning in a bottle. Literally impossible to follow. And this has nothing to do with Blake's skill as a writer. Once you've done your claustrophobic murder game, you have to expand the world, find another way to up the stakes. And that can be interesting, for sure, but it's never going to be as fascinating, as tense, and as compulsively readable as the initial setup. Again, let me reiterate, this isn't about Blake. I feel the same about The Hunger Games trilogy. The first book gripped me, the second book mildly disappointed me, the third book lost me, even though I fully recognise that what Collins was doing with the second and third books was vastly more ambitious in both scope and complexity than what was going in the original Hunger Games. Or, y'know, maybe I'm just a sick fuck who loves a (fictional) murder game.
Anyway, if we take as read--as I think we must--that neither The Atlas Paradox nor The Atlas Complex was going to be, nor were intended to be, "like" The Atlas Six, I can see that the trilogy as a whole is doing some stuff. It has some shit to say. There are themes. There is even some degree of resolution and catharsis on offer for those willing to take it. Unfortunately--as as ever, this is just my perspective--none of this comes together coherently. Partially by design, I think, given we're playing with multiverses here. But also in ways that, deliberate or not, wound up being ultimately pretty frustrating.
The second book, for example, is almost completely pointless. Or rather, it exists to motivate Libby's actions in the third book, which don't make a whole lot of sense anyway. But I increasingly feel this series could have worked as a duology and perhaps could have worker better as one. And, yes, yes I know all three books are first and foremost a set of intensely intricate character studies, and what actually happens is much less important than the impact it has on the protagonists. Unfortunately this kind of has diminishing returns over the course of two books of stalling, introspection and avoidance, and what started out as as kind of exuberant maximalism in A6 has become undisciplined and bloated by the halfway point of The Atlas Complex.
There's also bit towards the end of The Atlas Complex where Libby thinks to herself: "How ridiculous that Atlas had once sat within these walls reading The Tempest when it had been Hamlet all along!" And I nearly threw the book at the wall, I felt so fucking trolled. Because I'm honestly not the biggest fan of Hamlet, a play about an self-absorbed man who does nothing for three hours, and then murders everyone pointlessly. And this is essentially what we get in The Atlas Complex: a book about six self-absorbed people who do nothing for five hundred pages. And, no, it doesn't help that this was what I was set up for this from the beginning. And, yes, I do understand that it's a book about people, not about events. But it's not until the 50% mark of The Atlas Complex that we get any character development at all, further contributing to my sense that book 2 was little more than water treading.
I'm not saying that an Atlas duology (with the second book consisting of a compressed version of book 2 and the latter half of book 2) would be a better series. But it would certainly make me feel less like my time was being wasted.
Okay, I think that's all I can say without spoiling the book. Time to get into it.
Libby has come back from the 70s thanks to nuclear-powered time travel. This means the archives haven't received their blood sacrifice. The 6 are bodding about doing their own things: Tristram is brooding, Nico is kissing Gideon, Parisa is discovering Dalton is hideously and irredeemably broken, Reina and Callum are trying half-arsedly to influence world politics. The Forum are ... there? As for Atlas, he's MIA, though we learn this is because because Libby killed him in order to prevent him destroying the world. Everyone spends about 200 pages dancing fruitlessly around each other, naval gazing and wondering if they should do Atlas's multiverse experiment anyway. They decide to do Atlas's experiment anyway. Halfway through Atlas's experiment Libby realises this is a bad idea, bounces a graviton particle beam of the main deflector dish, and kills Nico. The Forum try to invade the Alexandrian society. Parisa and Gideon have a big psychic battle with Dalton and the Forum inside Dalton's crumbling mind palace. This is cool but pointless because Callum then shoots Dalton in the head. Tristram's dad abducts him. Callum runs to his rescue and gets shot. Tristram later takes out James Wessex (who is also the guy to whom Gideon's mum was indebted--though she's killed in, like, chapter 2, so add that subplot to the pile of pointlessness). Reina is sad she is maybe not a god and maybe ends up with Parisa. And, yeah. That's it.
Which, you know, to be fair, I think would have been okay had it not taken us the entirety of Paradox and most of Complex to meander our way there. But, also, I don't want my frustrations with the format and the approach to diminish my genuine love for these characters, even though it's a love as complicated as the love they have for each other, in that a lot of the time it feels a lot more like irritation. Parisa is wonderful in this book. Just wonderful. She gets moments to shine, moments to acknowledge her own vulnerability and--best of all--moments to grow. To be fair, most of them do, it's just that, for me, she's the character who has the most cohesive emotional arc. Like, I feel I understand all her actions, even the self-destructive ones (like shacking up with Dalton), and, for me, there was a measurable progression from the Parisa we meet in book 1 to the Parisa we part ways with in book 3. Callum, who I've always had a soft spot for, I also felt had got a fully realised and recognisable arc: the scene before his death, where he's surrendering to the general mortification of love and willing to give it all to Tristram, is gorgeously executed and is so completely Callum:
He wouldn’t kill Tristan with a knife, he’d kill him with such cherishing. He’d offer to take Tristan to the movies, he’d feed him grapes, he’d brush his hair. He’d make a meal for him, the kind his mother had always insisted on when she was in a good mood, food that was meant to be eaten with leisure. He’d peel an orange for Tristan, share the slices of a clementine, drizzle him with honey. It would be embarrassing and he wouldn’t die of humiliation. He would simply live with the providence of it—the sacred proffering of shame.
Although I will note that I felt the impact of this scene was somewhat diminished for me by the fact Gideon expresses very similar sentiments about Nico literally a few chapters later:
Nico’s brow arched with prompting and Gideon, wretched and helpless—Gideon, little motherfuck that he was, a true idiot prince—wanted nothing more than to sink to his knees and kiss Nico’s feet. He wanted to buy Nico’s groceries, to write Nico poetry, to sing Nico the songs of his people in terrible Spanish and passable French. He wanted midnights in Brooklyn, golden hour in a galley kitchen, coffee with cream.
Of course, maybe this is deliberate parallelism--a more general statement about the humiliating banality of love's power to overthrow you as a unique and rational being--but it just felt repetitive and diminishing to me in the moment. I mean, you can't get two characters more unlike each other than Callum and Gideon--I literally don't think they have a single interaction across three books--and yet they both characterise the experience of love in almost identical terms? Or are both these sections simply sop for shippers--a forced nod towards romantic conventionality in a series that is otherwise deeply cynical. At this point, I don't even know any more.
And, oh look, I've drifted back into complaining. But please don't mistake me: to return to my original point, I deeply and sincerely adored the moments of true character development that finally unfurled in the second half of The Atlas Complex. The personal revelations. The honest-at-last conversations between Tristram and Callum, Libby and Nico, that really really fucking needed to happen. Was it enough, though, to give shape to a book that is otherwise little more than a pile of themes and ideas? Again, I just don't know.
Thematically, at least, I think you can get something reasonably coherent from The Atlas Complex (though, again, is theme enough to support an entire novel? It feels kind of like trying to build a house on metatext). As I've seen other reviewers point out, ultimately this is a series about damaged twenty-somethings given access to nearly-unlimited power and nearly-unlimited resources, and needs to be understood in that context. In fact, I would go so far as to say The Atlas Complex foregrounds this idea pretty damn explicitly--for example in this scene where Libby and Tristram are talking over wine.
“I feel like [said Tristram] we’re in a pretentious film about tortured geniuses.”
“Yes.”
“But actually we’re just babies with expensive glassware.”
The series, and the final book in particular, is asking questions about power and trauma and responsibility and choice. It doesn't necessarily care that much about the trappings of dark academia or who is kissing whom. Nor should we be expecting sensible decision-making on the part of any of these barely-more-than-children who have the capacity to alter the fabric of the universe but not necessarily the ability to change the world (oh do you see). And, y'know, by the end of The Atlas Complex each of the six have faced some kind of reckoning with their own power and their own limitations (whether that's their limitations as, essentially, magical superbeings or their limitations as humans who can be hurt just as easily as anyone else). Some of these confrontations are more successful than others (again, I mention my hero, my beloved, my queen of queens, Parisa, but poor Reina is shunted into a corner doing her own political thing for the entire book) but they're all, singularly and in totality, at least interesting.
The problem is that when you step back from the charisma of the characters themselves and you think about this as the overriding theme of a three book series it starts to feel a little shallow. I mean, you can ask me "hey, Alexis what would be the consequence of giving a bunch of damaged twenty-somethings access to unlimited power and unlimited resources" and I don't even need to write one book to answer that question for you. I can, in fact, tell you right now: "It would be a fucking disaster." And, once again, credit where due, maybe that's the point (or a point) - but I think, as much as power is given arbitrarily in the world, there tend to be some natural checks and balances applied to most twenty-somethings by sheer dint of their being twenty-somethings.
Like, I do think the books have things they want to say about the nature of power and, more significantly, the value of accepting powerlessness. Of choosing something as banal as love. Of living with grief. Of recognising that meaningful change cannot be violently enforced. Or imposed on the many by the few. I guess from a certain perspective, the Atlas series is, at heart, an incrementalist fable. But, again, is that enough to justify three books? Does it payoff what was initially set up? Is it a satisfying or a meaningful conclusion to, um, anything? Well. Maybe? I guess.
I will say, however, that while some thematic coherence and a few emotionally satisfying moments can be dug out The Atlas Complex you do kind of have to work for them. And I don't mean in that in a "ahh, the book richly rewards your labour" way. More, it is literally hard work to get through it. Because, for every moment of deft, devastating character writing like this...
This was it ... the only meaning Parisa had left in life. It wasn’t a secret society, it wasn’t an ancient library, it wasn’t an experiment that had taken two decades to design, it was waking up every fucking morning and deciding to keep going. The tiny, unceremonious, incomparable miracle of making it through another goddamn day. The knowledge that life was mean and it was exacting. It was cruel and it was cursed; it was recalcitrant and precious. It was always ending. But it did not have to be earned.
...there's some, err, arrant nonsense like this:
The question is not whether the world can end. There’s no question that it can, that it does every day, in a multitude of highly individualized ways ranging from ordinary to biblical. The question is also not whether one man is capable of ending the world but whether it is this man, and whether such destruction is as inevitable as it may seem. What is the problem? The constancy of fate. The liquidity of prophecy. The problem is Einstein’s theory of relativity. The problem is closed-loop time travel. The problem is Atlas Blakely. The problem is Ezra Fowler. The problem is the invariability of the particular strand of the multiverse in which Ezra and Atlas meet.
I'm sorry, I'm not usually one to critique writing or bad science, but this is utter bobbins. It is meaningless. It is just some words. And there are a lot of words in this book that, unfortunately, end up coming across as just some words. To say nothing of some sections that are genuinely stylistically repetitive, as though (and this is pure, and purely unfair speculation, on my part) neither editor nor proofer had troubled themselves unduly with this book as it passed through their hands. On top of the excess of verbiage, there's a bunch of POVs in the Atlas Complex whose relevance and necessity I found myself constantly questioning--especially because we get barely more than a chapter of them so opportunities for either emotional investment or intellectual curiosity were minimal. I get that Blake is trying to expand the world, and increase our understanding of it, but this is book 3 of 3. I need the focus to stay on the characters I've already spent two books with. It's too late for me to give a fuck about, like, Julian? Who the fuck is Julian? (That rhetorical, he's one of the Ezra Six, but it's too damn late to get me care about the Ezra Six)
To be completely blunt, it's also too damn late to be able to get me to be able to care about Atlas and his Sinister Plan to end the world. It doesn't help that he's literally dead for this entire book--killed off page by Libby--and therefore broadly irrelevant. And yet we get multiple sections trying to ... I don't even know what. Contextualise him? Explain him? None of the above? I assume none of the above because there's another trollish-section at the dead centre of the book where we're asked a succession of self-described "book club" questions about Atlas's choices that are, in fact, a set of moral philosophy hypotheticals. Unfortunately, by the time I reached that the point my answer to each and every one was "don't care." So that was either very effective or the opposite of very effective, depending on what you think that section was for, and what you think the book--and the series--are doing as a whole.
I won't lie, there's something fairly relatable to me about Atlas's Sinister Plot. I mean, who hasn't occasionally wanted to access a multiverse in which you personally have never existed. I think that's why therapy exists. But it's also why I didn't need multiple chapters exploring what might lead to someone feeling that way - you can get everything you need to know about Atlas from the nature of the Sinister Plan itself. "I want to erase myself on the quantum level" is depression. It's, err, not that deep. (Though, again, maybe's that's the point. Although if so much of what I'm struggling with is, indeed, the point, could there not have been a way to convey the point less ... annoyingly ... laboriously? ... somethingly?)
(Omg, this review is too long for GR - continued in comments. HELP).
January 9, 2024
SCREAMING INTO THE VOID/WORMHOLE/MULTIVERSE !!!!!!!
What an absolutely decadent finale to the Atlas Series. This was everything I hoped for and more, truly just written for me and me alone idk what to tell you. I literally could not put this down and stayed up all night to finish it!!
WARNING !! WHOLE BOOK SPOILERS !!
my thoughts/impressions as I was reading
-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈
✶ NICOGIDEON SUPREMACY THANK YOUUUUUUU
✶ Libby villain arc tysm >>>>>>>
✶ Reina sulking for a year because she won’t admit she cares for Nico was perfect, so was her realising she loves Parisa (about time)
✶ The conversation between Libby and Nico about in most of the worlds but not this one was perfect. PERCECT!!!! Because our Nico would’ve never chosen anyone but Gideon
✶ I’m so fucking happy that I got both LibbyTristan and TristanCallum, I am simply the chosen one idk!!!!
✶ I low-key expected either Parisa or Callum to kill themselves and I guess I was sort of right on both counts
✶ “Should someone have killed Atlas as a baby?” I SCREAMED
✶ ”Didn’t you know he’s the house purveyor of qualify wines and sarcastic comments” once again I am Tristan and he is me
✶ I’ve BEEN TELLING everyone who will listen to me that Libby would kill Nico !!!!
✶ And having Gideon be there??? Omfg that is the kind of cruelness I enjoy
✶ Real ones knew it was Nico straight away because Gideon would’ve never cried out to save himself
What an absolutely decadent finale to the Atlas Series. This was everything I hoped for and more, truly just written for me and me alone idk what to tell you. I literally could not put this down and stayed up all night to finish it!!
WARNING !! WHOLE BOOK SPOILERS !!
my thoughts/impressions as I was reading
-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈
✶ NICOGIDEON SUPREMACY THANK YOUUUUUUU
✶ Libby villain arc tysm >>>>>>>
✶ Reina sulking for a year because she won’t admit she cares for Nico was perfect, so was her realising she loves Parisa (about time)
✶ The conversation between Libby and Nico about in most of the worlds but not this one was perfect. PERCECT!!!! Because our Nico would’ve never chosen anyone but Gideon
✶ I’m so fucking happy that I got both LibbyTristan and TristanCallum, I am simply the chosen one idk!!!!
✶ I low-key expected either Parisa or Callum to kill themselves and I guess I was sort of right on both counts
✶ “Should someone have killed Atlas as a baby?” I SCREAMED
✶ ”Didn’t you know he’s the house purveyor of qualify wines and sarcastic comments” once again I am Tristan and he is me
✶ I’ve BEEN TELLING everyone who will listen to me that Libby would kill Nico !!!!
✶ And having Gideon be there??? Omfg that is the kind of cruelness I enjoy
✶ Real ones knew it was Nico straight away because Gideon would’ve never cried out to save himself
Want to read
November 20, 2022GUYS OLIVIE SAID IF U SHIP ONLY TWO CHARACTERS W/EACH OTHER, UR DOING IT WRONG #polycouple I WIN 🙈(i should’ve done this as an update originally but i got too excited)
i really want them all to be a poly couple and no one is agreeing with me😩
i really want them all to be a poly couple and no one is agreeing with me😩
June 7, 2024
This was as horrible as I expected.
Full RTC.
Well, well, well we have a cover now. I don't have high expectations for this. All I want is for Libby to turn evil along with Nico. Can't we have that much?
Full RTC.
Well, well, well we have a cover now. I don't have high expectations for this. All I want is for Libby to turn evil along with Nico. Can't we have that much?
January 15, 2024
I both…have thoughts and don’t. This was essentially the same book we’ve read before, same points being made, and I can’t say my attention was held this time. I love Olivie’s writing and there were the moments of me thinking “omg I’m loving this now”, but ultimately it felt a bit lacklustre after my adoration for the first book. Will still read everything she writes as I’ve loved everything else, but the series curse strikes again for me :/
Want to read
October 31, 2022i don’t need to read a romance book for the rest of my life as long as i have nicolibby
Read
January 11, 2024Let me sit with this for a second...
January 10, 2024
A few headaches later and now here we finally are. If I could give this book less than one star, I would. The Atlas Complex has got to be one of the worst finales for a trilogy. *Spoiler-free* review because I want to save your time.
For context, I consider myself to be a huge Olivie Blake fan. I remember being on Twitter back in February 2021, when the Nicolibby edit made its rounds and everyone was trying to find out what book they were from. As soon as people did find out the title, I bought a paperback copy, because (forgive me) an illegal epub version wasn’t even available at the time. Man, I would have even read this woman’s grocery list.
Now all I feel is disappointment.
To put it bluntly, reading The Atlas Complex felt like Scrat, the squirrel from Ice Age, trying to get ahold of the acorn all the time without ever reaching it. Because every time I thought it was going *some*where it just went nowhere.
The Atlas Six had such a promising premise, and it all went to shit in this book. Really nothing of importance happens for the MAJORITY of this book and when stuff does happen then it was just so dumb and weird. Wasted potential of the entire series, wasted potential of the characters, who could have done so much more, who could have been iconic and be the embodiment of destruction, of moral grayness because who does not love some nice anti-heroes? Instead they sit around and whine about philosophical nonsense and ponder the same questions over and over again. Useless for most of the story. I am so damn fed up with where this went and simply… ended?
After reading about 70% I had this inkling that it would simply not get better and that it would keep disappointing me, lo and behold, I stopped having expectations. And yet, even with crushed expectations, I was still entirely disappointed for the entirety of this book. I am not kidding when I say this felt like a waste of time, of potential, of ink on paper.
Whatever Olivie Blake tried to do here failed miserably. Sometimes it’s okay to admit defeat. “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land between the stars”, well unfortunately Olivie Blake landed in a black hole with this. If you have to explain yourself in your acknowledgments then maybe reconsider the way you wrote the story itself. It just made me laugh bitterly and write this bitter review. Save your time and nerves. I will ignore the existence of this book to make myself feel better.
For context, I consider myself to be a huge Olivie Blake fan. I remember being on Twitter back in February 2021, when the Nicolibby edit made its rounds and everyone was trying to find out what book they were from. As soon as people did find out the title, I bought a paperback copy, because (forgive me) an illegal epub version wasn’t even available at the time. Man, I would have even read this woman’s grocery list.
Now all I feel is disappointment.
To put it bluntly, reading The Atlas Complex felt like Scrat, the squirrel from Ice Age, trying to get ahold of the acorn all the time without ever reaching it. Because every time I thought it was going *some*where it just went nowhere.
The Atlas Six had such a promising premise, and it all went to shit in this book. Really nothing of importance happens for the MAJORITY of this book and when stuff does happen then it was just so dumb and weird. Wasted potential of the entire series, wasted potential of the characters, who could have done so much more, who could have been iconic and be the embodiment of destruction, of moral grayness because who does not love some nice anti-heroes? Instead they sit around and whine about philosophical nonsense and ponder the same questions over and over again. Useless for most of the story. I am so damn fed up with where this went and simply… ended?
After reading about 70% I had this inkling that it would simply not get better and that it would keep disappointing me, lo and behold, I stopped having expectations. And yet, even with crushed expectations, I was still entirely disappointed for the entirety of this book. I am not kidding when I say this felt like a waste of time, of potential, of ink on paper.
Whatever Olivie Blake tried to do here failed miserably. Sometimes it’s okay to admit defeat. “Shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land between the stars”, well unfortunately Olivie Blake landed in a black hole with this. If you have to explain yourself in your acknowledgments then maybe reconsider the way you wrote the story itself. It just made me laugh bitterly and write this bitter review. Save your time and nerves. I will ignore the existence of this book to make myself feel better.
Want to read
November 2, 2022I’m going to be fuuuuming if I don’t see Rhodes show Callum that she’s more than insignificant in this book
Also Nico and Gideon have my heart, and if anything happens to them I will be a sobbing mess
Also Nico and Gideon have my heart, and if anything happens to them I will be a sobbing mess
January 21, 2024
nicogideon are truly the only saving grace of this series and OH MY GOD libby should have died instead of prince nico. she shouldn't have been born like idgaf at this point. i can't believe the author's unfulfilled dramione fantasies led to libby having a "corruption arc" (girl be serious) which killed arguably the only character who has been consistently brilliant throughout the trilogy. nico you are loved and will be remembered... and gideon you have my full support to send that cheap ass hermione rip off back to 1990
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 19, 2024
olivie’s books fill some existential hole in my ‘majored in philosophy in university for some reason’ heart and i will never have the words for the profound effect her writing has had on me ♡
January 11, 2024
2.5☆
thank god (or reina mori, or olivie blake) for that pathetic blond man and the brit he's obsessed with. everything else can burn.
thank god (or reina mori, or olivie blake) for that pathetic blond man and the brit he's obsessed with. everything else can burn.
Read
January 31, 2024after reading the atlas complex :
i need to medically indoctrinate myself into psychiatric hospital…
-
-
before reading the atlas complex :
begging for an novacaine endgame knowing it will never happen
i need to medically indoctrinate myself into psychiatric hospital…
-
-
before reading the atlas complex :
begging for an novacaine endgame knowing it will never happen
Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,551 reviews