Mostly Fluent

Here are some musings on a book that I’ve just finished reading. The book is The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. It was a strange read, in that I both enjoyed it, and didn’t enjoy it. Let me try to explain.

The book is about a secretive, powerful, magical society called the Alexandrian Society. The book follows a group of six impressive magicians who are trying to be initiated into the Society. This premise sounded good to me, so I picked it up. As an academic, I’m a sucker for novels about learning and quasi scholastic endeavors. Thus, I was intrigued by the year long crash course that the six were to go through. With that said, the novel only partially focused on what they were learning. What the novel really focused on was the interactions between the six as you would probably expect. Thus, the novel is mostly a psychological analysis of the want-to-be initiates.

It took a while for my interest to develop because I thought the beginning of the novel was slow. With six main characters, Blake spends time focusing on what each of the six think about the initiation offer. As events unfolded, we felt compelled to view them through each of the six’s perspectives. At many times, I just wanted the action to pick up. With that said, there were some interesting events in the novel. For example, one of the characters goes into the mind of another character and I found that fascinating.

My interest really kicked in during the last 100 or so pages of the 373 page novel. Mystery and intrigue began to replace the psychoanalysis and that’s what I found to be the most entertaining.

Now, this book is the first in a trilogy. As I was reading, I asked myself if I would want to continue with the next in the series. For quite a while, my answer was no. But Blake finally roped me in that last quarter of the novel, so I think I will continue on… eventually.

Thus, the overall experience of reading the book was fun, but it took some time to get to that point. There were some things I didn’t like. For one, Blake seems to mention the character’s mouths often. Whether it’s a thin smile, or a crooked smile, or their lips raising, or what have you. It felt like she mentioned it a lot. But that’s a really picky complaint. Like I said, overall I enjoyed the novel.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the novel if you’ve read it. And if you’ve read the whole series, should I continue reading? Let me know!