The Atlas Six Review – Overhyped

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake – Review by @Arcana_Reads

DNF’d at 72%

I don’t get the hype. I really don’t. I picked this book because I noticed it in Goodreads listopia feature. Went to Amazon to buy it and it was listed as “The Atlas Six: TikTok made me buy it!” ..and frankly that should’ve been the first red flag.

I’m in India and TikTok is banned here so the social media platform definitely didn’t make me buy it. Nothing against TikTok or Booktok (hey I’m on bookstagram, BUT if you need to put it as the title on your Amazon page, it’s just weird.)

Atlas Six starts great. It’s building on a reliable premise – a magical story concentrated in study/libraries. The hook is there. Hell, even the characters’ powers are intriguing.

Where it went south for me was the way the story flowed. It was boring. I feel the author was aiming for angst-filled, sexually-devious, morally ambiguous-yet-powerful people but, for me, it came across as whiny, immature, dense, frustrating and just plain insensible folks trying to cover more stupidity with threesomes.

I usually liked books with grey characters – but this one didn’t feel grey as much as people aspiring to walk the line between good and bad but mostly coming across as utterly boring.

Also, there wasn’t anything dark about the academia. Ugh.

I thought I would rant quite a bit because this is one of the rare instances in which I have not joined the ranks of admirers of highly-rated books (I’m a sheep, guys and probably why I dragged it to 72% instead of quitting at 40%) – but it was Sunday and I was tired.

Rating: 2/5

This book review is by @arcana_reads (Click to follow on Instagram)