2022/30: The Atlas Six -- Olivie Blake

Here at the library, their lives would change. Here their former selves would be destroyed, like the library itself, only to be built back up again and hidden in the shadows, never to be seen except by the Caretakers, by the Alexandrians, and by the ghost of lives uncrossed and paths untaken. [loc. 61]

Six candidates, the best young medeians (magic-users) in the world, are invited to join the Alexandrian Society and gain access to a vast trove of arcane knowledge. The Library, which has achieved a kind of sentience of its own, contains not only volumes from the ancient Library of Alexandria, but materials from other collections throughout history. Atlas Blakely, Caretaker, has personally selected the six: Libby and Nico, who loathe one another, can both manipulate the physical world; Reina has an affinity with plants; Parisa is a telepath, who also uses sex to get what she wants; Tristan can see through illusions; and Callum is a very particular sort of empath.

There is, of course, a catch. Each decade, six people are chosen for initiation, but only five will proceed to their second year of study. Who's going to be disqualified this time around?

I was reminded of The Magicians (not least because several of the characters are, at least initially, unlikeable), of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and of Ninth House. The Atlas Six is as much, if not more, about the interactions between the characters as it is about the magic that they perform. The magic is intriguing, but the sharp edges and soft places of the six initiates -- not to mention their friends and associates -- make for an intense, often claustrophobic black comedy. Allegiances and affections (definitely not the same thing here) shift and fray, magic isn't the only strength, and not everything on the page is what it seems.

I found this an immensely engaging read. There are flaws (the occasional clunky phrase, the lack of foreshadowing regarding a particular plot twist) and it is claustrophobic, with a tight focus on the protagonists that's seldom, and fleetingly, broken by scenes outside the house. I would have liked more about the wider world, and how a small but significant population of magic users have affected it. I also felt that some of the characters were much more developed than others, but that might be a 'volume 1 of X' issue. For yes, there is another volume coming, The Atlas Paradox, in which the twisty cliffhanger will be either resolved or multiplied, and in which I hope to see more of some vastly intriguing secondary characters, such as Max. Happily, this is due quite soon (autumn 2022): The Atlas Six, though only just picked up by a major publisher (and also optioned for TV), has been available since 2020 as a self-published work.