The Atlas Paradox

[alaterdate]

The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake is the second book in the The Atlas series. You can check out my full review of book one here: The Atlas Six. I didn't think the first book was the best, but I had to read this one because there was something entertaining about The Atlas Six that I never quite put my finger on. I also thought this series was gonna be a duology, unfortunately not....

Oh my god, I thought this was a duology I'm fucking SICK.
— Me

In this book we follow the five candidates who passed the trial to join the Alexandrian Society as they start their second year in the house and are tasked with writing a thesis. Riveting. They have to balance their growing paranoia, the mind games they play with each other and that the school plays with them all while secretly working toward uncovering just what happened to Libby Rhodes.
Through the process of reading this book I came to believe that "Dark Academia" is a kind of power fantasy. Being special because you're good at school and knowledge being a tangible sort of power over society. Then not only having these qualities, but being able to explore them deeply, in isolation, without worrying about money, food, or lodging. When Libby finds herself out on the street with nothing, but the clothes on her back where does she go? The closest university where she is able to get off of the streets and made comfortable because she has knowledge the university wants. The supernatural elements in this series highlights the core of the trend rather than just regurgitating the aesthetics, which is let's face it 99% of it's raison d'etre.

I know I gave the first novel a hard time, but I generally dislike first books that are all character work, the plot in this was slightly set up in the first one (wormhole, Ezra V. Atlas, was there anything else? lol) but the plot in this book is about saving Libby and it’s barely touched on then the TOPIC of this book (which I assume is setup for the 3rd book) feels like it came out of nowhere. And it kind of feels like a spoiler to mention it for that reason, but it's becoming gods.
However, there really is something so enjoyable about reading these. I remember mentioning that Blake should have watched a couple season of The Challenge to get a feel for “high” stakes collaboration and competition with rotating factions so it’s equally amusing that when I was trying to describe what reading these books felt like I described it as “watching The Real World”. There’s not really stakes or factions, people do become better friends with one person over another despite hanging out with everyone eventually, but that’s it. You just watch a group of people hanging out and sometimes there’s drama, but it’s just petty drama. There’s no relationships or heaps of money to be lost in the pursuit of the heaps of money. I’ve seen some wild shit happen in The Challenge, people HATE their former friends because of betrayal. The betrayal in this book that happened for the sake of joining the Alexandrian Society was literally the attempted murder from the plot of book one and it doesn’t amount to much, there’s barely even extra strain between the two involved characters and no one bats a single solitary eyelash. But damn if I didn’t want to keep reading about these people milling about. At the same time I admit I almost set this one down because I was getting too busy to read it in my allotted two weeks, but I pushed through at pace and finished it right before the due HOUR. (I really didn’t want to go to the end of the multiple digit queue for it when I was the second person to get my library’s copy, hehe.) It was fun while reading it, but suffers from fridge logic the second you put it down.

There was a plot this time, it just wasn’t explored for 99% of the book. Libby’s chapters were the most focused on the plot of getting her back to the present time and even then she spent a lot of time just hanging out. The rest of the book would once in a while mention Libby, but for the majority of it nobody else did anything about it either. Gideon’s chapter also touched on plots and he did the most useful action in the book and I think he only had like two chapters lol. Reina was absolutely insufferable and her chapters added nothing to the story except that I got to read a little bit more about Callum. Parisa had one or two good scenes with Dalton, the rest of her chapters even including her conversations with Atlas were negligible. Tristan and Nico spent most of the time doing the same one thing over and over again until finally they decide to try to work on the Libby thing. At least they realized who was the reason for her disappearance even if they never interacted with them besides one innocuous conversation. It’s so weird that the book is so long and yet they stay in the same place of progress in the plot for the entire time. Character gets a new power —> the plot is not even touched by that new power. And then an all new villain gets thrown in the mix at the 90% mark :^\ I don’t know if I want to read the next volume, I thought there were only going to be two books. I’m kind of intrigued because it seems like Callum will have even more of a part, but it’s not a priority, I’m not excited at the thought of reading any more about these characters.

I guess I have to chalk this one down as a guilty pleasure, even though I still don't think it's that great. I wanted to write a small fic for it though, but I got bored and gave up lol. It's just so vexxing because there is something about Blake's writing that I like, but I can't figure out what it is. Maybe just the potential I sense from her plots and characters that unfortunately don't go anywhere. I'd definitely like to see her write something else. I'll have to wait and see what she does after she concludes this series. I haven't heard about her getting any new deals though.