Book Review - Olivie Blake's The Atlas Paradox
The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: October 25th, 2022
Format: Kindle, 397 Pages
Rating: ★★
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Knowledge is carnage, you can't have it without sacrifice. They were meant to kill one of their own. So obviously it was going to be Callum. He's too dangerous and too annoying. The problem is, the sacrifice had to actually mean something, which meant that Tristan was to do the deed. And he just couldn't. Callum really meant something to him. Which didn't fit in with Atlas Blakely's plans. Callum was chosen from the very beginning to die. He was the sacrifice. But instead Libby died. So the library got it's pound of flesh and the six became five. Though they're all having trouble trusting each other what with the fallout from the murder plot. Old alliances were destroyed and new alliances were forged. And Atlas's plans imploded all because of Libby's ex Ezra Fowler. Ezra, unbeknownst to Libby, can travel in time and is technically a lot older than her. He was one of the six candidates chosen the year Atlas was an initiate. They were the best of friends and to this day he is Atlas's confidant. They thought the same and shared the same goals, to take down the society from within and replace it with an organization that would allow access to all. To let the knowledge be widely distributed not hoarded away. Once they learned that one of their number would have to die the two of them formulated their plan. They would fake Ezra's death and he would jump forward in time while Atlas worked from the inside. Only without a sacrifice there were unintended consequences. Everyone in their year died. Except Atlas and Ezra. Ezra was safely in the future and Atlas pleased the library by becoming it's caretaker and therefore it let him live. The flaw in their plan soon became obvious. Atlas grew over the intervening years and changed what he wished to do. Whereas Ezra was still the Ezra that was first approached by the Alexandrian Society. When Ezra realizes that Atlas no longer cares about access and wants to undo the past, something Ezra knows is impossible, he fakes Libby's death and secrets her away in 1989. He does not want the Society to destroy the world, which is very much something that could happen if Atlas gets his way. But Ezra doesn't count on Libby's tenacity and her friends' obsession with finding her. Nico would know in his bones if she were dead, they are two halves of a whole. He never fell for her "death" and has been determined to find her. And, eventually, they do. She's been busy in the past. The only problem is to bring her home would come at the loss of many lives. Can Libby live with herself if she does what she needs to do? Can the world survive if they reunite and listen to Atlas? And will the library claim it's pound of flesh now that they are all still alive in the present?
So, after reading the first volume I kind of thought that there is no way this series is going to turn out to be as divisive as I kept hearing. I will fully admit I was wrong. The decline in quality between The Atlas Six and The Atlas Paradox is almost incomprehensible. What had some structure now is nothing more than fanfics colliding at the speed of light, here's some Outlander, here's some Dark Materials, here's some Dark Phoenix. Oh, and just for fun, here's some pretentious preaching reminiscent of the worst parts of Sophie's World. And yet, it might have worked. Maybe. Possibly. I'm trying to not trash fanfic or fanfic adjacent here because if you're a good writer you can make that work. You just have to have the right characters and the right plot and not you know almost four pages of nothing. Here's the thing. I truly believe this in my heart of hearts and it's my personal headcanon. When Tor was negotiating the rights to publish this series it was originally written as a duology. But Tor went, hey Olivie Blake, we're only buying trilogies at the moment and she promptly said, I can do that! And what followed is four hundred pages where nothing happens. OK, that's a little unfair. There's angst and philosophy and moral dilemmas but that's just the air of ennui this series exudes. For actual plot points Libby gets back to the present. Oh and Ezra tries to kill the remaining five of the six, but that's so half-hearted that I don't know why I'm mentioning it. So the entire plot is get Libby back to the present. That could have been handled into a single chapter. Maybe, possibly two. In other words, it could have happened at the end of The Atlas Six or, if you wanted to maintain the cliffhanger, at the beginning of The Atlas Complex. The Atlas Paradox does not need to exist. Wait, is that the paradox of the book? No. It couldn't be. That would be too clever and I won't give the author that much credit. Though lovers of this book, the two of you out there, will say that we needed this book so we could have Libby Rhodes's corruption arc. She had to go all evil villain. AKA Dark Phoenix. And, I'm sorry. But no. It was stupid. She chose herself and her potential over countless lives. She could have stayed in the past, but it was her potential in the future, at that point in time with those people that was more important than the lives lost. She blew up a nuclear power plant to get home. She's a bitchier Oppenheimer, destroyer of worlds. And ironically she's going into the future to destroy worlds as well with Altas's plan. But then again, this book is all about people choosing ignorance over knowledge and the six are the most ignorant of all.
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