strange and random happenstance: The Atlas Complex

The Atlas Complex by Olivie Blake
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: January 9th, 2024
Format: Hardcover, 496 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

If someone offered you all the power would you say yes? That doesn't make you a villain. It doesn't make you a hero. It makes you human. But power has to be taken from someone. And both Atlas and Ezra took that power with both hands and created a foundation of futility built on despair that was destined to rot. Atlas watched as his cohort suffered. As his cohort died. Somewhere, out there, he and Ezra chose a different path. But Altas needed the six to bring about this change. He needed them to destroy the world. He had to have Libby and Nico, Reina, Parisa and Tristan. He even needed Dalton. But not Callum. Callum was the sacrifice that should have been. They should have never trusted Atlas. Now that Libby is back they have an additional problem. Their agreement with the library is unfulfilled. Just like when Atlas and Ezra tried to trick the library, tried to deny it it's pound of flesh, the six now owe the library a death. The promise unfulfilled has led the library to be draining them. They aren't living up to their potential because they didn't read the terms of service carefully enough. If only they had realized that they were making a deal with three separate entities, the Society, the archives, and Atlas. Therefore they have some choices before them, keep working for the library, or beat Atlas at his own game, win the multiverse arms race, and perhaps acknowledge that they have a god complex. That last one is specifically for Reina. The plan wasn't to destroy the world, but to make a new one. The idea isn't necessarily a good one, but it is one nonetheless. Gideon is the one to confront Nico that Nico's world is falling apart. Altas is missing, Dalton is lying, and their obsession is compromising them. They don't realize that they are trapped in their very own multiverse trolley problem. They can't see the forest for the trees. They want to prove that they can do it so they will, damn the consequences. And that's why Atlas chose them. Their lack of morals. Nico though always thought that in the darkest of times he could rely on Libby's moral compass. But she has been corrupted. He doesn't know what happened when she return from the past. What went down in Atlas's office. Something happened there that changed everything. Perhaps she is now like the archives, soulless. But how many times can you burn the world down and still walk away unscathed? And what if their goal isn't to succeed but just survive? Their burden is the burden of survival.

I was being generous when I said this series should have been a duology. There wasn't enough material for two books let alone three. This should have been one book. Nothing more. Possibly less. The Atlas Complex was one of the most excruciating reads of my life because it adds nothing, it does nothing, it is nothing. Hundreds of pages of nothing can break you. And what's worse, I think it's trying to be clever. It's trying to hide the reveal that Atlas and Ezra were murdered by Libby when she returned to the present and therefore the six just keep up this pretense that everything is normal when nothing is. That means it's just more of the same. More of them doing nothing. More of them accomplishing nothing. Because you know that big, destroy the world experiment that Atlas had hand-selected them for? Well, they decide to do it and then they just stop. At the cost of Nico. So THE THING this whole series was building to, well, it doesn't happen so we never find out what would have happened. But that's not the only loose end. For a story that could have been one and done we have a trilogy of the unanswered and the unexplained. We aren't even privy to who lives and who dies. We've been following these six characters for so long and we aren't given the common courtesy of some kind of ending. I mean, could I at least have found out about the archives and it's sentience? Nope. That wasn't in the cards. Olivie Blake obviously wanted this to be about the six characters and their excruciating relationships which meant what minimal plot there was didn't matter in the end. Either you loved these deplorables or you deplored the book. I deplored the book. And speaking of deplorables... Trump. So, at the end of The Atlas Complex Olivie Blake explains that this entire series was written as a way for her to process the trauma of Trump's presidency. I'm not sure if her process involved passing that trauma onto me, but she sure did. The "themes" in this book are how people want ignorance, people want hate. They will knowingly turn away from the truth if it's not what they want to hear. Which is exactly how we've ended up in this situation for a second term. Oh dear god, I hope that doesn't mean we're going to get more books in this series for her continued therapy. I'm a completest but I just can't. I seriously can't. I don't want to be her therapy! Because now I need more therapy. First to deal with my anxieties and second to deal with my PTSD from this series. And I don't want to be facetious, but I think just being able to finish this series gives me hope that we can get through anything. Even this second term.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Alexandrian Society, Atlas Blakely, Callum Nova, Donald Trump, Ezra Fowler, God Complex, Libby Rhodes, Nico de Varona, Olivie Blake, Parisa Kamali, PTSD, Reina Mori, The Atlas Complex, The Atlas Six, Therapy, Trilogy, Tristan Caine

The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: October 25th, 2022
Format: Kindle, 397 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

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.