The Atlas Six

Olive Blake

MacMillan

Otago Daily Times, May 25th 2022

Every decade, a handful of the world’s most powerful magicians are invited to join the Alexandrian Society, gatekeepers of history’s most powerful arcane texts. Six are selected, but one must be sacrificed before the group’s induction to maintain the magical balance. This year’s intake includes a rival pair of ‘physicists’ who can manipulate matter, a power channeler, and a young man who can see through illusions and down to the sub-atomic level. The intake is rounded out by a telepath who combines her power with seduction to great effect, and an empath adept at turning people’s emotional pain against themselves. We get to know all six as the first-person narrative moves between them, and the deserving victim/villain is soon apparent. But the very fact that the divisions are so clear hints at a broader agenda to be played out in forthcoming instalments.

By combining the freedom and camaraderie of the boarding-school tale with dreams of exceptionalism, stories of magical academies become wish-fulfilment fantasies that appeal to the child in all of us. As such, The Atlas Six is right on target and will join Ninth House, The Magicians and A Deadly Education on my ‘guilty pleasures’ shelves.