The Atlas Six - Olivie Blake

Immediate impression, page 1: it feels like there was an attempt at a sort of highbrow eloquence, but really the prose is wordy for no reason and difficult to follow at times. The sentences are clunky. For example:

It was an old trick, really, death and disappearance so to start again, which depended entirely on the library’s ability to keep its own secret.

I don’t understand what the stylistic goal was supposed to be, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the mark has been missed. I’m barely on page 2 and I’m already being ripped out of the story by these clunky-ass sentences.

A few paragraphs further and I’m now discovering an annoying pessimism. This introduction to Dalton Ellery is seriously ass. If the writing here is any indication of the character’s personality, he has the negative aura of an incel. Maybe that’s intentional, but it being coupled with sentences that feel like riding down a pothole-ridden dirt road makes me afraid the writer won’t handle him properly. As a reader, I’m not interested in risking my mental peace with a character who might eventually piss me off or make me uncomfortable in a bad way.

So now we’ve got unsuspecting initiates standing in front of a man who is apparently too awesome for them to comprehend with their mundane little minds. He is dripping with prestige, and they will be too, but first everything mundane about them has to die and they have to be lonely and secretive FROM NOW ON. Being ordinary isn’t neutral, it’s YUCKY GARBAGE. Or so Dalton Ellery seems to think.

I don’t know how long I can stand to read this writing. These are some rusted out 1995 Toyota Corolla-ass sentences.

Greatness isn’t easy, Dalton didn’t say, nor did he add that greatness was never offered to anyone who couldn’t stand to bear it.

What?

Read a bit further and genuinely can’t stand the writing. That, and every character is a self-centered pessimist. The only character who sparked any interest at all was Nico. I hoped his characterization was the product of Libby’s unreliable narration rather than being fact, but I’ll never know because I’m not gonna last til the end of this book.

If the writing of this book were a character, it would be Atlas Blakely. His manner of speaking is a typical American interpretation of how British people speak: a nonsensical soup of posh-sounding words delivered in a way that tries and fails to sound important. Just like the rest of this novel. And Atlas Blakely himself seems for all the world to just be a stack of tired old British stereotypes. If I gave more of a fuck, I might wonder who he is, but at this juncture I just find him annoying. He makes no fucking sense.

Got to the bit where Tristan and his friend Rupert are introduced and found I just didn’t have enough give-a-fuck to retain all of his backstory details. I can’t take it anymore. Moving to DNF.