The Atlas Complex

The Atlas Book 3

I loved the first two books in this series. I had read some other reviews of those books that were critical of Blake’s prose, but it generally felt apt for the story, for the characters. This one, right away, the prose seemed to go immediately up its own ass fast—not just whimsical and flowery, but disjointed and alienating. I pushed through because I wanted to know how this all resolved. The prose settled a little, for a while. But the book never really found its feet before it lost them again. The result of the experiment was both anticlimactic and perplexing. Maybe the writing style obscured the intent—not even just the intent, but the actual events that took place—but it seemed like that was the climax of the trilogy and in the end I don’t even really know what happened or why.

And then it all fizzled out.

From the perspective of “I like these characters and want to see them succeed,” there’s a number of obvious disappointments, but characters failing can absolutely be a compelling narrative. Here, though, it all just felt like a whole bunch of …nothing? No happy endings, but plenty of people working against their own interest, with little to no character growth and a completely avoidable tragic outcome on multiple fronts.

I was really disappointed with this book, both as a piece of writing and as the resolution to a series I had really enjoyed.

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