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Knowledge Is Carnage: Announcing a New Edition of Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six

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Published on September 28, 2021

Photo courtesy of Olivie Blake
Photo courtesy of Olivie Blake

Tor Books is proud to announce the acquisition of Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six, along with two more books in the planned trilogy, by Molly McGhee via Amelia Appel of Triada US Literary Agency. The UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired by Bella Pagan, Publishing Director of Pan Macmillan’s Tor imprint.

Blake self-published this thrilling tale of magicians vying to join a secret society in early 2020, and it went on to receive an explosive reception online, becoming a top seller at online retailers.


Molly McGhee explains her excitement about the acquisition, saying:

“When I first came across The Atlas Six, I declined three parties to stay at home devouring the novel. Not since Donna Tartt’s The Secret History have I come across a book so totally engrossing, so completely heart-wrenchingly devoted to asking: at what cost does knowledge come. Plus—there’s magic. A dark, physical magic based on the physics of the universe and the powers of the mind. I’m not the only one who stopped everything they were doing to inhale the heady fumes of Olivie Blake’s lost society of Alexandria. Her devastatingly complicated (incredibly hot) characters broke me and the tens of thousands of readers who have already helped The Atlas Six to go viral. If you love either dark, academic novels (The Magicians, Ninth House, A Lesson in Vengeance), V.E. Schwab’s Darker Shades of Magic, or morally ambiguous stories with infinitely shippable characters—trust me. You’ll love The Atlas Six, too.”

Olivie Blake comments:

The Atlas Six is a book about knowledge, power, and the lengths people will go to have both. In this setting of dark academia, magic, and secret societies, moral ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. Beyond matters of good and evil are the story’s subtler gradations: ambition, betrayal, and the fractures we accept in order to become something more. It’s a book that has taken on a life of its own since I first conceived of it, and I am beyond excited to be working with Molly McGhee and Tor to bring this trilogy and its dynamic cast of characters to both new and existing readers.”

The ebook of The Atlas Six is now available to purchase from Tor Books. A newly revised and edited version with new illustration material will be available in ebook and hardcover formats on March 1, 2022. Pre-order it here!

The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation.

Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Most of them.

Buy the Book

The Atlas Six

The Atlas Six

Cover art & design by Jamie Stafford-Hill

Olivie Blake, the pseudonym of Alexene Farol Follmuth, is a lover and writer of stories. She has penned several indie SFF projects, including the webtoon Clara and the Devil with illustrator Little Chmura and the BookTok-viral Atlas series. As Alexene, her young adult rom-com My Mechanical Romance releases May 2022. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, new baby, and rescue pit bull. Find her at olivieblake.com.

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