I Am an Olivie Blake Fan

Sometimes you come across an author that just clicks. And apparently, that happened to me with Olivie Blake. I found The Atlas Six by accident and loved its dark humor, stark prose, and sharp characters. No one was exactly lovable, they all had so many flaws, but that was what made them (and the story) more fun. Soon after, I finished Alone With You in the Ether on audiobook. And recently I have finished The Atlas Paradox and am now reading Masters of Death.

In all her books, the characters are not cute and cuddly. They all have spikes and are not exactly shiny and happy. But the books all explore deeper questions than you initially expect them to. The Atlas books (of which there is another coming) are about trust, creating universes, and choice vs. free will. They explore belief vs. knowledge, guilt, and expectations. In Alone With You in the Ether, we get a story about two very broken people figuring out who they are and just what they want in someone else. Or if they can even be with someone else. And how much do they actually want to make progress on themselves?

With Masters of Death, while I am still early in it, I can already see that it is going to explore good vs. bad, and how one is judged in the end by what they do with their lives in the present. Can we balance our ledger enough to change where we end up in the end? And who makes those decisions for us?

I love that at the end of every book, I have more questions than answers, and yet am perfectly satisfied with where things have ended up. Olivie Blake makes me think, makes me question, and takes me along for a story that I didn’t know I needed to read.