Each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation to the Alexandrian Society…
We’re thrilled to share audio clips and excerpts from Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six—the newly revised and edited edition publishes March 1st with Tor Books and Macmillan Audio. Today we’re introducing Nico, voiced by in James Patrick Cronin the audiobook, and Tristan, voiced by David Monteith. Check back all this week for additional content!
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.
Nico was fidgeting. He was very often fidgeting. Being the sort of person who required motion, he was frequently unable to sit still. People usually didn’t mind it, because he was perfectly likely to smile, to laugh, to fill up a room with the buoyancy of his personality, but the fidgeting cost him quite a bit of energy, resulting in a somewhat pointless caloric burn. Traces of magic were known to spill, too, if he wasn’t paying attention, and his presence already had a tendency to reshape the landscape around him without his noticing, sometimes forcing things out of the way.
Libby shot him a warning look as the ground beneath them rumbled. Beneath those horrid fussy bangs, her mutable slate eyes were reproachful and too alert.
“What’s going on with you?” she muttered to him after they were released, referring with spectacular lack of subtlety to what she probably considered an irresponsible disruption. Their recruitment meeting adjourned, they’d been directed through the marble corridors of the building where Atlas Blakely’s transportation spell had deposited them.
***
“No,” Tristan said when the door opened. “Not again. Not now.”
“Mate,” groaned Rupesh, “you’ve been in here for ages.”
“Yes,” Tristan agreed. “Doing my job. Incredible, isn’t it?”
“Hardly,” Rupesh muttered, falling into the vacant chair across from Tristan’s desk. “You’re the future son and heir, Tris. Hardly makes sense for you to work so hard when you’ll inherit it by default.”
“First of all, this company isn’t the monarchy,” Tristan muttered.
Excerpted from The Atlas Six, © copyright 2202 by Olivie Blake
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The Atlas Six
