The Atlas Paradox

“They were all slightly different without Libby Rhodes. Without them realizing it, she had established herself as the “but” in their collective conscience, their measure of morality. But what if this happens, but what if something goes wrong, but what if someone is hurt. The effects of her displacement from their anatomy as a group seemed imperceptibly compounding, like an infection that went undiagnosed.”

Reina recognizes that although the six initiates were only together for a year and in that time hadn’t developed strong connections, they’d formed some kind of group. Within that group, Libby played an important role: Her nervous approach to everything forced them to stop and consider consequences, putting her in the position of being the group’s conscience. The irony of this is that Libby’s transformation throughout the novel places her, in the end, in direct opposition to that role, suspending her own conscience in order to fully assume her power.

“Parisa knew something had existed between Tristan and Libby long before she interfered with them. They had shared something that couldn’t be undone—something that had followed them around, joining them even in their absences from each other. History did that to people. Proximity. Love in some cases, hatred in others. The specific kind of intimacy that meant that every enemy was once a friend.”

Although this is a novel about magic, it also concerns itself deeply with the characters’ relationships. In part, this is because several of the characters, most notably Parisa and Callum, influence and manipulate others. Parisa’s interest in psychology stems from her telepathic ability, and she continually shows insight into these relationships. In the previous book, Parisa engineered a sexual encounter between Tristan and Libby, which is the cause, in this second book, for Tristan’s intense interest in Libby’s return and his guilt about not preventing her abduction.

“If the five initiates were now revealing themselves to be simply patterns of habit, a series of trackable behaviors observable by each of the others, then perhaps that was the purpose, the true game. Maybe it was not about whether they could be defeated by one another, but how well they could be predicted. But by whom, and for what?”

Parisa has spent much of her time working to understand the archives themselves, and comes to believe that they are, on some level, sentient. She has also come to understand that the ceremonies and rituals surrounding the Society are actually a way for someone who’s observing them to understand and therefore use them. These two beliefs converge with the possibility that the archives themselves are studying the initiates and learning about them through these rituals.

“Reina’s interest in pursuing the creation myths came from some fundamental suspicion that if life was not random, then humans, whatever else they were, were excellent note-takers. The universe predated humanity, true, but when had life come to mean what it did? Someone must have witnessed what it meant for the world as they knew it to begin, and if such a thing had any sort of design, Reina needed exceptional hindsight to find it.”

Reina’s interest in the Society, from the beginning, has been to access the library and hide herself from the world by burying herself in research. Her research delves into the beginnings of life in the universe—and quickly becomes focused on her ability to create life. As a result, Reina reconnects in a new way with her power, accepting it and the responsibility it carries. This new understanding of her power eventually leads her to conclude that she, and others like her, are the next generation of gods, connecting to the theme of A New Generation of Gods.

“Tristan did not see what others called reality, but he did see something more useful. His definition of reality meant identifying the structures of time and space, but his experience of the world was consistently obstructing his ability to access it. Only in the moments where he felt his consciousness at risk of fracture or expiration was he able to dissociate from it, opening some other eye to a higher, truer truth.”

Tristan’s character arc focuses on his journey to understanding his own powers. To do so, he first has to learn how to access them—which, as he points out here, is possible only when he believes his life is in danger. This realization results in his plan with Nico, but it also forces him to remember that when he was a child, trying to avoid his father’s abuse, some of the first manifestations of his power emerged, although at the time he didn’t understand what it was.

“‘We can’t help clinging to our origins,’ Callum said. ‘The past always seems more ordered, Rhodes. It always seems clearer, more straightforward, easier to understand. We have a craving for it, that sense of simplicity, but only an idiot would ever chase the past, because our perception of it is false—it was never that the world was simple. Just that in retrospect it could be known, and therefore understood.’”

While Libby is trapped in 1989, she often hears the voices of the other initiates, but she hears Callum’s most frequently. Here, in response to her thought that she’s not herself right now, Callum considers that perhaps she has outgrown that past self, which may not have been as ideal as she now believes. His comments emphasize Libby’s journey in the book as she leaves the old, anxious Libby behind and evolves into her new self. She thinks these voices come from her own imagination, but it later becomes clear that Callum is somehow communicating with her—and he’s following her journey much more closely than anyone knows.

“‘It’s time for new gods,’ Reina replied simply. ‘We’ve progressed to another new generation, one where humans are no longer at the whims of the elements, but the shapers of them, the determiners.’ A pause. ‘Which is why I think the archives won’t give me the books. Because the library thinks I’m looking for instructions.’”

Reina’s studies have shifted from creation myths to the study of the gods, but the library increasingly denies her requests. Here, she suggests a theory as to why, which leads her to convince Callum—seemingly the least reliable or trustworthy of the initiates—to influence the archive and get the texts. This is all part of Reina’s journey to accept her power, which leads her to believe that she, and the other initiates, have in effect become supreme beings, supporting the theme of A New Generation of Gods.

“Because if Tristan could control the motion of things down to their quanta—down to the fundamental particles of their energy—then he was more than a physicist. He was not limited by the physical world or bound by the properties of force. He could also alter the chemical. He could travel through time. He could identify the materials of the universe, and if he could find them, he could move them. Create them. He could reverse entropy, master chaos. In fact, there would be no such thing as chaos anymore—no randomness, no spontaneity. It was no longer a world made up of things, but of events, systems, paths of a larger design that the rest of them, ignorant as they were, mistook for something human. A will. Fate. A plan. The universe through Tristan’s eyes would be orderly—and that, more than anything, was the closest thing Nico could imagine to omnipotence. It was as close to divine as anything could possibly be.”

Nico has always been the best at what he does as a physicist, but here he recognizes that Tristan’s powers go far beyond his own. The larger implication of Tristan’s power is that it would be all-encompassing, and Tristan would be in complete control. His reference to the divine in the final sentence is an awareness that Tristan could be one of A New Generation of Gods, a theme that manifests in several different characters’ storylines.

“If Parisa’s class of initiates could each be predicted by something that did not technically qualify as alive, then wouldn’t that affirm, in some way, the concept of a collective conscience, a predestined fate? Either that or it would simply prove the Society’s unlawful surveillance, which would be predictable as far as sinister plans went, but still worth knowing. Whatever the outcome, Parisa felt an answer worth divining before she left the confines of this house and never looked back.”

Parisa has concluded that it isn’t Atlas who’s observing them through the Society’s rituals—it’s the library itself, which she believes is sentient. Here, she considers the larger implications of this idea—that the library’s sentience doesn’t mean that it’s alive, per se, which points to the idea everything is working according to a grand plan. In other words, their actions are fated. Despite Parisa’s public contention that there’s no meaning in the universe, her own studies seek to find something, like fate, to indicate that there is something more.

“She could have said: For the last time, I do not think I am holy. I am not divine. What I am is the kind of powerful that could rewrite cultures, restructure societies. This is what it means to be a god: to enforce a new era of change. Not to create empires, but to shape a new generation. […] The old gods are dead, no one believes in them, so what is left now but a broken, faithless world? Give me seven days and I’ll make light, I’ll make the heavens and the earth. Not literally, because I’m not insane. But I have power and talent and it was given to me for a reason. Because if I can make life, then I am obligated in some way to do so.”

Reina has spent most of her life hiding from her power—and hating it, fearing the ways that others could use her for evil purposes. This statement represents not only a true acceptance of her power but also an understanding of what she refers to as the obligation to use it. Reina is further along her character’s arc, or journey to fully accepting her own power, and has become unafraid of it, which eventually leads her to conclude that she has become a supreme being of sorts, supporting the theme of A New Generation of Gods.

“‘Mr. Ellery,’ Parisa replied with mocking emphasis, ‘does not consider the Forum to be a valid threat, so that’s as much as I’ve gathered.’ ‘Ah, well.’ A shrug. […] ‘Physically they may not be threatening,’ Atlas explained, ‘but ideologically, they are the reminder that to every coin there are two sides.’”

Parisa and Atlas are both telepaths, and as such, they have insights that the others don’t. As the novel continues, he offers her more insight into the inner workings of his job as Caretaker, and the nature of the Society, as a way to convince her to join him in his work. With his statement of the Forum being simply the other side of the Society, Atlas lets Parisa in, treating her more as a peer than a student, but he also addresses the theme of Finding Balance.

“I have a theory, he wanted to say to her. A theory that we can open doors to the other worlds, that we can make them. That we can open crevices in time and space. I think that I was given these gifts as a tool, that I was taught to wonder for a reason. I befriended a dreamer so that I, with all of my power, could dream for myself.”

Parisa has come to Nico, who finally admits to Gideon his motivation for joining the Society. However, as he admits to her here, his focus shifted as he became more interested in understanding his own power. In this way, Nico’s character arc parallels that of the other initiates, all of whom are coming to a different understanding of their powers and their purposes in the world. Here, he explains that he now understands that his relationship with Gideon, and his actions on Gideon’s behalf, have been about understanding himself and breaking free of others’ expectations.

“Belen slid a wary glance to Libby that made Libby suddenly aware of her position in the room. Specifically, her position of complicity. […] She was, after all, exclusively seen in the company of the faculty that she had expected to be furthest along in the relevant medeian research […] Belen had turned loftily away, not quite respectfully enough for Mort’s taste, and was already out the door by the time Libby finally realized she had cast her lot with the wrong crowd.”

As a Filipino woman in the sciences in 1989, Belen has no power or authority to stand up to white male scientists in their privileged positions of power. Libby has been working with these men, trying to solve her problem, but she hasn’t been paying attention to the power dynamic and structures inherent in academia at this time. With this scene, Blake highlights Libby’s own privilege as a white woman through her ability to circumvent the power structure and her dawning realization of its existence. However, Libby continues to use her privilege to take advantage of Belen’s intellect and friendship to succeed, knowing that she’s depriving the other woman of the chance to develop her own career.

“Things were stable in Libby’s world. Thanks to a joint effort by medeians and lobbyists, most large corporations now contributed to efforts at decarbonization that Belen’s specialty had once been necessary to perform. But the preventative measures? Most natural disasters were still regarded as isolated crises, not the result of global systemic decline. The American medical system was still for-profit. The Wessex Corporation was still the primary distributor of medeian technology in the world. Magic had definitely fixed things in Libby’s lifetime, but it still wasn’t free, nor was it free from politics.”

As Belen begins to trust Libby, she shows her passion for using magical research and powers to right the wrongs of the world. Libby’s reflections here show that despite all the advances that have been made, the world hasn’t changed because people haven’t changed; they’re still avoiding the truth and commodifying the solutions. In this example, Blake again uses Belen’s character to highlight the system’s inequities and how they persist despite technological advances that could end them.

“Because he needed to show Atlas the kind of influence he commanded, the sorts of friends he had. Specifically, the kind in high places. Because Atlas, who was supposed to have changed things with Ezra, had chosen instead to become part of this thing they both hated, and now Ezra needed him to know that doing so was not impressive, it wasn’t innovative, it was barely even powerful. It was uninspired and predictable and stale. It was…disappointing.”

Ezra has come to the Society’s gala with an idea of showing Atlas up, proving that his interest in opposing Atlas is about more than Atlas’s plan—it’s an emotional reaction to personal betrayal. Even in this moment, as he claims to be disappointed by both Atlas and the Society, his rejection is so emphatic that it indicates exactly the opposite. Ezra’s actions throughout the novel, which he claims are a matter of principle, are in fact about his relationship with Atlas and his persistent feeling of not finding a sense of belonging, highlighting the theme of Outsiders Looking for Belonging.

“‘The only principle I know to be true is that of balance,’ Atlas supplied for him. ‘Matter and antimatter. Order and chaos. Luck and unluck. Life and death.’ Atlas was outstretched in his chair, his long limbs expelling forward as he raised his arms over his head. ‘This cannot be the only world.’”

Atlas is concerned, as many of the other Society members are, with the theme of Finding Balance. However, he applies this theory in a different way than anyone else has; he believes that it must indicate that another world exists that balances our world. This theory is the basis of his plan to discover another world, which expands to include a multiverse theory, and is the reason he’s interested in keeping Tristan working with him at the library, in order to take advantage of his immense power.

“You think this world is anything but a series of accidents? That’s all anything is. There’s no design, just…probability. Genetics are just a roll of the dice. Every outcome, every supposed gift or curse, it’s all just one possible statistic.”

Although Parisa has spent most of her time studying the sentience of the archives, looking for patterns that determine some kind of fate or predetermination, here she seems to refute that theory. Instead, she falls back on her old attitudes about life—established when she first arrived at the Society—that everything is meaningless. Throughout the novel, Parisa struggles to develop her new understanding of the world as a product of fate.

“It was as if the house had taken ownership of the impurities of his soul, like it had with Nico’s physical state. It was wringing all of them out, draining them of everything they hadn’t willingly given. Libby Rhodes was gone, a cheap trick, and now they were being punished for it.”

Reina and Callum are arguing—she sees that Callum has been slowly slipping into inactivity, while he believes that she’s becoming delusional. Like the others, Reina has slowly realized that the house drains them of their powers, and she thinks that is why Callum seems so exhausted. Although it’s true that the library is using their powers, Callum’s condition is exacerbated by his covertly working to bring Libby back, both by calculating the power needs and by appearing in her dreams.

“Dalton had removed the shadow of himself that had made the archives wary, but there was more to hunger than badness. There was also boyhood wonder, the innate desire to grow. Contained in Dalton’s hunger was the blueprint of his journey, the adaptation to his fate. The paths he would invariably take in order to become something more.”

Parisa reflects on Dalton’s decision to imprison part of his psyche so that he could pursue his research—like Reina, he had trouble requesting books from the archive, and this is his solution. However, she has gotten to know the Prince, that imprisoned part of himself, and understands that in the process, Dalton has lost other aspects of his personality as well. This realization connects to the theme of Finding Balance, as Parisa sees how the Prince is necessary to balance out other aspects of Dalton’s character.

“For a moment Libby was struck as if by lightning, by an ephemeral familiarity, the sudden presence of a prior version of herself. The drag and thump of her pulse, suspended and then resurrected. The man in the circle frowned, brow furrowed in thought or in expectation, and then their eyes met. Locked.”

Libby has made her way to Callanish Circle, as has Tristan. When she sees him, before she even recognizes him, she feels a remnant of her old self. This shows how much Libby has already changed—although she still hasn’t completed her journey, she’s far enough along that her old self seems like a different person.

“‘I’m not clear on the details,’ Callum admitted with a shrug, ‘but I know that something that Atlas did caused the other four to die. Not all at once. Not in some freak accident or anything. But by the time the next class of initiates was recruited to the Society, they had each met an untimely end.’”

While everyone else was pursuing their own studies and further discovery of their own powers, Callum requested dossiers from the archives and has been learning about everyone else. Here, he uncharacteristically shares his inner thoughts with Reina and reveals new information about Atlas that informs the perception of his actions and agenda going forward.

“This was the thing, the crux of it all, that Libby had the power, she had the formulas, the calculations—she had the goddamn means—and so what would it mean for her to live her life now, to decide to be small, to be powerless on purpose? What was she supposed to do, locked inside her mind, her mind that held all the answers, her life that had been stolen from her, that she—and only she—had the means to get back?”

Libby is moving further along her transformation journey—she now understands the extent of her abilities and is beginning to grow into the power to use them. She has realized, as have others like Reina, that she has a responsibility to use her powers. This is complicated by the fact that, as a woman, she’s often put in the position of making herself appear to be less, and her decision not to be “small” pushes back against her position as a woman—and the historical pressure on women to not display their full power.

“She had once fallen in love with a professor who was not a professor, who represented power and femininity and the promise of taking the things she deserved, who turned out to be just another white girl who thought that whatever obscure thing she was born to accomplish was worth more than Belen’s entire future.”

Throughout Libby’s journey, the narrative reveals the action—and her relationship with Belen—from Belen’s perspective. Belen’s character emphasizes the injustices perpetrated on her for racial and gender reasons. In addition, however, Belen’s perspective highlights the way that Libby exploits Belen in order to further herself without any apparent understanding of (or care for) the effect on Belen, illustrating Libby’s privilege and limited awareness as a white woman.