The Atlas Six

When describing magic, the narrator often evokes physical senses like sights, smells, and sounds. Parisa, for instance, experiences lust as “a color, but fear [as] a sensation: Clammy hands or a cold sweat were obvious markers, but more often it was some sort of multisensory incongruity. Like seeing sun and smelling smoke, or feeling silk and tasting bile” (62). Callum also compares the emotions he draws out of people to savoring flavors:

He was doubtful that Tristan would be capable of understanding that, but the sensation of being liked was extraordinarily dull. It was the closest thing to vanilla that Callum could think of, though nothing was truly comparable. Being feared was a bit like anise, like absinthe. A strange and arousing flavor. Being admired was golden, maple-sweet. Being despised was a woodsy, sulfuric aroma, smoke in his nostrils; something to choke on, when done properly. Being envied was tart, a citrusy tang, like green apple. Being desired was Callum’s favorite. That was smoky, too, in a sense, but more sultry, cloaked and perfumed in precisely what it was. It smelled like tangled bedsheets. It tasted like the flicker of a candle flame. It felt like a sigh, a quiet one; concessionary and pleading. He could always feel it on his skin, sharp as a blade. Piercing, like the groan of a lover in his ear (131-32).

Conversely, Tristan, who can see through magic, cannot relate his own experience to any known senses:

Sometimes he could identify something from [looking with his magic]—a mood, which took the form of a color, like an aurora, which was still somehow none of those things, because of course he hadn’t honed the sense required to name it. He wasn’t hearing or smelling reality, and he certainly wasn’t tasting it. It was more like he was dismantling it layer by layer, observing it as a model instead (160).

The parallel between an abstract, fictional concept like magic and sensory experiences enables the reader to better grasp the characters’ experience of magic while adding a poetic dimension to those passages. This imagistic language emphasizes the nuance of the different characters’ specialties, hinting for example at their motivations (e.g., Callum being bored by the dullness of being liked but stimulated by the smokiness of desire) or at their struggles (e.g., Tristan being unable to fully grasp the nature of his power).