Characters / The Atlas Series

Main Characters

In General

Tropes that apply to the six as a unit.

• Everyone Is Bi: More or less. As of the first book, the majority of the six seem to be bi. This sets the stage for a Love Dodecahedron. The series is remarked upon by fans for how everyone can be readily shipped with everyone else.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: 3 women—Libby, Parisa, Reina—and 3 men—Nico, Tristan, Callum.
• Multinational Team: The team is assembled by picking the world's top six medeians of the past decade, who are scattered all around the globe. Libby is American. Nico is Cuban. Parisa is Iranian. Tristan is English. Reina is Japanese. Callum is South African.

Libby Rhodes

Elizabeth "Libby" Rhodes

• Affectionate Nickname: She calls Nico "idiot prince" which he reappropriates for Gideon. Though she likely does not conciously think of the nickname as an affectionate one, that Nico uses it for one of the people he cares most deeply for demonstrates it's certainly not a standard insult.
• Apologizes a Lot: Parisa and Nico both tell her at different points in the story to stop apologizing for existing.
• Birds of a Feather: With Nico. They're both once in a generation incredibly gifted physical medeians and are also extremely competitive and prone to Snark-to-Snark Combat with one another. It's noted by everyone around them too— they are frequently regarded as a pair by nearly every character.
  In Reina's mind, they were binary stars, trapped in each other's gravitational field and easily diminished without the other's opposing force.
• Character Tics: Fiddles with her hair when she's nervous, which Nico teases her about.
• Last-Name Basis: It's just Nico at the start of the novel, but the rest of the six largely end up referring to her by her last name as well.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Libby is the last to learn that to complete initiation, five of the six must kill the last. Tristan, who knows earlier on, keeps it from her while asking hypotheticals framed as merely philosophical trolley problems, which adds to her anger when she finally finds out when Nico tells her shortly after learning himself.
• Naive Every Girl: Constantly lampshaded by the others, except, perhaps, Nico, though how much actual merit there is to the assessment is debatable.
• Nice Girl: Easily the kindest and most well-intentioned of the Six.
• Playing with Fire: Physicists can handle any physical force, but Libby's specialty is fire (as she discovered when Nico pissed her off so much she accidentally ignited both him and the nearby curtains).
• The Rival: Libby and Nico have been in constant competition for the entirety of their university careers and both accept the Alexandrian Society invitation because they can't let the other do something without them doing it to.
• Will They or Won't They?: It's heavily suggested right off the bat that Nico and Libby are attracted to one another, but as of the first book they have not acted on their feelings.

Nico de Varona

Nicolás "Nico" Ferrer de Varona

• Affectionate Nickname: Libby refers to Nico as "idiot prince" so often that he reappropriates for Gideon. Though Libby likely does not consciously think of the nickname as an affectionate one, that Nico uses it for one of the people he cares most deeply for demonstrates it's certainly not a standard insult.
• Bilingual Bonus: Nico speaks Spanish and some French with his flatmates.
• Birds of a Feather: With Libby. They're both once in a generation incredibly gifted physical medeians and are also extremely competitive and prone to Snark-to-Snark Combat with one another. It's noted by everyone around them too— they are frequently regarded as a pair by nearly every character.
  In Reina's mind, they were binary stars, trapped in each other's gravitational field and easily diminished without the other's opposing force.
• The Charmer: Much to Libby's chagrin, he's confident, witty, and frequently steals her thunder at university. When they're students at NYUMA, he's the Big Man on Campus.
  Nico de Varona was every teacher's favorite; when it came to their peers, everyone wanted to be him or date him, or at the very least befriend him. In some highly distant, extremely generous sense, Libby could see how that was understandable. Nico was enormously likable, unfairly so, and no matter how clever or talented Libby was, students and faculty alike preferred Nico to her. Whatever gift it was he had, it was like Midas; the effortless turning of nonsense to gold, more a reflex than a skill, and Libby, a gifted academic, had never been able to learn it. Nico's brand of easy charm had no metric for study, no identifiable markers of finesse.
• Oblivious to Love: Seems to be, at least lampshaded by Libby about a friend he apparently slept with during their university days, who never picked up on her feelings for him neither before or after. May also apply in terms of being oblivious to his own feelings— Parisa notes he seems to be unaware of how obsessed he is with Libby and Callum notes that it seems as though he might be in love with Gideon, but oblivious to his own feelings.
• Pretty Boy: Well noted by the others, especially Parisa.
• The Rival: Libby and Nico have been in constant competition for the entirety of their university careers and both accept the Alexandrian Society invitation because they can't let the other do something without them doing it to.
• Undying Loyalty: Nico proves to be this for those he cares deeply for, specifically Gideon and Libby.

Parisa Kamali

Parisa Kamali

• Everyone Has Standards: She's perfectly fine with using her powers for material gain, but Callum's Psychic-Assisted Suicide trick horrifies her.
• Fallen Princess: When Callum mindrapes Parisa, it's revealed that she was once the beloved "princess" of her family, but was unhappy and ultimately had sex with and married a man to get out, leading to her in their view shaming them.
• Femme Fatale: Uses her telepathy and sex appeal to get whatever she wants from people.
• More than Mind Control: Parisa doesn't actually use her magic to force people to do things—she reads people's minds to find out what they want and what they're vulnerable to, and then manipulates them into choosing to do her bidding.
• Really Gets Around: Acknowledged by pretty much everybody and without shame by Parisa.

Tristan Caine

Tristan Caine

• Abusive Parents: His father has always been emotionally abusive to him because Tristan's magic isn't obviously useful in some way.
• Gold Digger: A sympathetic male version. He starts the book fully prepared to marry a woman he barely even likes, who he's fully aware is cheating on him, because he believes it's the only way to have a stable future away from his father.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Tristan has never fully tapped the potential of his True Sight, instead training in illusions and believing himself to be "useless" due to his father's constant insults. But once the others help him investigate the full potential of his power, he finds that, among other things, being able to see the truth of things means he can do stuff like stop time because he can see the reality of how it works.

Reina Mori

Reina Mori

• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She has dark hair and she's reserved and just wants to be left alone with her books.
• Blessed with Suck: Even though her immensely strong naturalist powers could net her a plum job with any major agricultural company, Reina hates having them, because it's less "being able to control plants" and more "plants are always trying to drain her energy for themselves". She compares them to needy children who won't give her a second's peace.
• Green Thumb: Reina is a naturalist and her specialty is power over plants.
• Wilfully Weak: Reina chooses to focus on learning historical spells such as those used by the Ancient Greeks over her actual specialty, because she hates how nature magic makes her feel like a battery.

Callum Nova

Callum Nova

• Cruel Mercy: Callum claims that most people want their pain to end and that by, for instance, using his abilities to manipulate Parisa into committing suicide, was actually a mercy
• The Friend Nobody Likes: With the occasional exception of Tristan, Callum is the one the group universally dislikes due to his cold apathy towards other people and morality. He is ultimately the one the group decides must be eliminated, though he manipulates Tristan to prevent him from killing him.
• A God Am I: Downplayed; he says that medeians, given their immense power, should stop trying to conform to normal human morality or weaknesses, and just use their magic to do whatever they want without apology.
• Idle Rich: Callum works for his family's company, but does not work particularly hard given his gifts and notes he has no greater ambition because he is already on top
• It Amused Me: His primary motivation for doing anything. He finds most people and most things dreadfully boring and is driven purely by what is interesting to him.
• Manipulative Bastard: It comes with being an incredibly powerful empath. He can convince anybody to do anything.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: He knew from the age of about eight that he was probably a Child by Rape and his mother didn't love him because of it.
• Mundane Utility: Uses his amazing magic to...close deals at his family business, which, while a profitable multinational, doesn't actually do anything that important. (Atlas makes a point of saying that he could be doing a lot more, and the fact he isn't starting wars on a whim speaks to either great self-control or a total lack of imagination. Callum's thought process reveals that it's neither—if he wanted to start wars, he knows exactly how, he just can't be arsed.)

Other Characters

Atlas Blakely

Atlas Blakely

Dalton Ellery

Dalton Ellery

Gideon

Gideon Drake

Ezra

Ezra

• Faking the Dead: First he and Atlas stage his own death when he is chosen to be eliminated by their class of the Alexandrian Society. Then, he does it again when he abducts Libby and leaves an animation of a corpse in her room for the rest to find.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: He discovered his time-travel magic when a mass shooter attacked his synagogue and murdered his mother. Unfortunately, this is also how he discovered the limits of his magic: he can't change anything he's already lived through. (This is why he doesn't know the details of the Bad Future he's seen—anything more than a quick peek will make it something he's lived through, and therefore impossible to avert.)
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Noting this is the mentality Atlas seems to take about those involved in his schemes, this leads to Ezra ultimately betraying him.