Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future - all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past. The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome - and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her. Meanwhile, Apollo - stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he …
Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future - all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past. The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome - and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her. Meanwhile, Apollo - stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he does - has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being human. Then, a few years in, Sokrates arrives - the same Sokrates recorded by Plato himself - to ask all the troublesome questions you would expect. What happens next is a tale only the brilliant Jo Walton could tell.--Provided by publisher.
Athene sets up a city based on Plato's Republic and peoples it with freed slave children, worker robots, and men and women from up and down the timeline. About five years in, Socrates shows up and starts asking some difficult questions.
If you haven't read Plato, that's OK. I haven't, either, and I still understood the book.
One warning: there are a couple scenes of sexual violence, and Jo Walton doesn't shy away from it.
"But why justice, not happiness, or liberty or any other excellence?"
5 stars
Apart from the time-travelling, the possibly sentient robots and gods and goddesses, not much sci-fi or fantasy here, but plenty of philosophy, melodrama and a little sexual violence. Jo Walton continues to pursue excellence in writing in this thought experiment of realising the Just City of Plato. To be honest, the ideals of the Just City are a bit shit and demonstrate once again why we shouldn't slavishly follows ideas from the Bronze and Iron Ages. Perhaps Walton subtly alludes to this with the demographic and centuries of origin of the Masters. Nevertheless, this is a thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking read, and you may ask yourself the question enunciated by Simmea that appears as the title of this review. Why indeed, eh? I look forward to reading the next book in the series and I hope we see more of the workers.
What if you could get the finest minds to establish Plato's ideal city?
5 stars
Considering that these "finest minds" mostly come from an era where slavery is not a problem, and that Plato's ideas on personal relationships—as logical as they might be—have nothing to do with how humans relate to each other, well, the experiment would be interesting to watch.
Jo Walton pushes the thought experiment by giving us well written characters, a fantastic setting (Atlantis was real!) and sci-fi musings (do robots have souls?), and uses the rules of the experiment to make us question it (thanks, Sokrates).
I really enjoyed this book, but I'll wait a couple of weeks at least before opening the second volume of the series—I don't want to burn out on it.
I read this because the people on Crooked Timber were all talking about it. I liked the article I linked above better than the book, but feel like it's my fault for not knowing sufficient history.
This book is the first of a trilogy in which the Republic that Plato describes in his book by that name is set up to see if it can actually work. The problem seems to lie in the fact that the metaphysical assumptions underlying Plato's arguments need to be valid (or, at least believed by those involved) for the idea to have a chance at all.
I'm going to read the second book of the trilogy next, which you might take as a vote of confidence in the first book, but it's really a vote of confidence in Ada Palmer who wrote the above article on Crooked Timber.
If you're in the mood for Plato and Socrates, wrestling with who the best life is for, and don't get turned off by time travel or robots, this is pretty good. Clever and more dramatic than her last.
The negative first: since this is the first half of a duology, the story more or less comes to a crashing end with numerous loose ends.
The positives easily outweigh this. If you've read any of Walton's books, you should know to expect a engaging, literate read. The Just City gives you this in spades.
Bonus points here if you're familiar with Greek or neo-Platonic philosophy!
