Necessity

June 6, 2016
Walton delivers an adequately satisfying conclusion to her Thessaly trilogy (The Just City, The Philosopher Kings). The Greek goddess Athene brought a collection of people from ancient Greece to our near future on a planet called Plato, where they attempted to make Plato’s Republic a reality. Forty years after being relocated, they finally make contact with the rest of humankind. Rather than engage with the intriguing philosophical and ethical issues presented by this reconnection, the story focuses on freshly re-deified Apollo, who discovers that Athene cannot be found anywhere and sets out to track her down. Walton makes the fresh and delightful choice to pull point-of-view characters from a broader cross-section of society, including Jason, a low-caste fisherman of the Remnant City, and Crocus, the first of the Just City’s robots to become self-aware, but the story bogs down in its supernatural elements. The mortal characters are given tragically short shrift, and the abandonment of questions raised by earlier installments will leave readers wishing this story had strived for greater excellence. Agent: Jack Byrne, Sternig and Byrne Literary.

Starred review from June 1, 2016
A trilogy which began as an almost-dry intellectual exercise ends as a glorious kitchen sink of genre, combining philosophy, time travel, aliens, and the gods.At the conclusion of Volume 2, The Philosopher Kings (2015), Zeus moved Athene's civilization modeled after Plato's Republic from ancient Greece to a distant planet in the 26th century (named Plato, of course). Forty years later, the next generation has established itself on Plato, joined by self-aware robots known as Workers and the alien Saeli. Now, a human spaceship prepares to land on Plato for the first time. And Pytheas, the god Apollo in human form, finally dies; but once returned to his divine form, the deity discovers that his sister Athene is missing from all time and space. It sounds like a lot of plot, but mostly it's an excuse to explore whether or not Athene's experiment is still working, discuss the nature of the soul, and engage in character development, both with old friends from the previous two books and new ones introduced here. Along the way, some mysteries are resolved and loose ends tied up. Ultimately, the endeavor proves to be surprisingly involving. The only real downside is that the first contact between the two human civilizations, which is initially touted as a major event, is mostly teased, not developed. Although some potential aspects are discussed, the reader never gets to truly witness the culture clash and eventual reconciliation between the essentially communist, cerebral, but culturally restrictive ideals of Plato versus the rampantly capitalist and presumably more pleasure-seeking "space humans," who don't even realize that their Workers are sentient. But perhaps both Walton and her characters refuse to spoon-feed the reader and wish us to do our own work of considering the implications. Engaging food for thought.

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Starred review from July 1, 2016

When we last left the Platonic experiment of the Just City, its citizens had fought wars over art and been transplanted by Zeus to a new planet to continue their attempts to live lives of excellence. This third and final volume of the trilogy opens with the planet of Plato in crisis. Apollo, who had lived there as a mortal, has recently died; Athena, the goddess who set up the whole experiment, hasn't been seen in a while; and a spaceship appears in orbit over Plato representing the human society that the Just City circumvented with their isolation. In this satisfying if not completely tidy end to the series (after The Just City and The Philosopher Kings), Walton brings back characters from the other books, making these titles that should be read in order. The author isn't afraid to pose questions that leave readers thinking and takes a deep dive into classical philosophy. VERDICT The rewards are plentiful for fans of thoughtful speculative fiction as well as for aficionados of the classical world.--MM

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2016
The riveting conclusion to Walton's The Just City (2015) and The Philosopher Kings (2015) opens on a busy day: Pytheas, the human form of the god Apollo, dies (not to worryhe immediately returns in his true form as deity); the goddess Athene goes missing; and the first human spaceship appears in the sky over the Just City, inviting a debate over whether to offer proof to these new arrivals that the gods exist. There are many other debates informing this novelistic exercise in dialectic, especially when Sokrates, who had been transformed into a mayfly by an angry Athene, returns in his human form. In the meantime, a search for the goddess is launched and takes on greater urgency when it is discovered that she has somehow managed to go into Chaos to study Necessity, the force that binds all thinking beings, and to learn how time began. How to rescue her from this dangerous mission is at the heart of the plot-rich novel, which is told from four points of view: that of Apollo himself, his granddaughter Marsilia, the fisherman Jason, and the sentient machine Crocus, who provides much of the philosophy that is the substance of this sometimes abstruse but nevertheless accessible novel of ideas. As before, Walton has done a superb job of world building and character development, giving readers a novel that both stimulates and satisfies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)