The Just City (edizione 2015)

I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. I think I was expecting to be bored to death by deep, philosophical discussions, as philosophy is not really a topic I like to give much of my time to, but I liked that Walton truly created her own interpretation of historical figures like Socrates and famous god(desse)s like Athena. They fit neatly into the story with the fictional characters, who all had compelling and individual voices. Every time I picked this book up I didn't want to put it back down.

The only negative thing here, in my opinion, was the ending. There wasn't much of one. The final chapter of the book was very intense. I felt just as enthralled by the debate between Athena and Socrates as the crowd that gathered to watch it. Athena's abrupt disappearance (in a sort of wrathful, literal deus ex machina moment) and the ensuing one page of chaos that followed left me unsatisfied with too many questions. I see now that this is the first of a series, which does explain the last-minute twists and loose ends, but the suddenness of the ending given just doesn't feel appropriate.

TL;DR: The Just City is a thoroughly engrossing book with a brusque ending that was I found to be a slight detriment, but not enough to spoil the rest of the story.
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There's an awful lot of set up in this book. More than I have the patience for right now.

Closer to 4 stars than three.

A very difficult book to classify. One might say "The Just City" bears the same relationship to classical Greek philosophy that science fiction does to science.

It's a story about an experimental attempt to create a city that embodies the ideals of Plato's Republic, and the places where reality is simply incompatible with the ideal, thus illuminating flaws in that ideal.

It's a sort of philosophical parable; the characters in the Just City (which include both adults from various times, and children/youths of ancient Greece) care and talk about justice, slavery, excellence, deception, and friendship. The practice of rhetoric is central in the way that the practice of science is in SF.

The viewpoint characters include a couple of Greek gods. Don't let this put you off the book, or dismiss it as mythology: instead, accept them as real elements of the universe in which the book takes place. (Or, just consider them as aliens, if that's more familiar.)

I liked the book very much, except for the treatment of one theme; but I also perceive that treatment to be a strength of the book. (just, an unpleasant one to read)


The theme is rape.

Early on in the book, when they're still setting up the Just City and deciding how everything will work, one of the women is raped by one of the men. After arranging to go for a walk with her in private, he tells her that he wants to have sex with her, ignores her refusal, tells her that she wants to, rapes her, and then tells her that she enjoyed it.

Afterwards, she tells some of the other women about it, and they discuss whether to bring the matter before the emerging city government: clearly, this violates the principles of the Just City.

But they're legitimately afraid that it won't be treated as obviously wrong, because the adult population is dominated by men from eras in which women had no rights. And they're legitimately afraid that the controversy would doom the experiment from the start. Better to keep quiet, they decide. She'll just avoid him in future.

And so from the beginning, the experiment is poisoned.

The whole book isn't about this, but it keeps creeping up, breaking through, one way or another. It's very well done, but very disturbing, which is why I think it's a huge part of the point of the book.

This theme arguably serves as a concrete fictional example of the question often raised by feminist critique of the Western canon: if all the canonical writers are male, then what perspectives are thereby excluded from the canon? What problems, what themes, what practicalities won't be considered?


It's a very feminist book, in a very subtle way.

It does end on a bit of a cliffhanger, but at the same time it's the right place for a book about the Just City to end: when the city breaks down as a functioning social order. But it doesn't resolve any of the issues that caused that to happen.

I may read the sequel (I assume there will be one); in terms of characters and plot, I came to be reasonably invested and curious. But in terms of the rhetorical substance of the book, it feels satisfyingly complete. ( )

Walton, Jo. The Just City. Thessaly No. 1. Tor, 2015.
Jo Walton is a writer I know best for her excellent reviews of older science fiction and fantasy novels at Tor.com. The Just City is an intriguing novel of ideas based on Plato’s Republic. The Greek Gods are still alive and well. Apollo goes to Athena to ask why Daphne would rather be turned into a tree than give in to his sexual advances. The only way he will ever understand is to become human, so he does. Athena sends him to a city she has established on a doomed island. People from across time who have read Plato in the original Greek and have prayed sincerely to live in the Republic are brought to inhabit the city designed on Plato’s model. Apollo courts a young woman who only wants Platonic romance, and Socrates shows up to foster a revolution among the robots being used as slave labor. Along the way, we get good character development and lively philosophical debates about personal agency. Fun. 4 stars. ( )

Clever and detailed, not to mention elegantly written, but ultimately the narrative is constrained by the very strictures it sets out to explore.

I have a pretty high tolerance for musing, thoughtful, character novels which ramble gently without heavy plot, and of course the promise of Socratic dialogue in spades was a huge draw.

However, the book did drag in places even for me; I found myself skimming Maia's sections but avidly reading Simmea's and Apollo's.

What definitively knocked the last star off for me was Sokrates. Any story which includes him as a character is always going to be taking a risk, since he is a phenomenally influential character for whom readers will have high expectations. I suspect only Plato or another Socratic scholar could have any hope of pulling it off.

Matt Hilliard once said that authors should refrain from writing messianic messages or sermons unless they are themselves Messiahs. I wonder if perhaps this also applies to writing philosophical arguments, when authors are not philosophers. The didactic rhetoric and Socratic dialogue often fell flat for me, with logical disconnects between arguments. I would also argue that Socratic dialogue isn't really debate; it's artificial and constructed to prove the main speaker's point. Walton seems to have aimed for a halfway point between true rhetoric and group discussion, but didn't quite nail either in many instances. Sokrates versus Athena carried well (the Final Debate) but not so much Sokrates and Simmea/Apollo.

The novel did offer a robust defense of the Republic which often gets much flack, although in the end it did come down firmly on the side of Plato's ideas being too unworkable in many cases.

I think its other strong point (I don't usually say this) is the thoughtful and scintillating examination of feminism in this context, with full nuance and no easy answers.

I would happily recommend to any fans of Jo Walton's other works, or fans of literary and/or philosophical science fantasy. ( )