The Just City

Such philosophy, much Plato. Yeah, well. The Just City can be summed up as an imaginary of how Plato's Republic would play out in real life—but with active participation of Gods and robots and, like, time travel. It's a good book, and it's really interesting to see how it tackles Plato's theories and plays with them, bringing up questions and discussions and counter-arguments and an amazing debate between Sokrates and Pallas Athene and whatnot. The great issue here, in my opinion at least, is that it doesn't really bring anything new to the table. So humans are flawed, what's new? So Gods can play with mortals, what's new? So robots might develop sentience, intelligence and/or free will, what's freaking new about that? Apollo wanting to reach excellence is interesting, but... it's not really the focus here, is it? He's just along for the ride.

It is a nice read. Jo Walton's prose is fluid, and it takes us competently in a journey with three different characters who show us different points of view on the Just City's foundation and development. It's just sad that the only thing that made me really, actually glad about it was that it had a definite end, instead of ending in a cliffhanger—it does leave stuff for later, and its ending is sort of anti-climatic, but it is finished nonetheless; it's almost a self-contained story, meaning you could just leave it here and just disregard its sequels entirely. I intend to read them—the sequels, that is; eventually—, but I'm just not in a hurry.