So this is the last book of Jo Walton’s Thessaly trilogy about Athena and Apollo’s project to found Plato’s Just City. It’s pretty clear that this was written only to close out the trilogy as there is very little plot. Much of it consists of a series of philosophical essays by Crocus, the first of the Workers, the robots Athena brought to build the city, to gain sentience. The much promised renewed contact between the Platonic cities and the rest of humanity also turns out to be a bit of a damp squib. But it does have time-travel, aliens and even a dinosaur!
The present time of this novel starts some forty years after the events of the last book when Zeus transplants all of the Platonic cities hundreds of years into the future and onto a planet in a distant star system to prevent them from altering history. Despite this new planet having a far colder climate and a completely different ecosystem, they adapt well and build a rail network to connect the cities. They are even in contact with two different alien civilizations who they trade with and some of aliens have become residents. Pytheas lives out his mortal life and when he dies of natural causes, takes up the mantle of Apollo again. However the day he dies turns out to be a tumultuous one as a starship from Earth arrives in orbit. Meanwhile just as Apollo is intent on spending some time outside of time to reflect on what he has learned, he is interrupted by Hermes who claims to be acting on behalf of Zeus. Athena is missing, having gone into the primordial chaos in search of forbidden knowledge in defiance of Zeus’ edict. Apollo sets out with Hermes to rescue her, even as he is angry at her for doing so as he realizes that she secretly planned on his involvement as her failsafe measure all along.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers here so I’ll just say that there are deceptions and alien gods involved in the story. At the same time, there really isn’t much of a story at all. The actions of gods are beyond mortal ken and with gods involved, the whole situation with Athena is resolved very quickly once Apollo gets things moving. Instead, what this book mainly feels like is an extended reunion as everyone who is anyone in the previous books all manage to put in an appearance. So yes, Socrates is returned to human form by Apollo and brought to the future when he gets to meet with everyone and is updated on everything that has happened since the Last Debate. The novel introduces new characters as well of course to help convey a sense of how life on the planet Plato is like. Notable among them is Jason, a fisherman who is notable mainly in that he is a perfectly ordinary person in the midst of so many gods and relatives of gods. Then there’s Hilfa, an alien, who has settled down on Plato and works with Jason on his boat. Hilfa helps to introduce the idea of alien gods who have similar powers as the Olympians but seem to more malevolent.
The best thing about this novel is probably that it is so satisfying in giving answers to all of your niggling questions from the previous books and having characters of three generations meet and acknowledge one another. From the obvious ones of whatever happened to Socrates and where Athena took the other robotic Workers of the city to unanswered plot points like where Kebes obtained a modern musical instrument to more subtle ones like what Zeus really wants or what happened to Ikaros, this book pretty much lays all these questions and more to rest. At the same time scenes like Plato learning about what happened to Simmea or Crocus finally being able to talk with Plato using a voice-box are immensely pleasing to read about. At the same time, the book is so frustrating about how little information it gives about the new developments it brings up. For example, we know that the Saeli live in fear of their own gods and want as little to do with them as possible but we never actually get to see what those gods do. Similarly the book teases first contact between the Platonic cities and mainstream humanity from the very beginning, hinting at the conflicts to come, but never follows through as everything important happens off-screen.
This too is similar with the previous books in that the truly tough questions are dodged and these philosopher-kings never have to face serious difficulties. We are told that the Platonic cities including the ones founded by Kebes no longer engage in violent conflict with each other since the end of the art raids. There are plausible reasons for this longstanding peace including having to struggle to adapt and survive on an entirely new planet, instituting a worldwide governing council and an Olympics games event that permits non-violent competition. But it seems to me that there is an even more obvious reason: the original city clearly has the favor of the gods and has the children of Apollo defending it, a military advantage that no other city can hope to match.
Similarly it presents their trade relationships with two separate alien civilizations as a fait accompli, with the only difficulty being understanding their languages. This is easily solved with Arete’s communication superpowers. We’re led to believe that there’s no threat of violence with them either which seems a little blasé given that the aliens have starships in orbit and the Platonic cities don’t even have guns. Let’s not even go into how they are able to build a train network without any substantial industrial base. Or that their technology includes both fishing from wooden sailing ships unchanged since they were in Greece and a modern spaceport to facilitate trade and communications with alien visitors. It’s nice to have sapient AI who can seemingly learn anything incredibly quickly and gods on your side. This book likes to pretend that they’re so great because all of them pursue excellence but it isn’t at clear how this helps them solve the same kind of practical, everyday problems faced by every society.
Coming to this after the two previous books, I had a pleasant enough time reading this. But I have to say that it feels very fan-fictiony and isn’t at all rigorous. Philosophically, I suppose it is interesting in that it asserts excellence as something that can always be improved upon and not a static state of perfection. This nicely explains why even all-knowing Zeus can actually still learn new things. But that’s not exactly a revolutionary insight just as this treatment of Plato’s Just City is nice to have but doesn’t feel at all definitive and as such doesn’t seem like something you ought to go out of your way for.