The Just City (Thessaly, #1) in Goodjer Recommends

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Aug 08, 2016 Rebecca (LirilAB) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, alternate-history, thessaly, philosophy

First, I have to say that I LOVED this book! I read it because it was TOR's free book club book for this month and I didn't want to send it into my backlog void after downloading it. I knew nothing about it, though I vaguely remember the author's name from a short story I read from years and years ago when I used to be subscribed to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. I don't recall anything about the story other than that I really liked it and this author's name. I keep thinking that I've First, I have to say that I LOVED this book! I read it because it was TOR's free book club book for this month and I didn't want to send it into my backlog void after downloading it. I knew nothing about it, though I vaguely remember the author's name from a short story I read from years and years ago when I used to be subscribed to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine. I don't recall anything about the story other than that I really liked it and this author's name. I keep thinking that I've imagined it though because I can't find anything about her writing before the year 2000 and she was winning new author awards.

In any case, I had a good feeling about the book from what I thought I remembered about the author and the book's description.

With the help of the goddess Athene and her brother Apollo incarnating himself as a mortal human, a number of people from various time periods established a city they called The Just City on a volcanic island that was known to us as Atlantis, among some other names. The time period when they built the city is at some point before the Trojan War. What is unique about this city is that they are attempting to model it after Plato's Republic. The first group of people, the Masters, would set up the city and then bring in numerous 10 year old children who would be raised in this city and then grow up and birth their own babies who would be full citizens and Philosopher Kings. (Both male and female.)

There are many figures from different time periods in our own history who are Masters in The Just City, though their names are changed if they had "inappropriate" ones. Cicero is there as Tullius. Socrates as Sokrates. Lukretia who was Lucretia Borgias, and so on. Some of the Masters were also regular people that were not well-known in our history. The conditions for being taken to The Just City is that they all had to wish they could live in Plato's Republic and they all had to have prayed to Athene about it.

I also enjoyed the language in this book. It's not flowery or lyrical in any way (thank goodness) but it captures the essence of something more epic. I'm probably a bit biased too because I loved reading the Iliad and the Odyssey and other Greek classics and philosophy and would have fit right in with many residents of The Just City, with their love of learning, philosophy, language, art, and mathematics.

Naturally, lots of things happen to these characters, told from the perspectives of Apollo, Simmea (one of the children), and Maia (one of the masters), but it's the character development and their thoughts that I most enjoyed.

I had to go to the local library yesterday because my internet at home was down, and discovered that there is another book in this same "world" called the Philosopher Kings. It takes place 20 years later, and I'm already in the midst of reading it as my library had it right there on the shelf! ...more

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Oct 16, 2015 Katy added it

Shelves: read-2015

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