A trilogy of fantasy books republished under a single cover. My inclination is to describe it as “high-concept fantasy,” because it is based on asking a very thinky-yet-clear what-if and then seeing how it plays out, but I worry that label makes it sound obscure and inaccessible when in fact it is compulsively readable. The book asks, what if the gods of Greek antiquity actually exist and that Athena gets it into her head to bring together philosophically inclined people from across time – from the ancient world to the mid-21st century – to a temporally and geographically isolated corner of the Mediterranean to try to implement in real life the Just City that Plato writes about in The Republic. It includes Apollo in human incarnation as a central character, robots, and eventually aliens and other planets. Almost all of the characters, and certainly all of the viewpoint characters, approach the world as philosophers, so much of the book is built from philosophical conversation – often very much in the mode of Socratic dialoguge, and even sometimes involving Socrates himself – that engages deeply with ideas while remaining entirely plausible within the context of the story, very much conversational rather than pedantic, and usually about real practical questions that the characters are wrestling with. The writing makes you care about the characters and about the ideas, and it makes you not care so much that, particularly in the second and third books, the plot feels somewhat secondary. I also felt a few elements of the resolution of the third book seemed to come out of nowhere, but the trilogy had earned considerable indulgence from me by that point and I wasn’t too bothered by it, particularly given that it included a novel and interesting relationship formation, which is something I always appreciate. Not a short read, but an excellent trio of books and well worth it.
Originally posted on Scott’s Goodreads.