Book Review: Jo Walton - The Philosopher Kings

The previous book ended with the fracturing of the Just City in a furious debate between Socrates and Athena over the morality of all-powerful gods using feeble humans to settle philosophical questions, and in the way of all dissolutions the exodus from the Just City was both inevitable, because it was founded on premises fundamentally incompatible with free human choice, but also tragic, because 20 years later it's apparent that the new world - multiple competing Just Cities, some with differing interpretations of Plato's plans but some implacably opposed - is still informed by the unhappy knowledge that good intentions, and even good actions, are not enough to run a good society for very long. There's a subtle structural nod to the Odyssey, as the majority of the book consists of the main characters sailing around the Aegean, but this time it's as as an act of vengeance rather than of return, an ironic repudiation of the scene in The Republic where Socrates tries to convince Polemarchus that true justice consists only of helping friends and not harming enemies. That this crusade is instigated by the grief of Apollo, who should know better, is interesting both for his character and as a commentary on how Greek mythology makes mortals the playthings of the gods, and the religious syncretism of the Platonic diaspora they encounter along the way is a good way to approach the conflict between objective truths and subjective understandings. Often this installment felt more like an in-universe exploration of its world than a straight-up philosophical exploration like its predecessor, but Walton has still left plenty of Easter eggs for those who know their Plato, and the way it ends with the translation of the experiment into space was as true to the spirit of the source material as it was to the story.