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The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton - Here There Be Books
The Philosopher Kings gets off to a bad start, tbh. The Just City has separated into multiple cities, all with differing ideas about what Plato Really Meant, Aristotle-the-fly disappeared, Pallas Athene never came back, and worst of all Simmea, my favorite character from The Just City, dies. She’s murdered during an art raid. She’s dead! And that really hurt. Apollo didn’t much like it either, and he spends the majority of the book trying to come back from his overwhelming grief. Maia is also dealing with things, including her rapist from The Just City wanting to apologize and be friends again. Everybody’s depressed from the raids and people dying and it’s just a very downer kind of beginning to a book. Luckily, Simmea’s daughter show up as a narrator and she turns out to be every bit as amazing as her mother. Arete’s super intelligent and kind and curious about everything and she’s a HERO! Not just because she’s the daughter of a god! (Though that helps.) She’s got everything that made Apollo and Simmea great in The Just City, plus her own unique wonderfulness. And, like, heroic ambition? She wants to be a god, but she’s not sure how it happens and so we get lots of interesting conversations with Apollo (and his kids) about the nature of gods and what happens after you become one, etc. Apollo’s other kids are also really fun to get to know. Some of them want to be heroes/gods, some of them want to live in terrible versions of the Just City, and some of them want to be a legit philosopher king. Sibling/family stories are some of my favorites, and I particularly liked the family in this book– mostly because of Arete, actually. She loves her family and it comes through in her narration. The Philosopher Kings mostly takes place away from the Just Cities, as Apollo and his kids (and various other favorite characters) go on a journey to find the group of Just Citizens who left after the whole Aristotle-Athena debacle from the end of The Just City. They go for revenge! And exploration! And self-discovery, as it turns out. If The Just City was all about consent and the issues surrounding it, then The Philosopher Kings is about the consequences of giving/receiving/not receiving consent. And also the consequences of practically every single thing that happened in the first book. Plus new issues of forgiveness and family and destiny. All good stuff! It’s maybe not as tight of a story as The Just City was, but it’s definitely just as vibrant and enjoyable. And I very much want to read the third book, after the monster of an ending that was in this one. Read: June 26-27, 2015
A. Finch