On sale yesterday: Jo Walton's The Philosopher Kings, Book Two of Thessaly
Excerpt here.
Author's remarks about it on her own website:
The Philosopher Kingsis the sequel toThe Just City. Read that first! [...]
It is my twelfth published novel. I wrote it betwen 20th June and 28th November 2013, in 28 writing days, and then revised it in early 2014. It's set twenty years after the end of The Just City.
The Philosopher Kingsis about...love and excellence. And responsibility. And art. And it's about Apollo and his daughter Arete and Ficino and some other people going on a boat trip that leads them to end up somewhere you'd never have expected.The Just Cityuses the myth of Apollo and Daphne.The Philosopher Kingsuses the myth of Apollo and Marsyas.
First line is "Not many people know that Pico della Mirandola stole the head of the Winged Victory of Samothrace."
ReadThe Just Cityfirst, did I say that already? It seems to work for people reading it without, but it's full of spoilers for the first book.
Some reviews
"[T]he gathered characters, their philosophical and practical discussions, and their character-driven decisions, along with Walton's plain, declarative, and crystal-clear style, and the straightforward and probing dialogue (in both the Socratic and the fiction-writing senses), familiarize the high concept and make it seem plausible. [...] Another of the reading pleasures here, and in all of Walton's writing, is the intimate scale. Much as I love the more-is-more rush of [Neal] Stephenson's work, Walton's economical method is just as effective. The characters are just as complex, and perhaps more distinctive because they are not lost in the overwhelming detail about their environment. The environment in the Atlantean novels is detailed enough for us to supply the rest, and if we don't know exactly how the robots work or how the ships are constructed, we still get the idea. This economy, along with the harmony among characters, events, and ideas, keeps her novels of ideas from seeming wooden or boring. Walton knows what to leave out as well as what to include. "
--Joan Gordon, Los Angeles Review of Books
"[T]he science it deals with is moral science: it's a science fiction of philosophy, as much argument as adventure, and its nature is such as to invite the reader to participate. That's half the fun. More than half, over and above Walton's agreeable prose and solidly believable characters--even Apollo is believable, and I have high standards for fictional gods, though that might be hubris. What does it mean to strive for excellence, as a person, and as a person among other people? What does it mean to be a hero, or a philosopher? What's just? [...] The Philosopher Kings is a very entertaining novel. It's even more entertaining as an argument."
--Liz Bourke, Tor.com
"Audacious ... The end result is a satisfying conclusion, with room for more if desired."
--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"One of my favorite parts of this book is the characters running into the rest of the world and having it be something of a shock, after all these years, that there are people who are not in any way attempting to recreate Plato's Republic. It has come to seem utterly, indisputably normal to them. And...I think we can all come up with aspects of our unique lives that feel totally normal until we compare them with the outside world and remember. It's done really well, the shock of the new coming from an unexpected direction and yet feeling entirely in-character."
--Marissa Lingen, Novel Gazing Redux
"The ending is a knock-out, tongue-in-cheek deus ex machina twist explicitly stating that no matter how much The Philosopher Kings departed from The Just City, the third and final book, Necessity, will move exponentially farther away -- both literally and figuratively. If there's one thing Walton is brilliant at -- and there are roughly 1 million of those -- it's not letting you know quite what kind of story you're in, and leading you to relish the discovery."
--Amal El-Mohtar, NPR.org
The Philosopher Kings, sequel to The Just City, will be followed by Book Three of Thessaly, Necessity, slated for summer 2016. Follow Jo Walton's blog for updates.