Necessity

Thessaly, Book 3

By: Jo Walton

Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine

Necessity: the sequel to the acclaimed The Just City and The Philosopher Kings, Jo Walton's tales of gods, humans, and what they have to learn from one another.

More than 65 years ago, Pallas Athena founded the Just City on an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, placing it centuries before the Trojan War, populating it with teachers and children from throughout human history and committing it to building a society based on the principles of Plato's Republic. Among the city's children was Pytheas, secretly the god Apollo in human form.

Sixty years ago the Just City schismed into five cities, each devoted to a different version of the original vision. Forty years ago the five cities managed to bring their squabbles to a close. But in consequence of their struggle, their existence finally came to the attention of Zeus, who can't allow them to remain in deep antiquity, changing the course of human history. Convinced by Apollo to spare the cities, Zeus instead moved everything on the island to the planet Plato, circling its own distant sun.

Now, more than a generation has passed. The cities are flourishing on Plato and even trading with multiple alien species. Then, on the same day, two things happen. Pytheas dies as a human, returning immediately as Apollo in his full glory. And there's suddenly a human ship in orbit around Plato - a ship from Earth.

©2016 Jo Walton (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Revised Plato

I was hesitant about the first book and had it on my wishlist for months. I really enjoy ancient Greece and Greek mythology. From the moment I started listening to the first book I knew I was going to really enjoy this story. The imagination and idea of going through time and humans working towards being excellent and true to ones self. Philosophy is the path to excellence.

Lost opportunity to explore new cultures?

I was very excited to start book 3 as our favorite characters living out the Republic were now on an a brand new planet surrounded by alien cultures. This created so many opportunities to discover how these new civilizations would react to human beings and how the Greek gods were represented in their cultures. Unfortunately, very little of the book is dedicated to this topic and even less to the modern day humans making contact. Book 3 feels about half as full of an overall story as books 1-2. The time taken to delve into the sentience of the workers and their pursuit of excellence brings my review from 3 to 4 stars as this is very well done.

it's a "woke" story

book one was great, two started taking liberties with a main storyline had a weaker message, and three- was absolutely off the map. I couldn't buy the illogical statements about gender ( in ancient times?? really??), the giving of freedom to all robots(like anyone would take a lunatic extremist culty civ on the edge of existence serious), alien gods Egyptian gods Greek gods mixing (without knowledge of each other?).. the characters became illogical and npc'ish, it was unfortunate to see Socrates fall into that category as well, as he was my second favorite character of all the books. if I misinterpreted parts of this book in my review, I apologize, but I'd stand by my stars given.