The Just City
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Among Others, a tale of gods and humans, and the surprising things they have to learn from one another
"Here in the Just City you will become your best selves. You will learn and grow and strive to be excellent."
Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just
City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children
and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with
some handy robots from the far human future — all set down together on a
Mediterranean island in the distant past.
The student Simmea,
born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much
learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an ungaurded
moment during a trip to Rome — and, in an instant, found herself in the
Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her.
Meanwhile, Apollo — stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he does — has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as
one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from
his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being
human.
Then, a few years in, Sokrates arrives — the same Sokrates
recorded by Plato himself — to ask all the troublesome questions you would expect. What happens next is a tale only the brilliant Jo Walton could
tell.
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Jo Walton
Jo Walton has published thirteen novels, most recently Necessity. A fourteenth, Poor Relations is due out early in 2018. She has also published three poetry collections and an essay collection. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002, the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw in 2004, the Hugo and Nebula awards for Among Others in 2012, and in 2014 both the Tiptree Award for My Real Children and the Locus Non Fiction award for What Makes This Book So Great. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are much better. She gets bored easily so she tends to write books that are different from each other. She also reads a lot, enjoys travel, talking about books, and eating great food. She plans to live to be ninety-nine and write a book every year. She takes writing biographies of herself terribly seriously at all times.
Thessaly
Thessaly consists of three books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
