So once upon a timeless time the goddess Athene gets the bright idea to set up a "just city," based on Plato's Republic. She sets it up on an island that will eventually be doomed to destruction and imports anyone who ever prayed to her for deliverance to go there (throughout time and space!!!) to come there and be one of the "masters" that run the city. The masters also, in the time period the city is living in, purchase/rescue various slave children and bring them to the island to be raised there. So there's three classes: gods (okay, not too many), masters, and children. (Oh, and robots!) For whatever reason, the children aren't allowed to read Plato until age 50, which baffled me given the setup.
Our narrators are:
- Apollo, who's completely gobsmacked at the whole Daphne incident--he really didn't have any concept of a woman saying no--and decides to join his sister's city, but as a mortal boy named Pytheas.
- (b) Maia, a girl from the 1800's who didn't fit in to her time and place and now gets to be one of the masters of the city..
- (c) Sinnea, a rescued slave girl who also revels in the academic thought and philosophies of the city. She becomes close with Sokrates and Pytheas.
The story narration switches between all three of them--though I'll admit that Maia and Sinnea are similar happily-nerdy philosopher girls that I had a hard time telling their chapters apart except for the different circumstances that they came from. Maia's concerned with setting up the city, Simmea's just enjoying getting to grow up in a place that lets a girl pursue excellence. She also becomes very good friends with Pytheas and is conflicted between wanting a sexual relationship with him or just sticking to being the best of friends. Pytheas/Apollo admits Sinnea's not exactly his sexual type--she's a plain girl--but loves her personality. And the two of them hang out a lot with Sokrates, who's eventually res-cued from his hemlock death whether he wants to be or not* and well...he's not exactly Plato's biggest fan and likes to go around asking questions.
* the masters will be returned to where they left off in time to die when they would have hit their natural death instead of a forced one, such as hemlock drinking.
As time goes on, things are mostly great, except for a few things. Like the masters of the city deciding that the "children" (former slaves) should start breeding and follow Plato's dictates on that--have "festivals of Hera" three times a year where everyone is married off to someone eugenically selected for them for a day, they have sex and then break up, and then whoever's pregnant has the baby and then gives it up to the collective raising, not even knowing the kid's name. Nobody's allowed to pair-bond or baby-bond, and that goes about as well as you'd expect it to. Plus you gotta wonder at the logic behind having so many kids so suddenly, and how all of them are probably doomed to exploding volcano death. Not to mention the consent issues behind being assigned to have sex with someone that you may or may not be okay with doing that with (see below).
Meanwhile, Athene's helpfully shipped in robots from the future to do the grotty household chores slaves normally do, and as far as anyone knew these robots weren't supposed to be intelligent. However, Sokrates gets the idea to try to communicate with the workers and see if they have any intelligence, and he eventually gets enough evidence to prove that yes, some of them have developed intelligence and they aren't happy as they are now. What do we do about the slavery question NOW, eh?
Speaking of slavery, we have Kebes, a slave child who NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER will get over the fact that he lost his parents, was sold by slavers, and then FORCED to join the Just City and change his name (everyone has their name changed to something Greek upon arrival). He haaaaaaaaates it, he hates pretty much everybody, he's miserable and wants everyone to know that he's resentful and miserable. Also, he fixates on Simmea because she came in at the same time he did, heard his given name, and he seems to equate her as some kind of "hometown" girl he should have married. Ugh, he's one of Those Guys. I desperately wanted to smack him upside the head and yell, "Dude, your parents are dead, nobody can bring them back now, and your intended life is over. If the Just City folks hadn't picked you up you'd be a miserable slave. Seriously, this is what you want?" Or alternately, I wanted to know why nobody just lets him leave if he's so goddamned miserable there. Ugh, this guy.
Oh yeah, and rape is a minor plotline in this book. For those of you who do not want to read about that sort of thing, I'd recommend skipping this. The author seems to be trying to discuss issues of consent and something about how men think about the topic, but I'm not even sure how the heck I feel about how it's handled. I'm going to take this bit below the spoiler cut.* I think it's a fair question to debate given that consent in general is a huge issue in the book, but at the same time, it's frustrating to read about.
Anyway, the story generally builds slow, builds the Just City, shows the problems that are inherent in the idea, and then finally comes to a head and ends rather surprisingly and noisily. Had I not already read Pegasus earlier in this day and had my cliffhanger rage burned out on that story, maybe I would have been more annoyed at this. But this cliffhanger felt more natural--more like "this is where the book was building up to, and the next story is really too big to start here," and it also helps that I did find that the author wrote a sequel and finished it already, so there wasn't the impotent rage at wanting to find out more and finding out instead I never can. (On the other hand, I read the synopsis of the sequel to this book and thought, "you know what, I don't wanna read that.")
So...I'm gonna say this gets three and a half stars from me. It's an interesting thought experiment to read, at least. I don't think it's gonna be for everyone if you're not into philosophy (or reading about rape), but if you're into thought experiments, this may be your jam.
Spoiler space
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* Both Maia and Simmea get raped during the course of the story. Maia is VERY CLEAR about saying no and how she doesn't want to be doing this, but Ikaros goes right ahead and does it anyway and doesn't even get that he did wrong. In Simmea's case, she's assigned to temporarily marry Kebes, who's been pining for her for years. She's not super thrilled about this but is willing to go along with it for the sake of the city laws and whatnot (plus Apollo's gotten her some kind of herbal pregnancy preventing substance the day before), but he hurts her during the act, she points that out and that she's not enjoying it, and he doesn't give a shit because he's getting what he's wanted for years.
Both times the author seems to be making it pretty clear that the guys are so full of themselves and their own wants that they don't even acknowledge that the woman might feel differently. Their yesses and getting what they want means more to them than what she does or doesn't want, and Simmea points out that Kebes doesn't really love her, just his idea of her. As for the aftermath of those rapes...well, the ladies aren't happy about it, but they seem to just kinda go on with life anyway. The idea of pursuing justice or the law against these guys doesn't even come up to them--okay, that's probably a reality of their time period, but it still kinda makes you mad these guys just go on their merry way thinking everything is fine.
On the other hand, we have Apollo, who admits to Sinnea that he didn't intend to but would have raped Daphne back in the day--he truly didn't get a woman who was running from him for real instead of playing the usual consenting chase games he was used to. Now that he's learned otherwise, he's confronted with a temporary marriage to the one woman on the island who can't stand him. He actually doesn't want to and tells her he's fine with not doing it if she doesn't want to, but she insists on doing it and lying back and thinking of the Just City anyway. Well, that's a switch.
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