Björn recenserade The Just City av Jo Walton
None
4 stjärnor
I want to knock a star off for being yet another damn trilogy, but I knew that going in so that'd make me a bit of a hypocrite, wouldn't it?
Then again, the novel (or third thereof) is all about getting yourself into things you should see coming, and the setup is so brilliant (and a neat jab in the ribs to too many YA 'verses to boot). The Greek gods are bored and puzzled by mankind (that's always a good start), so they kidnap a few hundred Platonian philosophers from all eras, plonk them down on an antique Greek island along with 10,000 likewise kidnapped children, and tell them "There. Now build Plato's Republic for real, in detail. Go on, teach the kids about beauty and justice, divide them into factions according to their worth, get them breeding without that pesky emotional bond, all that stuff."
Fun fact: Plato, …
I want to knock a star off for being yet another damn trilogy, but I knew that going in so that'd make me a bit of a hypocrite, wouldn't it?
Then again, the novel (or third thereof) is all about getting yourself into things you should see coming, and the setup is so brilliant (and a neat jab in the ribs to too many YA 'verses to boot). The Greek gods are bored and puzzled by mankind (that's always a good start), so they kidnap a few hundred Platonian philosophers from all eras, plonk them down on an antique Greek island along with 10,000 likewise kidnapped children, and tell them "There. Now build Plato's Republic for real, in detail. Go on, teach the kids about beauty and justice, divide them into factions according to their worth, get them breeding without that pesky emotional bond, all that stuff."
Fun fact: Plato, for all his influence on Western so-called civilization, was kind of a fascist asshole, and the Republic may or may not be about as practical as actually locking a cat in a box with some radioactive material. So The Just City comes to be largely about the difference between idealism and pragmatism, theory and practice, freedom and society, all the while gleefully picking apart the old (and I do mean old) divide-the-kids-into-houses-and-put-them-in-love-triangles plot with an only slightly poisoned pen.
No, The Just City isn't perfect. But that's kind of the point, isn't it?
