Necessity
core novel 2016 Thessaly
Record
| First published | 2016 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.93 (1,907 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780765379023 |
| Internal chronology | 3 |
Synopsis
Forty years after the descendants of Plato's Just City experiment were relocated to a distant planet in the twenty-sixth century, Necessity opens on a pivotal day: Apollo's long-maintained mortal form dies, returning him to his full divine powers, at the very same moment that a human spaceship from Earth makes first contact with the isolated, philosophically minded civilization he helped found. Apollo quickly discovers that his sister Athena has vanished into the Chaos existing outside ordinary time itself, apparently in pursuit of forbidden knowledge, and her rescue becomes the driving concern of the novel, unfolding through intrigue, time travel, and encounters with alien gods. Familiar figures such as Sokrates and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola reappear alongside a wider cast of ordinary citizens, as the series' long-running experiment in philosophy and society faces its final test.
Where it sits
- Universe: Thessaly
- Series: The Thessaly trilogy core; position 3 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Jo Walton
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Thessaly trilogy: position 3 of 3: previous The Philosopher Kings (2015)
Sources
- Wikipedia: The Just City
- Thessaly series bibliography (specialised series-tracking site)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_(novel)
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