The Just City
core novel 2015 Thessaly
Record
| First published | 2015 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.80 (8,689 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780765332660 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
The goddess Athena, acting on a fascination with Plato's Republic, gathers an eclectic assortment of extraordinary men, women, and children from across many different eras of human history to the island of Thera, intending to build an actual, functioning utopian society modeled directly on Plato's philosophical blueprint. The god Apollo, intrigued by human concepts of consent and volition that his own divine nature has never had to grapple with, chooses to join the experiment by living among the city's inhabitants as an ordinary mortal child, subject to all the same rules and limitations as everyone else. The careful order Athena has designed is complicated by the unexpected arrival of the philosopher Sokrates himself, brought into the city as one of its teachers, whose famously relentless questioning threatens to unsettle the very premises the whole utopian project was built upon.
Where it sits
- Universe: Thessaly
- Series: The Thessaly trilogy core; position 1 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 1 of 3: next The Philosopher Kings (2015)
Sources
← Thessaly dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.