For all of your Plato's Republic fanfic needs... ( )

Despite this conclusion to the fantasy trilogy being the most science-fictional, set in the future as it is, in a way it reminds me the most of the ancient Greek dramas it uses for source material. The ideals of the Just City have been translated to humans on other planets, the Worker robots, and even alien species, but the characters spend much of their time debating their relationship to Fate and Necessity in a way familiar to anyone who's read Oedipus. I was a bit frustrated in the middle, because their continuous time traveling to collect plot tokens often felt too much like a recapitulation of the wandering in the previous novel, but like always, Walton manages to address issues with The Republic in an organic way. Way back in the first book, Socrates awoke the sentience of one of the Workers in exactly the same way he taught Meno's slave how to double a square, and throughout this volume Walton sprinkles in the same clever callbacks to other Platonic dialogues - in one funny scene, a character they visit loves the feminist ideals of the Just City but can't imagine how they get along without slaves, which should give anyone skeptical of Sheryl Sandberg-esque corporate feminism a lot to think about, and the way several of the main characters end up in a polyamorous soul-bond with aliens (don't laugh) is a nice update of Plato's musing on how the souls of men and women relate. The closing points about whether the robotic Workers might be the only ones who can actually embody the virtues necessary to implement the Republic mesh nicely with the lessons about virtue, free will, and consent that were set up on the very first page of the first book. ( )

Starts slow and strange, and it gets stranger as it goes on. The thematically appropriate extended philosophical explorations nevertheless sometimes drag on more than I would have preferred.

And yet, this book is absolutely unique and delightful. I didn't intend to finish it tonight, but once I got to the last 75 pages, I just couldn't put it down. Astonishing, incredibly satisfying, and highly recommended. (But read the first two books in the series first, or this one will make zero sense.) ( )

I was so disappointed in this book. It was not the conclusion to the series I hoped for.

For one, the opportunity presented by reuniting with humanity was entirely overlooked: the novel appears to assume that of course Plato's culture will hold its own, that it has reached some kind of permanent maturity that will not be open to outside influence. We don't even see the two sets of humans interacting with each other; they don't even meet until the last page.

For another, this assumption appears to be entirely based on Walton's own personal belief that the Just City is some kind of pinnacle of human achievement that, if it were ever tried, would lead to the ultimate happiness and justice for all people. But for the love of god. That's just dumb. The idea's been around for thousands of years; people have had plenty of time to try it out. It doesn't work because it takes no account of human nature, and not just in the ways that Walton noted and addressed in the first two books of the series: no one likes to be assigned a class at some arbitrary point and then to have one's opportunities restricted to that class. As soon as the Plato-born Irons come into contact with societies where you can reinvent yourself throughout life and continue to advance, the entire Plato system will collapse. But we don't get to see this, because Walton has apparently decided it isn't going to happen, because the class-assigners on Plato are such perfect Philosophers that they never make a mistake.

Also, too much of it reads like an exposition of Walton's own theological and philosophical ideas. NONE of the major characters disagree with each other on anything really important. Their "debates" in this novel are all trivial, superficial, and frankly smug.

But most importantly, it is dull. Dull dull dull. Too much of the book is people sitting around talking to each other about philosophy; there is no real tension in the plot as Necessity, introduced early on, guarantees the ending. Athena goes missing; she leaves clues, they walk around leisurely and collect clues, put them together, find out where she is; they go, see her, chat, and bring her back; then at the end they meet regular humans but that's no biggie because of course they won't be a threat to Plato's society ...

It read like a philosophical treatise as opposed to a novel. It read like a religious apologia, like CS Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress rather than his Narnia chronicles.

Still enjoy the first two books, but they both deserve a better ending. ( )

On hold - will pick back up.