The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton
348 pages
Published 2015
Read from July 26 to August 4
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
About two-thirds of the way through The Philosopher Kings, a single paragraph tantalizes with a glimpse at a better, more interesting novel. The god Apollo (one of the narrators, incarnated in human form as a lad named Pythias and abducted to the Just City when he was 10) reminisces about a time when he met his brother Dionysios at a nightclub in the last days of Weimar Berlin. "He was dressed in black leather, topped off with a leopardskin scarf"; they danced together to "Summertime," "cheek to cheek, in that crowded little underground room on the desperate edge of destruction, amid the smoke that was like, and not like, the smoke of sacrifice...." I've always wanted an urban fantasy novel or series set in Weimar Berlin. I had never known, until I read that paragraph, that the book I wanted to read would be about the Classical Olympian gods mingling with humanity in the cabarets and attempting "to save as many as we could, in the teeth of Fate and Necessity." It was only a single paragraph, but it left me profoundly disappointed that I could never get that novel now, having seen its premise thrown away on a flashback, spent in a single paragraph. Though if Jo Walton ever wanted to expand the paragraph into a daring YA series, I would probably never complain about her books again.
Among Others remains among my favorite fantasy novels, and easily one of my favorite books of all time. That's a weight of expectation for Walton's other books to live up to, for sure, but nonetheless I have been consistently disappointed by how... average Walton's novels have been. The Philosopher Kings, like The Just City before it, is a vehicle for exploring important and topical themes: consent, autonomy, and equal significance in City, free choice in the face of outside forces and people trying to make your life "better" in Kings. And like in City, Kings at times feels like a didactic playlet or Very Special Episode rather than a novel with a cohesive storyline, stopping the flow for assorted characters to debate and discuss the very important lesson of the week. City has the edge over Kings thanks to the strength of its central cast; within four pages, Kings offs one of City's narrators and replaces her with a fifteen year old, Arete, who feels like a refugee from a breezy but entertaining YA series about the half-mortal children of gods. (Never having read the Rick Riordan books, I can't compare the two.) Other new characters are scarcely fleshed out at all; Arete's various half brothers have one character trait apiece, while Kebes, a much more ambiguous character for much of City (at least until he rapes Simmea near the end), becomes a stereotypical fanatic who skins heretics alive in his breakaway republic.
The plot, too, does little and goes nowhere: breakaway cities are stealing art from the Just City and people are dying in the raids, until Apollo/Pythias reaches an epiphany about being human and writes a song that makes everyone cry and make peace forever and ever. There's also a sea voyage so we can meet Kebes and his rival version of utopia, which really serves no purpose beyond padding out the theme of choice, with examples of refugees rescued from the horrors of Bronze Age warfare, only to become near-slaves in Kebes' pseudo-Roman cities and strongly encouraged to convert to his conception of Christianity.
The Philosopher Kings isn't terrible -- there are occasional moments that make the rest worthwhile -- but in terms of structure and character, it's probably my least favorite effort to date by Walton.
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