Review: The Just City by Jo Walton

The Just City by Jo Walton

Published: Tor, 2015

Series: Book 1 of the Philosopher Kings

Awards Nominated: Prometheus Award

The Book:

“Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future--all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.

The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome--and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her.

Meanwhile, Apollo--stunned by the realization that there are things mortals understand better than he does--has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being human.” ~WWEnd.com

I’ve been meaning to read The Just City, for quite a while, so I jumped on the chance to pick it up from Tor.com’s ebook club a few months back (http://ebookclub.tor.com/).  I have liked everything that I have read by Jo Walton, and the topic of this one piqued my interest. I enjoy reading about the process of building a society within a fictional universe.  This novel was very satisfying in that respect, and it left me eager to read The Philosopher Kings and Necessity.

My Thoughts:

All of us (who are honest) can agree that there are no perfect societies on Earth. I think every person acts, to some extent, to shift society toward their concept of the ideal arrangement.  This is a slow process, and muddled by the fact that people have very different ideas of how things should change.  That’s why, to me, the lure of building a new society from scratch is undeniable.  Athena’s group of mentors take Plato’s Republic as their model, and attempt to build it on an isolated island that will not endure in the future. While I don’t agree with many of the details of Plato’s Republic, I like the emphasis on creating a just society that allows each person to become their best self.  The Just City takes this idea and considers how it might work when implemented by and for actual people.  The City can’t be truly separate from the world, since the mentors are shaped by their own times and experiences, and the ten-year-olds are certainly not “blank slates”.  Even if it were somehow kept pure from the influence of other societies, people are messy, emotional, and confusing creatures.  It was fascinating to see how this planned society fared when taking human nature into account.

The novel covers many aspects of human experience through an engaging mix of viewpoint and minor characters.  Maia provides eyes into the group of mentors, people who are united in purpose but not in their prejudices.  Many of the men from older civilizations struggle with accepting women as equals, which has some frustratingly predictable consequences. Among the children, Simmea represents the kind of person best suited to the education the City offers.  She’s brilliant, driven, and eager to become her best self.  I also appreciated that she was unattractive, and that this did not harm her self-esteem or others’ estimation of her worth.  In her cohort is Apollo, who has a really personable, amusing narrative voice.  I enjoyed his outsider’s perspective on the society, and his exploration of the experience of being mortal.  The concept of the novel really depends on having characters that feel authentic, and I feel that it succeeds on this count.  

Central to Apollo’s arc is developing an understanding of volition and equal significance, and this is echoed in many places in the development of the City itself.  The mentors intend to create a just society, but they begin it with a denial of choice.  They buy children from slave markets, with the justification that they will have a better life.  This may be true, but it also leaves some children angry with being ripped from their world and taken to a society that is planned to have no future.  Not everyone wants their life to be part of an experiment.  The society attempts to regulate many things that most of us would consider personal, such as sexual and non-sexual relationships.  While their intentions may be honorable, the mentors are treating the children as subjects to be managed, not as people with equal significance.  I enjoyed seeing how this conflict between ideals and execution would influence the development of the City.  I think The Just City came to a natural conclusion, but there is still clearly story left to tell in this universe.

My Rating: 5 / 5

I am a fan of Jo Walton’s work, and The Just City is my favorite of her novels so far. The idea of building a society based on Plato’s Republic intrigued me, and the novel gave a fascinating look into how the experiment might play out when enacted by real people.  Apollo, Simmea and Maia each brought a valuable perspective on the planned society, and I especially enjoyed Apollo’s conversational narration.  One of the central ideas is the importance of choice and of considering others equally important to oneself.  It was interesting to see how this both drove and contradicted the efforts to build a more just society. The ending makes it clear that this phase of the story is complete, but that there is more to tell.  I am curious as to see where the citizens of the Just City will go from here!

Review: Among Others by Jo Walton

Among Others by Jo Walton

Published : Tor, 2011

Awards Won : Nebula Award, Hugo Award, British Fantasy Society Award (Holdstock Award as of this year)

Awards Nominated : Locus Fantasy Award

The Book:

“As a child growing up in Wales, Morwenna played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. When her half-mad mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled--and her twin sister dead.

Fleeing to a father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England-a place all but devoid of true magic. There, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off….” ~WWend.com

I’m getting the feeling my blog is going to fill up with a lot of Jo Walton titles in the coming years!  She’s a very talented writer, and I love how each of her novels feels so different from the ones before.  Among Others seems like a book that was written with a specific audience in mind. As someone who falls (at least partially) into that audience, I found a lot to love in Among Others.   

My Thoughts:

The story of Among Others is told through Morwenna’s journal. The novel was convincing as the journal of a teenage girl, but it was also satisfying as a work of fiction.  I think this is a very difficult balance to achieve.  It was well written, but it felt like the voice of a teenager. There was a certain necessary detachment from the events of the story, but it was compensated by the closeness to the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings.  Telling the story through Mori’s journal also resulted in a slow, meandering plot that was more like a ‘slice-of-life’ story than a traditional narrative structure. 

Mori’s journal felt at times like a teenager’s SF review blog, a mild teen drama, or a fantasy story.  I think it is the first of these points that is the most polarizing.  Mori spends most of her time reading, so she comments constantly on the science fiction novels she consumes.  Later in the story, she even recounts discussions about various authors or works that took place in the book club she joins.  For readers who aren’t well-read in 1960s/1970s science fiction, I can see how this might really bog down the story.   I’ve read a fair amount of the works Mori mentioned,  so I think that I fit into the target audience for these portions of the book.   However, even I have to admit that Mori’s comments about the works were often not particularly important for the story.  Her love for the novels—and her ability to connect with others through that love—was central, but the specific name-dropping seemed mostly present to invoke nostalgia in the reader. 

In addition to her love of science fiction, Mori’s belief in magic shapes her world.  I thought Walton’s treatment of the fantasy elements in Among Others was especially interesting and poetic.  There are no fireballs, magic wands, and magical-lightning-filled showdowns.  Walton’s magic is, as Mori would say, “always deniable.”  Even if a spell appears to have worked, it would do so through ordinary means, leaving always the possibility that the success was merely a coincidence.  Mori sees and talks with fairies, but they can only be seen if one already believes in them.  This mundane treatment of magic makes it possible to see the story either as fantastical, or as the tale of a highly imaginative girl.  I liked how skillfully the story walked between the two interpretations, so that it is never completely clear whether magic really does exist or whether Mori just uses her belief in it to give a meaningful shape to the events of her life.

In addition to the science fiction discussions and quiet fantasy elements, the character of Morwenna is another determining factor for the audience of the novel.  Since this is a story of her daily life, told through her journal, the entire story revolves around her thoughts, her opinions, and her experiences.  I think that it might be difficult to become invested in the story if one did not feel any kind of kinship towards Mori.  I doubt that many people can relate to her specific situation—being crippled in the event that killed your twin sister and then being shipped off to an English boarding school.  However, I think a lot of science fiction fans could probably identify with her struggle to find a group of people who shared her interests.  I particularly connected with Mori’s social problems at her new boarding school.  I know what it feels like to move into a closed system of friendships, and find that no one is particularly interested in involving the “weird new girl”.  Despite Mori’s problems, her narrative remained refreshingly low in self-pity, and I enjoyed getting to know her over the 200-odd pages of Among Others.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Among Others is an unusual book targeted towards a specific audience. The story, told through Morwenna’s journal, is a kind of slice-of-life fantasy story about a teenage science fiction fan searching for a community in which she feels she belongs.  Along the way, Mori constantly discusses the many science fiction novels she’s read (mostly 1960s/1970s SF), in a way that will likely be charming to some readers and off-putting to others.  The magic in the story is “always deniable”, where successful spells can easily be explained away by coincidence.  I loved how this created an ambiguity about whether the magic was real, or it was just the frame Mori used to make sense of her life.  Despite differences in the specific circumstances, this story resonated well with me, and I think it will also resonate with many other fans of science fiction.

Review: Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton

Published: Tor, 2003

Awards Won: World Fantasy Award

The Book:

“Here is a tale of a family dealing with the death of their father, a son who goes to court for his inheritance, a son who agonizes over his father’s deathbed confession, a daughter who falls in love, a daughter who becomes involved in the abolition movement, and a daughter sacrificing herself for her husband.

Here is what sounds for all the world like an enjoyable Victorian novel, perhaps by Anthony Trollope…except that everyone in the story is a dragon, red in tooth and claw.

Here are politics and train stations, churchmen and family retainers, courtship, and country houses…in which, on the death of an elder, family members gather to eat the body of the deceased. In which society’s high and mighty members avail themselves of the privilege of killing and eating the weaker children, which they do with ceremony and relish, growing stronger thereby.” ~barnesandnoble.com

This is the second novel of Walton’s that I’ve read, the first being her entertaining alternate history/murder mystery novel Farthing.  Tooth and Claw is written in a very different style than Farthing, but it is an equally smooth and entertaining read.  Tooth and Claw was the November selection for last year’s Women in Fantasy Book Club, and with this review, I’ve completed the year of novels!

My Thoughts:

Tooth and Claw has been described as being similar to Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage.  I’m not really a Victorian romance aficionado, so I have no experience with Trollope’s work.  However, I’ve also heard the novel referred to as “Pride and Prejudice and Dragons”.  I’ve read Pride and Prejudice, and I can say that it did feel similar in style to Jane Austen.  Though Tooth and Claw follows the conventions of 19^th century romance novels, it is not a retelling of any particular story. This is not merely a gimmicky dragon-insertion into a Victorian novel, but rather a well-constructed tale with inherent absurd humor that adds rather than subtracts from the story.

Referring to Trollope’s novels, Walton states in a foreword, "People aren't like that. Women, especially, aren't like that. This novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like if they were, if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology." For instance, maiden dragons’ lovely golden scales blush irreversibly pink when they are sexually awakened by close proximity to a male dragon.  Thus the ‘corruption’ of a young lady’s innocence actually has public, physical meaning.  

All in all, I was highly impressed by how well Walton’s idea of dragon physiology fit with 19^th century society, all while somehow maintaining the fundamental qualities of dragon nature.   High society has kind of a veneer of civility over an undercurrent of ambition, and I think the use of dragons as characters highlights these thinly masked predatorial tendencies. In this society, for example, dragons gain rank and respect through growing physically larger, which only happens if they consume weaker dragons. This essential violence is neatly wrapped up in civilized rules that govern who is to be eaten and who is allowed to do the eating.  I would never have imagined that dragon nature could mesh so naturally with Victorian society.

Tooth and Claw features a large cast, and the characters are basically the types you might see in a 19^th century romance. There were pious and impious parsons, low-dowry ladies searching desperately for husbands, an up-and-coming young man out to avenge the wrongs committed against his family, a wayward, good-natured, young nobleman, a ‘ruined’ woman with a mysterious past, and more.  The characters change very little, and that in predictable ways, but that doesn’t stop them from being absolutely charming.  I was surprised by how easy it was to get caught up in each of their hopes and fears, and how quickly I found myself rooting for or against various dragons.  Walton took characters that could have been boring clichés, and made them interesting and endearing.

While this kind of story is usually ultimately predictable, there were pleasant surprises along the way.  The novel mostly followed the stories of Selendra and Haner (the two lady dragons with a dowry problems) and their brother Avan (who takes a powerful nobleman to court over his inheritance).  These three stories eventually came together delightfully well, fitting together like puzzle pieces.  This is the kind of novel where, even if you can see the resolution coming a mile away, the journey is still a pleasure.  

My Rating: 4/5

Tooth and Claw is a charming, funny, and all-around pleasant story.  In style and content, it definitely follows in the footsteps of 19^th century novels.  Tooth and Claw works within the conventions of Victorian fiction to tell a well-constructed, social story of a high society peopled by dragons.  The large cast was full of engaging characters that were easy to either love or hate. I think this is a story that could have come over feeling very gimmicky and forced, but I was impressed by how the dragon society seem to naturally fit both dragon nature and the conventions of Victorian fiction.  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and I look forward to reading much more of Walton’s work in the future!

Review: Farthing by Jo Walton

Farthing by Jo Walton

Published: Tor, 2006

Series:  Book 1 of the Small Change Trilogy

Awards Nominated: Locus SF, Nebula, John W. Campbell Award

The Book:

“One summer weekend in 1949--but not our 1949--the well-connected "Farthing set", a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before.

Despite her parents' evident disapproval, Lucy is married--happily--to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It's even more startling when, on the retreat's first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic.

It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates. But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts…and looking beyond the obvious.

As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out--a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.” ~barnesandnoble.com

I read Jo Walton’s Farthing as the October selection for the 2011 Women in Science Fiction Book Club, hosted byCalicoReaction.  I’m a little behind again, but oh well!  I’d never read any of Walton’s work before, but I am planning to pick up Tooth and Claw in the near future.  At some point, I think I’d like to read the rest of the Small Change trilogy as well, though Farthing definitely stands on its own without sequels.    

My Thoughts:

Farthing is a fascinating combination of a country manor murder mystery and a WWII era alternate history.  The story begins with the mystery, and only slowly reveals a world that is not quite like our own.  The murder mystery is less concerned with Holmes-esque feats of logic than it is with a more ordinary type of investigating.  Carmichael’s work mostly involves paperwork, politics, and interviews with often-dishonest suspects. The stakes of the story were raised as more and more of the alternate history setting started to intrude on the situation at the country manor. I enjoyed both aspects of the story and was impressed with how well they worked together to create an atmosphere of increasing tension from leisurely beginnings. 

While I appreciated the story itself, the novel was really brought to life by the two main characters.  The narration alternated between the first person viewpoint of Lucy Kahn and the third person viewpoint of Inspector Carmichael.  It took a while to get used to the switching between first and third person, but I was really impressed with the huge difference in style between the viewpoint characters.  I would never have read a sentence of Lucy’s narration and mistaken it for anyone else.  

To be honest, Lucy really irritated me at the beginning.  She seemed like the usual representation of a ditzy, coddled, aristocratic woman-child—not one of my favorite character types.  However, later on in the story, I began to feel guilty about my initial dismissive attitude towards her character.  While she definitely was a little silly and sheltered, she was also a person of loyalty, courage, and integrity.   On the other end of the spectrum, Inspector Carmichael started as a very business-like, professional narrator.  Throughout the story, though, various aspects of his personal life and principles were slowly revealed.  I preferred Carmichael’s chapters at the outset, but, by the end, I was equally engrossed in the stories of both narrators. Many of the minor characters were fairly simple, but Lucy and Inspector Carmichael were engaging, complex, and dynamic characters.

Aside from being an absorbing story with active, likable main characters, Farthing also had a lot to say about human nature.  While some of the themes seemed a little heavy-handed, Walton’s writing never felt preachy to me.  Much of the novel seemed to be about examining the dangerous relationship between prejudice and power. Farthing also showed how easy it is for otherwise good people to allow or commit terrible acts, and how difficult it can be to maintain one’s personal integrity.  While the story is very smoothly readable and entertaining, it also carries a punch that kept it in my mind long after I’d finished the last page.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Farthing is a very impressive novel that skillfully weaves together a murder mystery and an alternate WWII history.  It switches between the first person viewpoint of aristocrat Lucy Kahn, who married a Jewish man in defiance of her family and society, and the third person viewpoint of Inspector Carmichael, who is tasked with solving a murder at Lucy’s aristocratic family’s country retreat.  Both viewpoints are vivid and engaging, and both characters are complex and well worth following.  While the story is highly entertaining, it also has a lot to say about power, prejudice and human nature.  I’m glad I ended up picking up this novel of Jo Walton’s, and I can’t wait to check out more of her work!