Product Description

From acclaimed, award-winning author Jo Walton: The Philosopher Kings, a tale of gods and humans and the surprising things they have to learn from one another.
Twenty years have elapsed since the events of The Just City. The city, founded by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, organized on the principles espoused in Plato's Republic, and populated by people from all eras of human history, has now split into five cities, and low-level armed conflict between them is not unheard of.
The god Apollo, living (by his own choice) a human life as Pythias in the city, his true identity known to only a few, is now married and the father of several children. But a tragic loss causes him to become consumed with the desire for revenge. Being Apollo, he goes about handling it in a seemingly rational and systematic way, but it's evident - particularly to his precocious daughter, Arete - that he is unhinged with grief.
Along with Arete and several of his sons, plus a boatload of other volunteers - including the now fantastically aged Marsilio Ficino, the great humanist of Renaissance Florence - Pythias/Apollo goes sailing into the mysterious Eastern Mediterranean of pre-antiquity to see what they can find - possibly the man who may have caused his great grief, possibly communities of the earliest people to call themselves Greek. What Apollo, his daughter, and the rest of the expedition will discover...will change everything.

About the Author

Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw in 2004. Her novel Ha'penny was a co-winner of the 2008 Prometheus Award. Her novel Lifelode won the 2010 Mythopoeic Award.