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A review by ophiuchus
Thessaly: The Complete Trilogy by Jo Walton
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Volition. Equal significance. Plato.
Plato’s Republic is put into action! How? Well, a little divine inspiration goes a long way… plus some literal divinity. This book is a thought experiment about a thought experiment. Get ready for a lot of talking!
1) Potential (for rereading): very low. What you see is what you get with this trilogy. Plus the third act/book has moments that *really* drag. That said, I will be reading the works referenced in this one, so there’s a plus. .25/1.
Plato’s Republic is put into action! How? Well, a little divine inspiration goes a long way… plus some literal divinity. This book is a thought experiment about a thought experiment. Get ready for a lot of talking!
1) Potential (for rereading): very low. What you see is what you get with this trilogy. Plus the third act/book has moments that *really* drag. That said, I will be reading the works referenced in this one, so there’s a plus. .25/1.
2) Protagonists (proportion of believable, people-like characters): .5/1. There are a couple of very interesting characters here. Also a couple of mind-numbingly tedious ones that could not exist in any universe except that of the author’s imagination.
3) Plot (well-structured/no holes):
.25/1. The “plot”, such as it is, is not what you’re really reading this book for. That said, it is there and has an overarching frame that is at least logical if not very satisfying. The lack of any sort of meaningful foreshadowing will really grate on some genre readers.
.25/1. The “plot”, such as it is, is not what you’re really reading this book for. That said, it is there and has an overarching frame that is at least logical if not very satisfying. The lack of any sort of meaningful foreshadowing will really grate on some genre readers.
4) Premise (interestingness): .75/1. This is the category I read this book for and it mostly delivered on the concept. There were a couple of hand-wavey / unnecessarily elided scenes that left me feeling blue-balled, but nothing seriously disappointing.
5) Prose (flow): yikes. For a professionally published book written by a veteran author, there were more than a few sentences that made me do a double take because they were so needlessly convoluted, and not in the intentional way obviously noticed at other junctures in the book. The editor really failed to do their job with this one. .25/1.
Who should read this book:
People who want to understand what on Earth is going on inside the heads of those people working at new AI companies cranking out LLMs like there’s no tomorrow (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.).
Who should not read this book:
anyone who hates philosophy/thought PHIL 101 was too boring to stay awake for in college.
Who maybe should / maybe shouldn’t read this:
fans of speculative fiction. You could really enjoy it. You could also find it really annoying. Like Greek mythology? Absolutely yes. Find the Olympian pantheon overdone? Stay away!
Who should read this book:
People who want to understand what on Earth is going on inside the heads of those people working at new AI companies cranking out LLMs like there’s no tomorrow (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.).
Who should not read this book:
anyone who hates philosophy/thought PHIL 101 was too boring to stay awake for in college.
Who maybe should / maybe shouldn’t read this:
fans of speculative fiction. You could really enjoy it. You could also find it really annoying. Like Greek mythology? Absolutely yes. Find the Olympian pantheon overdone? Stay away!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape
The rape scenes are integral to the plot and are well discussed in a reasonably detached and objective manner multiple times in the book. It’s not torture porn, but there was one rape instance that seemed like the author enjoyed writing it just a little too much.