Review: Necessity

Necessity by Jo Walton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was the perfect cap on the trilogy. Told in a series of POV chapters that shuttle back and forth through time, the book forms the perfect meta-analogy to the way the gods experience time. Their personal time is moving forward even as they move forward and backward through our timeline.

We also get a perfect conclusion to the story of The Just City and why Athene was allowed to set it up. The scene with Zeus reminded me of the Christian gnostics and it really provided a very interesting answer to the question Christians always ask - why did God create us? The answer is (view spoiler)[ as we learn more and become more excellent, so does God (hide spoiler)].

I also enjoyed the expansion of the pantheon of gods to include alien gods.

Walton does a great job with Apollo’s song to create something similar to the original epic poems.

I really loved this story although this review probably isn’t doing that great a job conveying it. As a story interested in socratic and platonic ideas, it’s really hard to talk about it without spoiling too much.

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