Jo Walton

In an alternate Great Britain in 1960 where the nation made peace with Germany in 1941 and Hitler is still living, the nation is preparing to host a peace conference with representatives from Germany and Japan. 18-year-old debutante Elvira Royston is preparing to be presented to the Queen, and her guardian, Peter Carmichael, has his hands full preparing for the peace conference as head of the Watch. Elvira and her friend Betsy accept an invitation to a fascist rally at Marble Arch. Everything starts to go wrong when a riot breaks out at the Rally and Elvira is swept up in the aftermath. Does Carmichael have enough political capital to protect her without exposing his clandestine activities?

This was a page-turner as tension built around Elvira and Carmichael. The resolution was a little too quick and easy and it left some threads hanging. I wish I could say that the alternate world that Walton created in this trilogy would never really exist, but in the current state of the world, it’s all too easy to imagine such a repressive social structure developing.… (more)

Found this on my e-reader (I must have got it free somewhere?) and remembered that I liked Jo Walton, so I might as well read it.

The premise is weird, but I promise it's interesting. In the notes, Walton says she was fifteen when she had an idea about time travelers setting up the Just City from Plato's Republic in Atlantis, but couldn't have pulled it off until now.

I wouldn't have been one of the people who prayed to Athene to live in the Just City, and I like Athene's (Walton's) explanation: the difference between times where we believe in attaining perfection and the times where we believe in progress. I was torn about whether to shelve this as queer; there are lots of side-mentions of bi- and homosexuality, but not any of the main characters and not as a central concern. (SO MANY HISTORICAL LESBIANS THO. IF THERE IS NO FANFIC I WILL BE DISAPPOINTED IN THE INTERNET.) The gender binary is strong in this one.

Apollo decides he needs to live as a human for a lifetime to understand equal significance and volition, and sexism and slavery are two of the foundational cracks with which the city struggles most profoundly. I might have more thoughts about this later, but Walton's treatment of both was good.

Klio's supposed to be from our near future, but she reads more like a 70s or 80s feminist. Does she not quite grok rape culture, or is she purposely giving a less-enlightened response to a date rape that takes place in the book because they're surrounded by a bunch of powerful dudes from the middle ages and antiquity and she's just being practical? (Ugh, what a time for a philosopher to choose practicality.) Both make her look bad, but her response makes more sense from a pre-2000s feminist.… (more)