This makes me want to actually read Plato’s Republic. Apollo and Athena decide that they’re going to experimentally create Plato’s hypothetical “just city” by using real people, and they put Platonic philosophers in charge of implementation, which goes about as well as one would expect. I liked the viewpoint characters and the differing life experiences that they brought from their various historical eras, but the novel really takes off when Athena brings in Socrates and under his influence, the residents of the city (mostly children raised, after all, by philosophers) immediately begin questioning everything, including how a city that relies on the purposeful creation of a laboring class can be considered “just”. Such a fun read.