From acclaimed, award-winning author Jo Walton: <i>Philosopher Kings, </i>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<i>The Just City.</i> The City, founded by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, organized on the principles espoused in Plato’s<i>Republic</i> 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.<br><br>The god Apollo, living (by his own choice) a human life as &quot;Pythias&quot; in the City, his true identity known only to 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 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.<br><br>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 &quot;Greek.&quot; What Apollo, his daughter, and the rest of the expedition will discover…will change everything.<div></div>