Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell

 

I fell in love with John Wiswell’s writing when I read his story “Open House on Haunted Hill”, which blew me away. Last year, I was thrilled when I got an eARC of his first novel. 

I adored Someone to Build a Nest In and was eagerly anticipating his next book.  I was over the moon when DAW and NetGalley gave me an e ARC of Wearing the Lion in exchange for an honest review. 

This book is the story of Heracles and Hera and their relationship. As a lapsed classicist who loves mythology, this seemed like the perfect book for me. And it was! This was the best, most human, and kindest version of Heracles I have ever seen; likewise, Hera and the other deities are at the most relatable. 

This book kept surprising me. As someone with a passing familiarity with the 12 Labors of Hercules, the nontraditional ways this Heracles solves the problem of how to deal with the Nemean Lion and the Lernean Hydra were surprising and ultimately delightful. The murder of his children hit hard, and I would’ve appreciated a content warning, but all in all this is s sad warm, loving book. 

As I said about his previous novel,everyone who loves monsters should go buy this book. It was that good. 

The Emilie Adventures by Martha Wells

 

These books are so much fun! I really enjoy the writing of Martha Wells.  (And I missed running into her in a College Station bookstore by about 16 minutes last December!) We all love Murderbot, right? Murderbot is one of the absolute best characters to come out of SF in years. I remember when I read the description of Martha Wells’s All Systems Red and thought to myself “I’ve got to put that on hold at the library!”  And I was right - it was excellent. I have eagerly awaited each new Murderbot book and also have been reading some of Ms. Wells’s other fantasy books. (The Witch King was good, but my heart belongs to Murderbot.)

So I was very excited when NetGalley and the publisher gave me an eARC of The Emilie Adventures, an omnibus reprinting of of two fantasy novels written by Martha Wells, in exchange for an honest review. 

These books are more YA than some of her other books, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed them so much? They really reminded me of fantasy adventure novels I read as a kid. It’s a steampunkish secondary world fantasy, where there are guns and airships are powered by magic. Emilie is a young teen orphan who runs away from an unkind uncle and ends up stowing away on a ship headed inside the hollow world in the first book, and, although not great at everything, she is quite capable without seeming like she has main character plot armor. I had so much fun with these books, especially the second one, which dealt well with the repercussions of her running away from home as well as including some exciting “alien” characters. Highly recommend.