Book Review: Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell

Bringing a new found family perspective to the story of the greatest Greco-Roman mythology superhero.

When I wrote my review of Stephen Fry’s Troy in 2022, I had imagined it to be an endpoint to a boomlet of books interpreting and reinterpreting Greek mythology from a variety of perspectives. Little did I know that Fry himself has a new book in his series, but more importantly, and germane to this review, John Wiswell (Someone You Can Build a Nest In) would step up to the plate of tackling and interpreting Greek mythology. And, what's more, take the biggest of swings to the most famous hero of Greek mythology in the process.

And so we come to his second novel, Wearing the Lion.

If you are at all familiar with anyone in Greek mythology, you probably know something about Heracles (or, if you want to go Roman, Hercules). Having a TV series devoted to him in the 1990’s certainly helped. His labors come up (even if why he had to do the labors sometimes is fuzzy in the minds of many people). His prodigious strength, certainly is the stuff of legend. He is really is the OG superhero of Classical western literature.

 
And then there is of course the monsters in Heracles' story, where Wiswell comes in.

In many stories of his even before his breakout novel, John Wiswell has been writing and thinking about monsters¹. Monsters are one of his core themes and ideas and exploring monsters, from the inside as well as out, is one of his strongest power chords. And Heracles’ story, let’s face it, is positively littered with monsters. Nearly all of his labors are capturing or killing something monstrous. Probably, the most famous of these is the Nemean Lion, the one whose hide is impenetrable to weapons. How do you defeat a monstrous carnivore you can’t hurt with a spear or a sword? In the main line of the myth, Heracles wrestles it to defeat, uses its own claws and teeth to cut the hide, and then wears it for the rest of his life as some rather good light armor.

 
Wiswell comes up with a rather different idea, and hence the book’s title and the throughline for the book. Why would Heracles, himself a monster in some ways, not seek to befriend monsters rather than to slay them? And what does that do to his myth and story? The Nemean Lion is the first, but far from the only monster that Heracles meets and befriends in the course of the narrative. Heracles is not afraid of a fight, or of war, but this is a Heracles that would rather make a friend. Again, and again. Wearing the Lion is not an act of violence... it is an act of love.

The book alternates point of view between Heracles and Hera. You might be familiar that in most myths, Hera hates Heracles and from birth tries to kill or weaken him². Wiswell plays on the fact that while Hera hates Heracles (for being a bastard son of her philandering husband Zeus), Heracles himself is for most of the book absolutely and positively devoted to “Auntie Hera”. He takes the “Hera’s Glory” of his name (that is what his name means) and hits that theme again and again. This imbalance between a Heracles who is always trying to live up to his divine stepmother and be worthy of her, not knowing she is seeking his downfall, drives a lot of the plot, and some of the more mordant humor of the book. There is the damoclean sword hanging over the narrative--what happens when Heracles finds out what Hera really thinks of him?

 
But the book begins lightly and sprightly enough, in a style that I’ve come to associate with Wiswell’s writing. It almost, I think, strays over to being twee. The conversational tone of the chapters contributes to this, as we often have Heracles, or Hera, talking to (or even more often addressing ) another character in the chapter. The second person point of view gets a workout in this novel and uses it frequently

For all of that rather light tone at the beginning, though, Wiswell is willing to go dark, and in fact to tell his story has to go dark.. I should not have been entirely surprised given his short fiction but there is definitely a gear shift in this book, before and after the death of his children. I had wondered, being relatively familiar with the Heracles story, how Wiswell was going to go there, since he changes a lot of the rest of his labors and background. But indeed, Heracles does in fact kill his three children thanks to a bout of divine madness. What had started as a relatively light Heracles and the monsters story shifts into a more serious and somber tone with less humor and more drama. Heracles of course wants to know why this happened, convinced some god must have done this, and so the rest of his narrative shifts to the quest to find that out.

There is also good work on the theme of identity and who you are. The fact that one of Heracles’ early names Alcides is used again and again, and Heracles reverts to that name when he feels no longer worthy of the name Heracles. This reminds me of Doctor Who’s The War Doctor, stripping himself of the title Doctor, and having in his own mind to re-earn and regain the right to use that name. Lots of Wiswell’s characters at some point have crises or have to come to terms with who they are and their nature. His take on Heracles is another in that spirit and mode.

Meantime, on the other side, Hera has reconsiderations of the fallout of what she has done. A strong beat Wiswell hits again and again is that Hera is Goddess of the Family. Families, especially pregnant mothers but all families in general, are her divine mandate. And instead of killing Heracles with the madness, she wound up killing his family instead³. Coming to terms with all that and what happens next, along with Heracles’ own quests, makes up the back portion of the book. And as Heracles befriends more monsters and completes more quests, the eventual conflict of Hera’s plans and Heracles’ own quest head toward inexorable conflict.

 
So the novel is really in the end about Heracles and his found family of monsters and how they intersect with Hera and her family of gods and goddesses. There is a lot of lovely bits set on Olympus with Hera and the parts of the Olympian pantheon we see--in particular Ares and Athena, although a couple of others come in as well. A criticism I might have for the book is that a few opportunities were definitely missed on this side of the equation, especially with Hera given the divine mandate of motherhood and family being an important theme of the novel. Demeter and Persephone for instance, aren’t even named. The wrangling between the deities we do get and see, however is gold, and their squabbling never gets old⁴. The novel really is, from Hera’s perspective, the slow realization that Heracles’ group of monsters with him are, in fact, a family. Heracles’ story is the slow realization of his own nature, what he did, and coming to terms with himself. And, not to bury the lede, learning to actually accept his family for and what they are.

 
Wearing the Lion shows off John Wiswell’s talents for humanizing and making monsters into people and again, like his first novel, showing that people can often be the real monsters of society. This book doesn’t quite hit that theme as hard as Someone You Can Build a Nest In, this novel though is much more about building and creating a found family...and accepting them and accepting them and their love into you, as much as you loving them. Heracles gets the latter part right off... but he (and Hera) need to learn the first half of that equation matters, too.

--

Highlights:

• Interesting take on the Heracles myth exploring his relationship with Hera in a new way
• Strong theme of found family of monsters
• At turns funny, mordant, and without warning, will tear your heart out (a John Wiswell book in other words)

Reference: Wiswell, John, Wearing the Lion, [DAW 2025]

¹Dream conversation at a con or literary event ? Get John Wiswell to talk to Surekha Davies (author of Humans A Monstrous History) about monsters. That’s box office gold. 

²As Fry notes in his books, though, there are a multiplicity of varieties and variants to Greek mythology. Heracles' story is no exception and in fact, he was enormously popular across the Mediterranean. Heracles is actually Hera’s chosen champion in Etruscan mythology and we get none of the “try and kill him” business.

³In this version of the myth, Hercules kills his children but not his wife, who remains loyal to him and important to his redemption. Is that “correct” to the myth? See footnote 2.

⁴Allow me once again to lament the cancellation of KAOS, with Greek Gods set in the Modern Day. 

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

Review: The Return

A visually stunning retelling of the final chapters of Odysseus' return home to Ithaca that is brutal, quiet, and an exploration of the traumas of war—but it's missing the supernatural

When I heard Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche were going to be in a new retelling of the Odyssey (focusing on just the final chapters following our hero's return back to Ithaca), I was stoked. This marks these two fantastic actors' first film together since 1996's The English Patient.

I'm also a long-time Odyssey stan, having fallen in love with the story upon my first read way back in 10th grade. Since then, I've revisited it over the years, especially the Emily Wilson translation that came out in 2018. And honestly, there hasn't been a good depiction of the story in quite a while. In the '90s, we had Armand Assante playing Odysseus in a TV movie (with a perfectly cast Isabella Rossellini playing the grey-eyed goddess Athena), which while entertaining wasn't quite classic cinema. You could also count 2000's O Brother, Where Art Thou?, though that's more of a loose adaptation updated to the 20th century.

With The Return, we pick up on the story nearly 20 years after Odysseus left his home to take up arms and join his fellow Greeks to fight against the Trojans across the sea. The war itself lasted for a decade, before our wily hero thought up the Trojan horse, which would turn the tide of the battle and end in Troy's destruction. While everyone else headed home, Odysseus spent another 10 years wandering the Greek isles, cursed by the sea god Poseidon.

When he finally makes it to the shore of Ithaca, he's battered, bruised, naked, distraught, and not even sure of where is until Eumaeus, a slave, tells him. This version of Odysseus, however, isn't the resilient hero (at least not yet)—he's a broken man filled with the horrors of war and PTSD.

His family, for whom he has so long fought to make it back to see, has their own issues too. Penelope is cornered by rapacious suitors that demand her hand in marriage while also ruining the island. Telemachus, their son, is man-child angry at both his mother and long-vanished father. Only Penelope, it seems, holds out hope.

For those familiar with the Odyssey (and I can't imagine someone seeing this movie who's not at least a little familiar with the age-old epic), you know the beats and the tropes, but the film takes its time with delivering some of them. With others, you get them ad nauseam. At times, I felt acutely Penelope's frustration as we watched her each evening unravel her shroud work on the loom, the bright red twine coiling away her progress. The camera lingers on many scenes on the island, and it feels at times like you're right there living on the craggy shores of Ithaca.

What this movie is missing, however, is the magic and the gods of the original source. Without Athena's constant guiding hand (and often appearing in disguise), Poseidon's unearthly rage, or Zeus' kingly machinations, the story misses something.

I know that the director chose to do this on purpose, to create a tale about humans and human destruction, but it doesn't exactly work for me. There's a majesty and grandeur to the Greek gods, and dare I say it a level of pettiness and fun that makes the story less about trauma and more about adventure.

Trauma is an important part of the human experience, and to be fair, one that's been overlooked in storytelling for much of history. The rise of A24 has given us many films that expertly explore trauma, and The Return follows the same sort of path. For me, though, it was a bit of a slog to watch, and as I left the theater, I was in a kind of numb place for a few hours. I don't think I saw Odysseus smile once in the entire movie, and the only time he expresses he gratitude for finally making it home, he literally stuffs his mouth with soil.

I'm glad I saw it—Fiennes' portrayal is excellent, and the production design is immaculate—but this one's for only hardcore Homer fans, I'm afraid.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, new NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film review: Kalki 2898 AD

A clash of past against future, tyrants against gods, ambition against destiny

The latest blockbuster to come from epic Indian cinema, Kalki 2989 AD is India's most expensive film so far. Set in a far future beset by hunger, despotism and hopelessness, it follows a handful of improbable heroes struggling to bring about a new era of peace.

The background context for this film is the Kurukshetra War, a pivotal moment in epic Indian literature. According to the Sanskrit poem Mahabharata, two related clans, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, fought each other brutally for eighteen days over control of the Kingdom of Hastinapura. Toward the end of the war, one formidable soldier allied with the Kauravas, Ashwatthama, upon seeing that his side was losing, hurled a weapon of divine might against princess Uttara, who was pregnant with the last surviving heir of the Pandavas. The hero Krishna, an earthly incarnation of the god Vishnu, stopped the attack and cursed Ashwatthama to walk the earth for centuries.

The film takes these events and gives them a continuation in our far future. The opening credits, which consist of a digital animation of scenes from the Kurukshetra War, end in a close-up of a CGI shoot of grass that blends into an identical-looking, real shoot of grass. The meaning is clear: the realm of myth extends into the real world. In this future setting, the Kali Yuga, the cosmic era ruled by sin and perversion, is nearing its end, and the hero Kalki, the next incarnation of Vishnu, who will restore the world and put an end to evil, is about to be born. Unfortunately, the tyrant who controls the last surviving human city has a habit of kidnapping fertile women for horrific experiments to try and extend his own lifespan. It is one of those women who is carrying the foretold savior of humankind.

Kalki 2898 AD does a good job of explaining the basics of its massive lore, but for Western viewers it wouldn't hurt to brush up on their Hindu mythology. Much of the emotional impact of the plot (especially the return of Ashwatthama as an eight-foot-tall badass immortal) relies on the audience's assumed familiarity with and personal investment in Hindu eschatology. This is not like watching a movie about Hercules or Achilles, where we know the relevant myths but don't take them as historical fact. Rather, imagine if the plot of Left Behind happened in the setting of Mad Max, and, more importantly, imagine that you're a devoted believer. The tacit position of the film, and of its intended audience, is that the Mahabaratha narrates actual events that happened in real life. Whereas Western scriptwriters and directors will probably not feel any reverence for the Olympian gods, to a huge portion of the Indian population the Hindu gods are very real. Keep that in mind as you sit to watch.

Once the stakes are defined, the film becomes a series of frantic chase scenes between bad guys and good guys trying to snatch this desperate pregnant woman who never asked to occupy such an important position. Combat scenes are a mixed bag: while Ashwatthama (now tasked with protecting Kalki's mother until he can be born) commands every scene he appears in with his imposing presence and impeccable acting (no surprise there, since he's played by cinema legend Amitabh Bachchan), his sometimes rival, a bounty hunter named Bhairava, is comparably strong, but the visual effects used in his fighting moves are too obviously fake. Nameless mooks get smashed against the walls like bowling pins, making Bhairava's battles (even the all-important one at the end) look more comical than awesome.

Visual effects in general are a problem with this film. Landscape shots look impressive, but the objects moving in the foreground seem copied and pasted from a stock photo archive. Together with the Zack Snyder-style yellowish tint that was applied all over the film, the disorienting editing between sequences and even within the same scene, the ill-advised use of fast motion for dramatic effect, and the cringeworthy sense of humor, these moviemaking choices rob Kalki 2898 AD of the majestic aura it wants to claim.

Your enjoyment of the protagonist, bounty hunter Bhairava, will depend on how much patience you have for the lovable rogue archetype. Take Han Solo, but replace Chewbacca with KITT from Knight Rider, and you'll get the idea. It's interesting that Bhairava starts the movie in opposition to the aims of divine prophecy, but gradually becomes an antiheroic figure who fights the villains for selfish reasons. Alas, the rest of the cast isn't fleshed out at all. The expectant mother of the god Vishnu is treated as a standard-issue damsel in distress; the generic mid-level commander who persecutes our heroes is stuck in the role of generic mid-level commander; the supporting heroes are an interchangeable collection of cool gadgets and catchphrases; and the minor villains are disposable meat. That's a common problem with plots built on prophecy: characters don't need to grow, because victory is already written in stone.

This film is the first entry in a planned Kalki Cinematic Universe that has already produced a prequel series. Accordingly, Kalki 2898 AD ends in a cliffhanger that renders much of its plot moot. In a discouraging imitation of Hollywood's worst habits, the film even has a post-credits scene that teases a bigger battle with the final boss. It's clear that the producers want to go big with this, but the studio needs to hire better scriptwriters, and the visual effects aren't yet at a level capable of delivering a spectacle deserving of awe.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Review: For Love of Magic by Simon Green

A myth about understanding why we love myths—a metamyth, if you will

Fantasy is a genre built on myth. That is what J. R. R. Tolkien was quite explicitly doing with The Lord of the Rings, and in traditional Western fantasy the myths of Western Europe are reinterpreted in any number of ways. In non-Western fantastic literature, the same is done to the mythologies of a variety of other cultures. Here, that concern is made more explicit than most fantasy, of any tradition, in Simon Green’s novella For Love of Magic.

For Love of Magic starts off with what appears to be a fairly standard urban fantasy setup: a magical painting has begun to cause problems in a museum in London, and His Majesty’s government calls in the freelance magic hunter to solve the problem. This opening scene alone is inventive, if not the most original, by virtue of it involving our esteemed magic hunter literally walking into the painting and forcing what’s on the other end into a shape that is more amenable to the non-magical world.

But that is only the opening salvo of a barrage of interesting magical set-pieces. Our protagonist is rapidly sucked into a war that has lasted for eons, between those who want to see magic gone and those who want a better coexistence between the magical and the mundane. This war has suddenly escalated: the opponents of magic have now found a way to travel through time, trying to erase that which made magic meaningful—to erase myth, to erase heroism and whimsy. Our protagonists simply cannot allow that.

It is here that For Love of Magic begins to really shine, as it sets out to interrogate the meaning of myth. That is why you find yourself sent back in time to Roman Britain, where you meet Boudica, as well as King Arthur and Robin Hood, among other figures of British mythology, not quite as you remember them, because time has done a number on how we perceive them. These were men and women, all too human, as Green stresses, who have become something else as time marched inexorably on, becoming the heroes, myths, and legends of British culture, and those of its former colonies.

Green is willing to show heroism become a burden, not so much literally as metaphorically through the incursions of the time travelers. These are people who have become special in a time when their Lord-knows-how-many generations of their descendants have passed on, with their own long lines of descendants likewise. They have become pawns in a war far more literal than what we call ‘culture wars,’ a conflict that truly deserves that title over the role of magic in human society. They are burdened with the vicious arguments of their progeny, but unlike the cold and silent statues of our day, be they in Bristol or Charlottesville, these heroes get to speak back and fight back.

The action in this slim little volume is well depicted, never bogged down in the minutiae that can tank a good action sequence. Green’s writing is brisk when it needs to be in these dynamic scenes, and tender when it needs to be among some of the character moments, be they concerned with romance or with the gravity of the situation. It is a style, indeed a combination, that feels properly heroic, with the gravitas that such a story naturally needs. Green never lets the story feel puny.

If anything, I’m disappointed this book wasn’t longer. There are many more British legends he could have gone with. The last one he depicts, while written by a British author (although not within Britain), struck me as a very odd choice for this sort of book, and some of the setting of that story is brought to Britain in a way that feels odd. Indeed, it’s a format that could have made for a much longer book, and part of me really wants to read that book (I can think of at least one British literary legend in the public domain that wasn’t in it, and frankly I was surprised that this figure was omitted). I don’t know whether Green is planning any sequels, but he really should be, for there are so many directions this story could go. There are other British myths, but also myths of other countries (his Wikipedia page mentions he studied American literature in university, in addition to British literature). Indeed, I daresay this novel could set up a whole shared universe like that of the late Eric Flint’s 1632 series.

For Love of Magic is a book that is not particularly original in a number of elements, but makes up for all of that in its bold use of intertextuality and its investment in understanding why its audience reads stories like this. It is fantasy that doesn’t just crib from mythology, but engages with and even probes these stories for why they became myths. It is a fantasy that is in many ways more self-aware than its contemporaries, and is all the better for it. Now only if Green could write another one…

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

Reference: Green, Simon. For Love of Magic [Baen, 2023].

Review: Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology

An eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways

Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology is an anthology of short stories written by a range of authors in the African diaspora. Through the variety of writing styles, we get an eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways. All of the tales are set in the “Sauútiverse,” a fictional star system inspired by African mythology and African-futuristic sci-fi. Most of the stories in the anthology are infused with evocative imagery and gorgeous, immersive lyrical prose.

The anthology opens with several layers of commentary on the creation and inspiration for the collection, followed by sections of explanatory discourse on the makeup of the Sauútiverse. Fans of detailed world-building might enjoy the deep dive into politics, mythology, magic, technology, and planetary ecology. But plot driven readers will prefer to skim the preliminary details and dive into the stories. Throughout the book, the stories vary from lyrical world-building to fast-paced adventures to introspective character narratives. Each tale is carefully woven and thoughtful but some are more philosophical and abstract while some are grounded in active struggles and adventures.

Each story is preceded by a backstory explanation passage which, like the prologues, may appeal to those who like technical details. However, this technique is distractingly lecture-like to readers who just want to dive in and escape to another world. The details from each preceding passage are helpful for understanding the context of the tale but the decision to speak directly to readers reminds us that this isn’t real. For those who prefer to be transported and immersed in a new reality, the information could be better woven into the introductory sentences of the story or provided by a recurring fictional storyteller sharing the information in between the tales.

Despite this shortcoming, many of the stories in the collection are fascinating, immersive, and engaging. A few stood out in particular for me.

In The Way of Baa'gh by Cheryl S. Ntumy, a crab-like creature tries to sabotage an alliance of his people with the humanoids. Unlike prior stories, this is a tale told from the point of view of humanity’s enemy, a monster who despises, fears, and misunderstands humans and remains determined to sabotage them when the humans and Baa’gh form an alliance to try to harness control of time. Through the protagonist we see humans as dangerous aliens. This clever literary technique allows the story to unfold in a unique and tragic way.

The Grove’s Lament by Tobias S. Buckell is the story of Ami-inata, one of several refugees rehabbing a wasteland and trying to protect the fragile ecosystem. But she must fight for her life when a chaotic scientist from their ruined world tries to reenact the same type of dangerous experiment that destroyed their home world. He is mystical and destructive but Ami-inata is practical and focused as they clash with the safety of their people in the balance.

Xhova by Adelehin Ijasan is one of many stories in the anthology which addresses the intersection of technology with spirituality and magic. A human child is raised by an android parent, Xhova, in a post-apocalyptic society where androids control the creation and raising of humans. Xhova has grown attached to his human child but testing reveals she possesses magic which dooms her to death and Xhova has to choose whether to save his human daughter. The story is told from Xhova's first-person perspective and also from his second person perspective to his daughter. As a result, it becomes an immersive confluence of mythology and technology.

My favorite tale in the collection is A City, a Desert, and All Their Dirges by Somto Ihezue and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. A young man, Ajubiju, is bored with his highly spiritual, rural, nomadic people. He gets a chance to change his destiny when he meets a high tech foreign entourage (the Lomanoo) to his community. Two of their high councilors have been murdered by spiritual means and, since they only have high tech at their disposal, they need a person from a magic community to help them solve the mystery. Ajubiju is tired of his isolated, spiritual nomadic life and craves adventure with the technologically advanced society so he defies his mother and breaks his spiritual bond with his people to leave. This story is a futuristic crime thriller set in a high-tech city. Ajubiju is the magic wielder brought in to find the spiritual assassin in a city of non-believers. While there he befriends a young woman, the sister of one of the targeted councilors, who finds him fascinating. The story is a page-turner, with chase scenes and plot twists worthy of a big-screen adventure, but it still manages to be poignant, tragic, and thoughtful in its exploration of grief and revenge.

Sina, the Child with No Echo by Eugen Bacon is set in a society where all humans have an “echo,” a form of spiritual/magical hearing essential to their culture. In the story, Sina is born without an echo and left by his parents to die in the woods as an infant. But he is rescued by his aunt, a village leader who raises Sina as her son and trains him to use his skills to hunt and forage. Sina’s sister, Rehama’re, is a year younger than him and raised by their parents as a replacement for him. Understandably this creates an awkward relationship when they encounter each other in the village. The background is an allegory for society’s willingness to accommodate physical disabilities while the main plot focuses on the two siblings joining forces against a creature who has been ravaging the village. Overall, the story is an exploration of the true meaning of “family” and the value of unequivocal love that inspires Sina’s journey to his own self-acknowledgment.

Some of the stories focus on the theme of false histories versus the pursuit of societal truth. In Undulation by Stephen Embleton, an orphaned girl is tasked with reciting the origin story of her people in special public ceremonies. She struggles when she senses the falseness hidden in the words even as she comes to terms with her own personal tragedies. Muting Echoes, Breaking Tradition by Eye Kaye Nwaogu is the story of an opposing pair of secret assassins who must decide if truth and friendship can overcome murderous commands and institutional lies in this star-crossed lovers story.

Overall, editor Wole Talabi has created a memorable collection of clever stories set in a vivid universe. Although the world-building can be exhausting, the payoff is worth it. The tales blend technology, magic, and spirituality in a way that will appeal to readers with an appetite for immersive and innovative storytelling.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights

• Immersive imagery, gorgeous prose.

• Backstory overload.

• Engaging mix of magic, mythology, and high-tech futurism.

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: Inanna by Emily H. Wilson

An interesting take on a Mesopotamian myth, but one that brings its own downsides along with its innovations.

One of my favourite fun facts (because I am a hit at parties) is that the earliest recorded text for which we have a named author was written by a woman. Her name was Enheduanna, and she wrote several hymns to Inanna, and to other of the Sumerian gods, back in the 23rd century BCE. The myth of Inanna - a... complex goddess of both love and war - alongside the Epic of Gilgamesh, is thus one of our oldest attested mythological narratives, rich in variations as all stories are when they've been around long enough. In a literary environment full of feminist retellings of goddesses and mortal women girlbossing it up, it feels somewhat surprising that we haven't yet had a heavily marketed attempt at this story of a goddess who seemingly gets to have it all (so long as you define "all" is as being the ability to wield both violence and sensuality). But we haven't, and so Emily H. Wilson's upcoming debut novel gets to attack the problem from a relatively clean slate.

Somewhat belying the title, the novel is actually a retelling of both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of Inanna's descent to the underworld (is it spoilers if it's 44 centuries old? I feel like that may be past the statute of limitations on spoilers), linking the two via Inanna's interaction with Gilgamesh in his own story, but mostly holding them apart as two concurrent but mostly unconnected tales. They both take place in a historically authentic Mesopotamian setting, rich in details of how life is lived by people both within and without the structures of power. However, this is a setting where the gods live very literally among their people, in palaces and temples, exercising temporal power alongside their more numinous abilities. We see Inanna grow up here, the only child of the gods born after their fall from the heavens, learning what it is to be an immortal among the mortal, forever set apart by her blood and birth. Meanwhile, we watch Gilgamesh, born likewise in the mortal world to gods but without their immortality, reckoning with his own fragility in comparison to those he loves, and who love him, and how this affects his character and behaviour.

We also follow Ninshubar, born outside of the sphere of Sumerian society but drawn into it by forces beyond her control, and forced to learn how to deal with its power and its cruelties, before she finds herself allied with Inanna and her people. An interesting person, drawn from a much more minor mythological figure, she presents the outsider's perspective to everything, as well as just someone with a unique view of the world and how one interacts with it, as something of a balm in the face of the other two stories, as well as, sometimes, a strange sort of comic relief. She's such a fun person to inhabit the thoughts of, I always found myself glad when I got to one of her chapters, because the way she speaks, and thinks, was so specific to her and unlike most other characters I've read before.

In some ways, this is a heavily character driven story - it cares a lot with young Inanna's reckoning of watching those around her die, as well as Gilgamesh's various interpersonal relationships, and particularly that with Enkidu. It wants to humanise their emotional inner lives, and have us relate to them as people, first and foremost, even as they behave as gods and heroes.

However... there's a catch. And it's by far the most interesting choice Wilson has made in the novel.

From the moment we start, the prose, constantly, at both a sentence level and a broader structural level, has a ghost of reminiscence of the original Sumerian way of telling stories about it. It's not a full on pastiche, by any means, and it doesn't read like a bad translation at any point, but if you've ever engaged with one of those stories directly, whether in translation or original, you will begin to feel the kinship between the way they speak, and how Wilson has organised her prose.

One of the ways she does this is the use of repetition. On a sentence by sentence level, it looks something like this:

Take away water from a man, and he wilts. But you have given me water and I thank you for that water.

As an English sentence, devoid of context and relation to any other text, this reads as... somewhat artless. The repetition is strange, and very much unnatural to the usual way our literature is written. But, in the context of Mesopotamian myth*, this is very very normal. Some of the texts we have that these stories come to us from are also hymns, rather than simple narratives, and we find this repetition especially common in those contexts. Wilson here is evoking very strongly the sort of phraseology you would see if you picked up a translation of Enheduanna's work, for instance.

But it's not just on the small scale. There's one phrase that Ninshubar uses in her first chapter - one step and then the next - that crops up from time to time in her own later ones, her way of approaching the seemingly insurmountable problems she faces. But as the story progresses, we find it repeated not just in her perspective but in the perspective of Inanna, who now travels with her, and even in that of Gilgamesh. It stops being a set phrase, repeated word for word, but becomes a sort of ideal that permeates how they all approach the problems of the later half of the book, and so this simple sentence sets off echoes that reverberate and change across the whole length of the story.

We also frequently see repeated motifs, like the following that comes in a Gilgamesh chapter when he meets strangers in the desert and is offered tea:

I drank it down, but at once he poured me another cup. Only when I had forced down three cups did Uptu hunt around for other cups, and hand them around to the other men. Finally, he sat down cross-legged in front of me, with his own tea, and sipped at it. Since he said nothing, I said nothing.

And then a few paragraphs later:

Uptu nodded at me, and then handed me a small plate.
"Thank you," I said. I heaped my plate high.

<gap of a few lines>

I ate a second plate, and then a third one.
After that, the other men came forwards to shovel meat and breads onto their own plates.

This type of repetition and formulaic, almost ritualistic expression, even of a relatively minor event, is incredibly common in Mesopotamian myth, and to see it here very strongly evokes them, to anyone familiar. And that particular type of repetition - and how it feels ritualistic - lends an air of the mythic to the story, even in those moments when we feel that its subject has become as mundane as drinking tea and eating meat. The prose feels constantly considered and laden with meaning.

And I love this, I love how there's such a persistent thread of commonality with the source texts running through it, meaning you can never forget where this story comes from. Wilson has done an impeccable job making it palpable and present, but without ever letting it become overbearing - you never stop feeling like you're still reading a modern novel... it's just one that evokes something much older. I think it took a great deal of skill to manage, and it's something I think we see less in retellings, even ones that do a lot to heavily set their story in an authentic historical place.

However, and to loop back to where this all started, this approach has a downside. Where repetition can feel ritualistic, ponderous, laden with weight and meaning, giving the whole text the air of the numinous and potent... it also very much undercuts the more intimate, human moments, precisely because it conveys their opposite. For Inanna in the underworld, numinous is amazing. For Gilgamesh's newly budding feelings for a travelling companion, for his grief at the death of a beloved, it robs us of our intimacy and our sympathy. By elevating the events of the story above the mortal plane, Wilson unfortunately loses some of the grasp on those same events' humanity, and this is a terrible shame. There are some incredibly potent moments across the story that even through the prose were heartfelt, but because they felt stilted and formal, never quite reached the level of sob-inducing and gut-wrenching they might have done in a story told differently.

On balance, I think this is a price worth paying. If I want my heart ripped out by touching moments of intimate emotion, there are other authors and can go to, other stories I can find. There are very few that do what Wilson has chosen here with her prose, and I think that should be treasured. But I have to admit, I wish she could magically have done both, even as I don't see how - I think if you applied the prose techniques more inconsistently, it would ruin the atmosphere she's so painstakingly created, and so succeed at neither part at all.

On a more structural level, she also harks back to Mesopotamian myth narratives in the way her story is arranged - especially toward the end it begins to feel rather like one event and then the next, rather than a cohesive plot with coherent underpinnings. But again, I find I don't mind it. Does it feel like a modern novel? Mostly, but not entirely. Does it once again evoke the feeling of reading an ancient myth? Absolutely. Gilgamesh's story particularly is full of twists and turns of things just sort of... happening... and him going along with them, and there's a shadow of something very similar haunting all of his chapters, and everyone's chapters in the last quarter of the story.

But the joy isn't purely in the story's authenticity. In little hints that I hope point to much more significant developments in the sequels (because this is the first in a trilogy), Wilson starts to suggest that maybe the power and backstory of the gods isn't quite as... magical or mythological... as we might assume. It's never made explicit, but the hints build and build until a point where you cannot quite ignore them, and you start to wonder if maybe this one needs to be shelved as SF rather than F. Again, in the landscape of myth retellings, this is a nice twist to set this one apart from the many others, and one I really want to read the sequels for, simply to find out where it leads. To have something like that, a surprise and a mystery, in a story 44 centuries old, is incredibly refreshing.

You will note that at no point since my opening paragraph have I talked about this in the context of a feminist retelling... because it's not one. It's not anti-feminist. It just has other themes and threads its interested in, and in a literary context where girl-boss Inanna feels depressingly plausible, I am incredibly glad to see she has not materialised here. Is she powerful? Yes, undoubtedly. But her power and her focus is unconnected to her gender (though she is deeply aware of how her gender influences her situation), and so it just never becomes the point... which again, is refreshing. It is a gender-aware story, without needing to hit the reader over the head with its points.

On the whole, that level of subtlety and care is exactly what exemplifies all the good parts of the story. It's an incredibly thoughtful retelling, and one that sets itself apart by how it ties itself close and pushes itself away from the myths it exists in conversation with. You have no doubt that the author is deeply familiar with them, but also wants to make her own story, not just put us through the same events in a different voice. It does let itself down in how it portrays the emotional lives of its characters, and I do feel like there was something of an opportunity miss in the way Gilgamesh and Enkidu was rushed a little through, but on the whole, this feels like a price worth paying for a story choosing to do something unusual in both ideas and form.

*I say Mesopotamian here rather than specifically Sumerian because a lot of the storytelling traditions and forms did translate across the different civilisations there. What is true of Sumerian can also be seen in some Akkadian or Hittite texts, for example, and the stories told in one sometimes made their way across to the others.

--

The Math

Highlights: prose incredibly evocative of the myths from which the story draws, very clear descriptions of place, interesting hint of deviation from the story you expect

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Reference: Emily H. Wilson, Inanna, [Titan, 2023]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea

Our Retellings are Dull - the Problem of the Modern Mythical Reimagining

Most of the myth retellings we have right now are bland.

There are several reasons for it, not least because most of them are retelling a relatively small subset of the stories from primarily one culture (Ancient Greece). Even the best, most interesting work that only plays in this small sandpit would run the risk of being overdone. And, in my opinion, most of what we're getting isn't anywhere near that best.

For one thing, the way many of them are adapted to modernity, in format, but critically in tone, does them a disservice. The originals have guts and teeth and claws, and they may not be the ones we want now, but they have them. But, unfortunately, the majority of the retellings take them out, make them... more palatable, but less substantial. Sometimes, this is in service of not spotlighting and lauding some of the truly awful things that were valorised in the past, which I can get behind, but sometimes... the originals actually have a better message, or a theme that remains relatable, even without it being above moral censure. Even when meant in the best possible way, some of the modern simplification erases the glorious complexity of the original - why make Achilles gay when you can accept that he could have sexual love for Patroclus, but also father a child on a woman, and neither of these things defined his identity in the ancient world. Isn't it more interesting to look at a world that viewed sexuality differently than to cut the edges off a figure from the past to make him fit a single, modern narrative? Or take any of the dangerous female figures of myth, for example, and Medea or Circe in particular. There is something to be said for leaving a powerful, dangerous, vengeful woman in a world hostile to femininity exactly as the nightmare to men that she is, rather than softening her for approachability. The Romans particularly had a deep-seated fear of the power of the virgin woman... so let that fear be palpable.

And then for another, a large proportion of the ones published and heavily marketed in recent memory are billed as "feminist retellings"... while having the blandest, most milquetoast version of feminism imaginable. In the year of our common era 2023, I submit it to you that "making a woman the protagonist" is not actually all that much of a feminist statement anymore. "What if it was told from a female perspective, so we can understand her suffering from her point of view?" I'm sorry babes but Ovid got there before you in *checks notes* the first century BCE. And then Euripides before him in the 5th century BCE. It is my genuine, considered opinion that about 75% of the modern feminist retellings do no better in their feminism than was achieved by either The Trojan Women or the Heroides, both of which centre the female experience of, respectively, the Trojan War or "being in any way associated with a hero of Greek or Roman myth", and the suffering that causes. And these are far from the only historical works that do exactly the same thing - wonder what the women felt in these stories that focus on men and their heroism, and dwell on the human cost. It was a common rhetorical training activity to ask students to argue the extent to which Helen was villain or victim in the Trojan War. Seeing these women as people, who lived and thought and felt and suffered... just isn't new. 

And maybe stories don't need to all be new. Maybe sometimes we can reexamine something without having to do a radically different take on it. But given the intense saturation in the market at the moment for these stories... well, sure, it's allowed. But it's rather dull.

And finally, of course, we have the problem of who gets to tell those stories. If we look at the ones that get the big press, all the marketing and the buzz and the social media engagement, they are your Madeline Millers, your Natalie Hayneses. Both are good writers, for whom there is no criticism for their success. But there are notable absences - why are all these big ticket Greek myth retellings from white, anglophone women? Where's the variety?

If you saw any of the discussion around the recently announced Greek myth anthology Fit for the Gods, you will be well aware that there's a repeated issue around lack of Greek storytellers and perspectives being represented in these retellings. Fit for the Gods bills itself as a diverse anthology, and, on some metrics, it very much is, but it is also intensely US-centred in terms of its authors. In the same way, if we look at the truly big names in Greek myth retellings... who among them isn't British or American? Who is getting all that marketing push, except these women from the anglosphere? And far more than in Fit for the Gods, they are overwhelmingly white, cis, and straight. There's a tight noose around who gets to tell these stories, who gets promoted when telling these stories, and it's stifling out a lot of other voices, even the ones from Greece. From actual Greece.

Which feeds into exactly the same problem - we're getting the same stories retold and retold, by people from the same background, with the same perspectives on the same stories... and so we're not really getting anything new. 

How many retellings are there, at the moment, of Hades and Persephone, but make it a love story? It's a lot. I've read (and disliked) several of them. This is not only a take that multiple people have done, but one that is, at its heart, intensely uncomfortable - we take a story of the rape of a young girl and decided, actually, it will be nicer and more fun to read if the dark and broody god is instead a softboi and will protect our beautiful little sheltered heroine from harm and/or her overbearing mother. How... how have we managed to go backwards from the original myth? And then do it to saturation? It's not feminist, it's not new, it's not interesting, most of them aren't good... so what exactly are they bringing to the table?

It's easy money and easy marketing, right? The great thing about these retellings, from a publishing and marketing perspective, is that you're selling people something they have a lot easier job of telling if they're going to like it, and so making them much more likely to buy it. "For fans of Madeline Miller" grand, done. Retell the same love story? If they know they like it, they'll buy more. Make them all occupy the same tone, the same perspectives, the same takes, make them safe and sanitised and bland, and they will be so very widely marketable and unobjectionable, but with a "feminist" tag to hide how truly unrevolutionary the content actually is.

What if we were braver? Or publishing were. What if, and bear with me on this one, we took our direction from elsewhere in fantasy, and looked to The Locked Tomb series for our inspiration. What if we decided we could handle stories full of messy, troubled, violent, scary and problematic people, just... being that. Stories open to interpretation and different readings. I was very lucky, a number of years ago, to read a book called Bright Air Black by David Vann, which does just that. It is a retelling of the story of Medea, and it does something that very few retellings have ever approached, for me - it let a figure from mythology be messy, and complex, and bad, and let her be the protagonist anyway, with not a single apology for her being exactly as she was. There is a great deal of power in that, and a power many of those feminist retellings are lacking, even though this was never marketed as such a thing.

Or what if publishing didn't wait until the market was utterly swamped with all this same old same old before being sufficiently daring to dip a toe outside of its comfort zone. Because there are people writing things that aren't these same five myths or same three perspectives - look at Maya Deane's Wrath Goddess Sing, where we imagine Achilles as a trans woman? Or look at Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel? Or Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie? Or Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola? Or Under my own Shadow by Elena Kotsile?  What if we could have got those types of stories right from the start, getting the buzz and the marketing and the special editions and the bookseller events and the press coverage that a new Madeline Miller book gets? What if we let "diversity", however you want to articulate it, be there right from the start, and let us have genuinely diverse stories, different genres and emotions and responses to different stories, stepping outside of this same little paddling pool of only a fraction of the Greek myths, out into a wider world of so many mythological stories?

I'd be happier. I'd read more of them.

Because this is the thing - I've mostly stopped reading those big marketed myth retellings. I am, in many ways, the targetest of target markets for a Greek myth retelling. I'm a white, anglophone, middle class feminist with a degree in Classics who likes to read. Selling them to me should be the easiest thing in the world. So it's insulting, to think that these books that ought to appeal to me, that clearly are targeted at my demographic, assume that what I want is to read the same three things over and over again, to never be challenged, to never have to think, or learn. To never have to explore what feminism might be outside of the smallest, most isolated and privileged little sphere. To never care about myths that aren't the ones I grew up with. To never be willing to live with a character who engages my sympathy while also being morally... complicated.

Of course, there's always the answer of "why don't we just stop retelling these stories at all and read new stuff", which is a fair point. But there is something in the older stories that clearly pulls us in, and I don't think it's necessarily bad to be swayed by that. Antigone has been staged as a play across 2464 years because there is something in it that appeals to us still. It still tells a story that resonates, in the tension between duty to morality and the state, the debts we owe to family, how authority can become tyranny. These are still relevant themes. And they are made all the more so when someone like Inua Ellams turns it into a commentary on being Muslim in modern Britain. But I believe that those values comes in the reinterpretation, the shift into different perspectives, the examination of the same core themes in different settings, by different voices and people. And we don't get that unless we let those stories be told by those different people. And we miss out on so many of these stories that may be just as compelling if we constrain ourselves to such a limited corpus of sources.

We don't need those bland, limited retellings.

Instead, we should have more retellings where Circe is terrifying, Medea is cruel and vengeful, where Artemis destroys those who wrong her, where Hades is a kidnapper and Persephone has to figure out where she fits in the aftermath, where Athena walks a careful line, avoiding the attentions of e.g. Hephaestus, where Achilles can love Patroclus as cousin, as sword-brother, as lover all in one, but also have a son by a woman and there be no contradictions. Where Hera is both wronged and wrong. Where Clytemnestra is everything she is and needs no justifications. Write them loud and bold and complex, and trust that readers can find the value and the meaning in them, just as they have for the last three millennia. We should have retellings of myths that mean an anglophone audience might have to stop and listen to someone else's thoughts. We should be trusted to go and look things up, to be fascinated to learn more, and willing to not be pandered to on every page. We should live up to that trust. We should have retellings that let everyone have a voice.

They exist. They're just not being marketed. So maybe we should go find and read them, and embrace the wider, wilder world of myth. Maybe then they'll listen.

--

References:

Jenn Northington and S. Zainab Williams (editors), Fit for the Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined, [Vintage, 2023]

Maya Deane, Wrath Goddess Sing, [William Morrow, 2022]

Vaishnavi Patel, Kaikeyi, [Little Brown Book Group, 2022]

Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire, [Bloomsbury, 2017]

Bolu Babalola, Love in Colour, [Headline Publishing Group, 2020]

Elena Kotsile, Under my Own Shadow in Orpheus + Eurydice Unbound, [air and nothingness press, 2022]

David Vann, Bright Air Black, [Cornerstone, 2017]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea

'Troll' is a battle to define Nordic identity

This movie recycles all the clichés of the kaiju genre, but the setting gives the conflict a fascinating context of interpretation

Netflix film Troll can be summarized as any kaiju movie you've seen: humans mess with nature, nature lashes back, humans go splat, nature calms down—for now. But this is not a typical kaiju movie. When the Japanese make a movie where a rampaging monster causes mass chaos, they're drawing from centuries of historical trauma caused by living on an unstable land that can shake with primal violence at any moment, plus the more recent trauma of the nuclear bombs. Meanwhile, when the Norwegians make a movie where a rampaging monster causes mass chaos, the emotional resonance is totally different.

The closest thing to a national trauma for the Norwegians is the 2011 shooting spree by neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Breivik. Of course, Troll isn't about neo-Nazism, but it does portray a catastrophe with multiple deaths, while engaging with themes related to the ongoing battle for the soul of Scandinavian identity. Legends about trolls are a distinctive part of ancient Norse culture, which has become a contentious political topic, to put it mildly. One of the tensions currently underlying public discourse in Scandinavian countries is how to honor the ancestral heritage of the Norse peoples without perpetuating the same talking points of the supremacist fringe. So, when the characters of Troll comment on the repercussions of depaganization or the downsides of modernity or the value of traditional folklore, the connotations of the discussion inevitably extend beyond the plot and into the real world.

The first lines of dialogue in Troll feature a young person mocking an old person's supposed frailty, but the scene shows us the old one completing a feat of athletic prowess while the young one struggles to keep pace. In this brief setup, the film establishes one of its central themes: the folly of seeing a conflict between old and new. This refers to a long debate in Norwegian culture: the 19th century saw an entire literary and artistic movement try to grapple with how to define a national identity for a people that had been denied self-rule for centuries. That era sparked a reappraisal of pre-Christian beliefs, customs, stories, and material culture. Norwegians developed a renewed appreciation for their mythic heroes and fairy tales. This act of collective introspection about the past is repeatedly alluded to in the script of Troll: when the key to understanding the monster doesn't even come from the biologist, but from the literary scholar; when a highway construction project is implied to defile a once-sacred mountain; when one character illustrates the bloody cost of replacing the ancient Norse religion with Christianity; when our protagonist realizes that the actual mission is not to kill the monster but to empathize with it.

It's possible to sense an ambivalence in Troll about what exactly the monster represents. Modern Nordic culture seems to have no use for magic or spirituality; the return of a creature of legend would threaten the secular order based on reason. On the other hand, those legends still exert a strong pull on Nordic consciousness, which might view Christianity as a latecoming usurper. Note, for example, how the climax of the movie is about preventing the monster from reaching the royal palace, a not very subtle metaphor for a threat to the stability of the nation. The monster is simultaneously a sympathetic and tragic character: it's an authentic part of the Nordic soul that was unjustly cast out, but must stay that way lest the nation burn. This is the anxiety that Troll symbolizes: Scandinavians still need to figure out how to express due reverence for their history without having it turn into an incontrollable force of destruction. This is why the protagonist's father, the character most in touch with the Romantic side of his culture, alternates between dreading the monster and wanting to save it, and also why the ending is told in such a way that we lament the monster's defeat.

Troll isn't particularly notable in terms of spectacle. It's well filmed, albeit inconsistently paced and not always well acted. But it does shed a valuable light on the exercise of inward looking that is occurring in Scandinavian countries regarding how to feel about their national heritage and how to deal with its deformation.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Microreview [book]: Troy, by Stephen Fry

Sing, Muse of the Retelling of the story of Troy, as told by the bard Stephen Fry.

The first two volumes of the Mythos project by Stephen Fry looked at the foundational myths of Greek Myths, from creation all the way through the Olympians, through the elder cycle of heroes and demigods, and then to the succeeding generations of demigods and heroes. It’s a complicated nest of relationships, characters, and events that still puts things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe to shame, and Fry ably brings it all together, if anyone can, in the previous two books.

Now in Troy, Stephen Fry caps it off by looking at the Trojan War. 

The Trojan War, standalone, is eternally popular, with even an early Doctor Who episode taking a crack at it, as does Shakespeare. It was odd to me when I first read the Iliad, though that we have a war that lasts 10 years, the Iliad only covers a short period in the ninth year of the war. Where was the Trojan Horse that I had heard about before ever reading the Iliad, so infused as it is in our cultural DNA? Why doesn’t Troy fall at the end of the Iliad? I later (when I read The Odyssey) saw that the ending of the War is contained there. And while I knew the Golden Apple story and the abduction (or flight) of Helen with Paris, what happened in years 1-8 of the Trojan War was and has been vague and not well defined.  Perhaps this is the same for you, reader. 

And all of these names and people to keep straight. I’ve heard the Iliad and the Odyssey described as the OG Sword and Sorcery and Epic Fantasy books, and there is a point to that. We’re dropped into the middle of things, with names and characters being thrown at you and an entire book in the Iliad (The Catalogue of Ships)  being basically a list of the “who’s who” at the battle. 

In any event, Fry is here to help you. He starts at the beginning, as to how Troy was founded, and why, and brings its history up to date as it were. The delight in the depth of research and scholarship he brings is tha there is a fair chunk here I didn’t know about. Fun fact, the Trojan War is not the first time that Troy gets attacked in its mythological history, and you will never guess who did it before the Greeks got it into their heads to take back Helen, nor why. 

Once we get to the story of Paris, I was on fully fleshed ground and I highly enjoyed Fry’s interpretation of his abandonment on Mount Ida, his being raised as a shepherd, the fateful judgment of Paris (giving the apple to Aphrodite) and on through into the War itself. Fry does not do the Catalogue in full but he does lay out the combatants, the names you do want to pay attention to and remember. When and where they are important to the narrative, and who they are to each other. Like the American Civil War, there are tangled distant family and friendships and acquaintances on both sides of the battle. And frequently (especially among the Greeks, and indeed, the inciting incident of the Iliad), the people on each side are at odds with each other. Long before there was Tony and Steve in the MCU, there was Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, Menelaus, Ajax, and others. 

There are many versions of the Iliad, and people have their favorites. Fry is not trying to be Robert Fitzgerald, or Lattimore, or Fagles, or Caroline Alexander. He doesn’t recite the Iliad, but tells its story in prose, in his own way. All the details are here, though, the pathos and the wonder, the terrible slaughter. He looks at the book with the eye of someone who loves and respects the story but can also see it’s faults. There is a fascinating bit where Fry metatextualizes a portion of the Iliad that, unbeknownst to me, he reveals that scholars think is a late addition, as it stylistically and otherwise does not match up with the rest of the poem. 

Another portion of the book that greatly interested me especially is after the death of Hector, and up to its fall. What had always been a little hazy for me is why Troy didn’t capitulate after their best hero, Hector, falls. In chess terms, they’ve just lost their queen, and are down material, and white is pushing hard against them.  Fry tells the story of the reinforcements Troy gets, which does not change the outcome, but it does stave it off, and it buys Troy time for Paris to land his fateful shot on Achilles’ heel (or was it with the help of Apollo?). Also some of the other events leading up to the Horse were new to me (Helen’s complete disenchantment with Paris, and Paris’ death, and the Greeks nearly getting Troy to crack before the Horse itself). The fact that Helen remarries was completely a “what?” moment for me. 

Another thing that struck me about this book as compared to the previous two is the lack of variations and the need to tell about alternatives to the main line of the myths and stories. Early on in the book, when the book discusses the founding of Troy, there are a few bits here and there, but in the main, the narrative of the who, and the what, and the why of the events of the Trojan War are much less braided and multivalent than in Mythos and Heroes. This is not particularly a fault, mind, but after two books where we get a host of alternatives to the stories of Zeus, Athena, Atalanta, Jason and Heracles, there is a much more unified picture as to what happened on the plains of Ida, what happened to the topless towers of Ilium. This is of course because our sources for the Trojan War and the stories of what happened at Troy once Paris and Helen arrive there come from Homer and sources that agree with Homer. 

I do think that while there are certainly a few more “stories” to tell of the Greek Myths, the Trojan War, the events at Troy are the last hurrah, the last great gathering of Gods and Heroes on both sides. To use a Norse reference, in a way, Troy is a Götterdämmerung, and we are left with a world where the heroes and the Gods themselves fade away, leaving a world of mortal men, and just the stories of what happened in these three books. 

In a real sense, then, when Eris threw her golden apple into that fateful marriage party, she had, in effect, doomed herself and all the Gods, with the Trojan War to be their final hurrah, their last battlefield. This gives the whole book a sense of tragedy, of foreboding that this is going to be the end, and it better had be a blockbuster smash. One last party, one last gathering.  Fry prefigures this idea with the marriage party of Peleus and Thetis, he states it is the “last great gathering” of these beings, and he is right. There is an almost faerie-like feel of diminishment in that, that the world is going to turn from the age of gold and silver and bronze to hard, cold, iron. (rather appropriate, in that the Trojan War might be thought of as the last hurrah of the Bronze Age)

And in that, Stephen Fry has completed very ably the project he began with Mythos. I do think that although the books are footnoted, always a hazard for listening to books, the sheer enthusiasm, love, respect, and intense fascination Fry has for these stories really comes through on the audio renditions. Like Homer himself, these stories here, of Paris’ choice, of the Rage of Achilles, of the Tragedy of Hector, the cleverness of Odysseus, are in the end well received in one’s ears, just as well as reading them in print. 

With people like Fry reading and reinterpreting and retransmitting the stories of the Greek Myths, I do hope, and I think, that these stories will find new readers, new transmitters, and new interpreters. While Fry does a fairly good job in providing a balanced and enlightened and nuanced viewpoint to these stories, another thing that struck me as I was listening to Troy (and indeed all of Mythos) is how much room there still is and is for readers and writers who are not of different backgrounds to take these stories and reinterpret, reinvent, and reuse them. 

Troy is the capstone of a whole cycle of Greek myths and stories that writers like Maya Deane (Wrath Goddess Sing), Madeline Miller (Song of Achilles), Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships) and others are picking up the banner and running with their own ideas and interpretations for. Fry provides a modern “baseline” for writers such as these to rediscover these stories, and then go on and tell and make them their own, providing ever new interpretations and (keeping in mind what I said before) new variations, too. That is my hope: With this work to introduce readers to these stories and myths in an accessible way, more people will want to take them and make them their own. I still dream of a Greek Mythology Cinematic Universe, but that is probably just a dream.

And with that, this review, as well as the Trojan War comes to a close. I'd humbly suggest that Fry tackle the (sadly) much poorer and thinner canon we have of Norse Mythology yet, but we HAVE that book already, ably written (and narrated) by Neil Gaiman. Readers who want more mythology ably written and imagined as in these three books might turn to that volume, next.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Nanoreviews: The Entropy of Loss, Folklorn, Leviathan Falls

The Entropy of Loss by Stewart Hotston (Newcon, 2022)

Sarah Shannon is having a weird evening. She's visiting her wife, Rhona, an artist  in the final stages of a terminal illness, when she gets a call from her colleague Akshai. That call pulls her back to the lab where she works on black hole research, to look at some strange data which suddenly throws them into a weird, reality-bending first contact situation. To make things more complicated, Sarah has been dealing with her grief over Rhona's imminent death by having an affair with Akshai, and when Rhona becomes trapped in Sarah's newly transformed lab with the new entity, Sarah's grief and her work become inextricably linked.

The Entropy of Loss has a lot to set up in its opening pages, and it ends up feeling quite artificial, although it's hard to see how Hotston could have done anything differently in novella length. Thus we bounch from hospital - to establish Sarah and Rhona's dynamic and Sarah's emotional state - then to the lab to set up Sarah, Akshai, and the black hole simulation, and back to hospital so Sarah can have Rhona want to come back to the lab again, so she can become trapped with this new alien life. It's easily the weakest part of the book, and that's a shame because once the scenario is established, this becomes a great novella, intertwining an engaging science fiction scenario with the complex emotions of its protagonist. We're long past the cliche of "scientists don't have emotions because science is too rational for feelings" in science fiction, but by making Sarah's emotional investment in her breakthrough (and its security implications for campus) extremely personal, and filtering the first contact communication itself through Sarah and Rhona's relationship dynamics, The Entropy of Loss creates a rich story that hits much closer to home than your average action-packed alien visitation. Just go with the set-up stuff and you'll be rewarded with a really intriguing novella that's well worth checking out.

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur (Erewhon, 2021)

Reviewing has been hard recently, and I'm sorry to say that Folklorn sat unloved in my "to read and review" folder for far longer than this strange, thoughtful story deserved. This is the story of Elsa, a second generation Korean American physicist working at a Swedish university who we meet when she is finishing a research trip to Antarctica. Feeling out of place as an Asian woman in a white-dominated environment, and working through the emotions of finishing her research and leaving Antarctica - and a boyfriend who will be wintering over, which she assumes (correctly) will be the end of their relationship - Elsa begins connecting things around her to the stories and myths her mother (who has been unspeaking and catatonic since Elsa's teen years) told her as a child, and to a "friend" she had at the time, a girl the same age who nobody else could see. It's the re-emergence of her imaginary friend which pushes Elsa into a reckoning with her family legacy, in a journey that takes her from Antarctica to Sweden and back to her family home in California.

While the ghost on the ice, and a later death in the family, provide catalysts for Elsa's journey, it's her internal emotional factors which really drive the narrative, making for a slow read with a lot of introspection. The biggest force here is intergenerational trauma: Elsa's parents lived through the Korean War, and Elsa has grown up with stories about missing relatives and disappearing Aunts, as well as a sister born between her and her brother who, allegedly, died at birth. Unpacking her family's legacy, and her relationships with her parents (both of whom have been abusive in their own ways) and her difficult, mentally ill brother, becomes a huge task, one which Elsa tackles through the lens of myth, uncovering a lineage of disempowered women in Korean folktales through her mother's writing and tying her story to theirs. Elsa is herself a challenging protagonist, at turns lashing out or ignoring help from those around her, and centring her own emotions at the expense of others, but it's done in a way that will feel very familiar to those who have experienced certain kinds of mental illness, and Folklorn's diagnosis feels redemptive: forgive the family who hurt you, especially if they were hurting themselves, but don't let them stop you from growing past the trauma. It's powerful stuff, told in a haunting, affective way.

Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey

What is there to say about a book that wraps up 9 volumes of one of the genre's most influential space operas? Leviathan Falls brings to a close the story of The Expanse, a generation-spanning narrative about human expansion in the solar system and beyond, and the political struggles that accompany these changes in the structure of human civilisation. From relatively humble (and very dudebro-oriented) beginnings in Leviathan Wakes, the series has encompassed space-faring revolutions, potential extinction events, the arrival of terrifying new alien technologies, and finally an intergalactic war for the future of humanity, with the crew of the spaceship Rocinante at the heart of the action at every step. Now, after seeing off the series' second most unpleasant charismatic dictator (sorry Duerte, but Marco will always have you beat), the final chapter is about the moment that has been brewing ever since the protomolecule came into human hands in Leviathan Wakes: when wil humanity need to reckon with the unknowable alien technology at the centre of its galactic expansion, and with the alien force that wiped those super-advanced predecessors out?

This is an extremely important question, but it does mean that Leviathan Falls is working firmly in the territory where (in my opinion) the series has been weaker: the "weird alien shit" plots have never hit the highs of the "political shenanigans" plots, which is why Cibola Burn is inarguably the weakest book of the series and Nemesis Games is the best (don't argue, you won't win). But Leviathan Falls overcomes that, for two reasons: first, because we are at the endgame and there are finally some answers to what, until now, have been unknowable events; and second, because after a generation of research on the rogue fascist world of Laconia, the weird alien shit is inextricably linked to human technology and ambition. Building on the first two books in the "Laconia" arc, we therefore get a satisfying inversion of the series' consistent "adapt or die" theme the solutions for adaptation presented by Laconians are awful, the results of decades of unthinkably unethical research, but nine books has taught us that one can't magic easy third solutions out of thin air in this series. And, sure enough, there's a powerful and fitting ending here, one that puts the focus back on Naomi, Alex, Amos and Holden as, once more, the wildcards in determining the future of humanity. 

There are some elements that don't work as well as others. The series' strongest supporting characters, Bobbie and Avasarala, are gone, and Aliana Tanaka, the Laconian officer who becomes the book's main human antagonist, is fine but not particularly exciting for the amount of time we have to spend with her (Elvi and Teresa are great, though). On the whole this is a strong end to a series that, despite its ups and downs, has firmly earned its place on my all-time favourites list.

Adri (she/her), Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Microreview [Book]: Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

A feminist exploration of the events leading up to the Ramayana attempts to do a few too many things and can't quite live up to its main character's promise.

Cover art by Lisa Marie Pompilio

Kaikeyi tells the story of, well, Kaikeyi (shock twist), a wife of Rama’s father Dasharath, and her role before the events of the Ramayana. In the original tale, it is she who causes Rama to be exiled from Ayodhya for fourteen years, and her own son, Bharat to sit on the throne in his place, while the story follows Rama’s exploits accompanied by his other brother and his wife, Sita . Kaikeyi, however, begins much earlier, in the childhood of Kaikeyi herself, beginning with the exile of her mother, leaving her the sole woman in a family of men.

This is meant to be a deeply moving, sad childhood, of this poor girl surrounded by her brothers, and a father who does not care for female children, so leaves her to her own devices. Because the story is told from Kaikeyi’s perspective, we get a lot of her feelings of how terrible and unfair and awful it is, that she should be ignored as she is, and how horrible her life has been made. And at the beginning, that feels very genuine – the parts about the loss of her mother and her confusion at not being told why feel very real. But as the story progresses, we see Kaikeyi flourish with little supervision, learn the arts of war with her encouraging brother, and develop magical powers that allow her to manipulate those around her to get what she wants nearly all of the time. But while this is happening, the story still focusses on how sad her life is, rather at odds with the events as we see them described. At one point, a maid who has been close to Kaikeyi refuses a request, and highlights how others in the world have things much worse than the princess, and it looks like a moment that may actually get through to her, and that she’ll see that though she has her struggles, the lot of many of those around her makes her seem extremely privil- oh, nope, she regrets it for a bit but then continues on her merry way.

And it’s difficult to read and feel like this, because some of her struggles are entirely present and sympathetic – I can hardly say that I wouldn’t object to having no say about my life and marriage either. But so much of Kaikeyi’s life sits in contrast to the serving women she spends much of her time with, especially the maid Manthara, that it’s hard not to feel a touch of exasperation at her.

It doesn’t help that we spend a long, long time with young Kaikeyi doing… not a great deal besides being sad about life and training alone or with her brother. The book suffers from a serious issue of pacing, where around 2/3 of it feels like prologue, and so by the time we get to Ayodhya and Kaikeyi’s marriage to Dasharath, we’ve been sitting with her for what feels like an age.

It is only when we reach Ayodhya, however, that most of the real happenings of the book begin. We get to see Kaikeyi deprived of her relationships and the power they bring her in her native Kekaya, and the struggle with this lack of influence, only broken when her maid Manthara shakes her out of it, practically dragging her to the market. And after a few visits there, she begins to come back to herself, kickstarting her efforts to make friends with Dasharath’s other wives, and also to see that there exist women in the world less fortunate than herself. 

If this realisation had come earlier in the book, I think the entire tone of the novel would have been different for me. But because it feels like we have spent so, so long with young Kaikeyi, it’s very much a situation of too little, too late. Doubly so, because the initial realisation on her part is somewhat overshadowed by, in this part of the book, her going off to war with her husband and being great at charioteering, which wins her a role as a minister in his government.

Eventually, the thread of Kaikeyi’s championing the poor women picks up again, and she and the other wives do what seems to be genuine good for the women of Ayodhya. And this (finally) brings us to one of the central conflicts of the story – Kaikeyi and her assertion that women can exist equally to men in the world, and the faction of traditionalists in Ayodhya, alongside whom the young Rama numbers one.

But this conflict loses some of its weight because of the way we’ve got there. For all that the reader agrees with Kaikeyi (I hope), it seems often that her argument is less one of principal, and more one of self-interest – Kaikeyi enjoys having power, having influence, and the traditionalist faction threatens that. So even when Kaikeyi is in the right, I found myself struggle to be completely sympathetic to her.

That being said, the latter third of the book, with this conflict and a lot more action, is by far a much better story than much of what came before, to the extent of almost feeling like a different book. There’s a sudden explosion of turmoil, where all the various threads that have been floated around throughout the beginning of the story suddenly all become relevant and dramatic at once, and while it was enjoyable to read, it threw the stuff that came before into even worse contrast – why couldn’t it have been like this all along?

And I’ve barely even touched on the magic yet – but like the various other aspects of the story, the relevance of the magic Kaikeyi has to her life, and to the progression of the plot, waxes and wanes constantly. Sometimes it feels like a critical element that will make or break the entire story, and sometimes it feels almost an afterthought, not used in situations where it might have made sense to include it.

On the whole, there’s a simultaneous sense of too many ideas being put together in one book, so none of them get the time or development they deserve, while at the same time a very slow, ponderous start without much in the way of drive to get you through the buildup to what feels like the actual story at the end. It’s a shame, because a lot of the concept here is really appealing, and I feel like Kaikeyi as a character, and as an actor in the story of the Ramayana, has a lot to recommend her, and it’s just not really drawn out here. Despite living inside her head for the whole book, I felt kept very much at a distance to her actual thoughts, and this didn’t help my already limited sympathy for some of her struggles.

In many ways, Kaikeyi struggles with the same thing Madeleine Miller’s Circe does – taking an incredibly compelling character from myth, with a lot of scope for exploration… and then somehow managing to make her less compelling than she is in the source material. There’s a lot of promise, a lot of potential redemption of an antagonistic female figure demonised for wielding power… but then a lot of navel-gazing and self-absorption, rather than the drama the original myth might promise. Both I think are novels where in an effort to make the protagonist more sympathetic, more relatable, they’ve defanged them and lost what made them exciting in the first place.

That being said, the last third of the book was genuinely a fun read, and once I got there, it had the pace and the excitement that I really wanted to keep on going. If the whole thing had been like that… it still wouldn’t have been my favourite book of 2022, but it would have had a lot more to recommend it.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10 

Bonuses: +1 for taking controversial female figure of myth and attempting to retell from her perspective

Penalties: -1 for very self-involved main character and her somewhat inconsistent focus on the problems around her

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Reference:  Vaishnavi Patel, Kaikeyi [Redhook, 2022]

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroform_tea