Wearing the Lion

By: John Wiswell

Narrated by: Christian Black, Elizabeth Klett

Nebula Award-winning author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In John Wiswell brings a humanizing and humorous touch to the Hercules story, forever changing the way we understand the man behind the myth—and the goddess reluctantly bound to him

Sometimes a goddess's worst enemy is her biggest fan.

Heracles, hero of Greece, dedicates all his feats to the goddess Hera. If only he knew that his very face is an insult to her . . . as he is yet another child that Hera's dipshit husband, Zeus, had out of wedlock.

"Auntie Hera" loathes every minute of Heracles's devotion, until she snaps and causes an unspeakably tragic accident: the death of Heracles's children. Plunged into grief and desperate for revenge, Heracles is determined to find the god that did this.

Wracked with guilt and desperate to save face, Hera distracts Heracles with monster-slaying quests, only to find that he is too traumatized to enact more violence. Instead, Heracles cares for the Nemean lion, bonds with the Lernaean hydra, and heeds the Ceryneian hind.

Each challenge adds a new monster to Heracles's newfound family. A family that just might lay siege to Mount Olympos.

©2025 John Wiswell (P)2025 Tantor Media

Mythic re-imagining

Witty, warm, and wonderful reworking of Greek myth, beautifully performed by the narrators. I will read anything John Wiswell writes.

Funny, tragic and, inspiring story all at the same time

I loved this book so much. It was a great retelling of the myth of Heracles 12 Labors with a very humorous and heartwarming story. Lots of twists and turns.

I love stories like these

I'm still crying thinking about this book and I will be crying every time I remember what empathy kindness forgiveness family and home mean to me as seen through this wonderful tale

Unique and stunningly beautiful retelling of an epic tale.

Such a beautiful and unique version of Heracles and his story. Hera is so vibrant and real. The emotional interactions between the two are visceral and the actors do a wonderful job expressing the emotions of the words they read

Mildly entertaining, not engrossing

Wearing the Lion is an enjoyable read, but not an engrossing one. In Wiswell's Greek myth reimagining, he uses very modern language including slang and modern vulgarities (i.e. dipshit) that make it difficult to really get any sense of mythological greatness. When you pull the gods and demigods down to human level, they turn out to be a bunch of losers and it is hard to see how anyone ever would choose these "people" to worship. Ultimately, it wasn't just that there were no truly admirable characters (Heracles has a good heart, but he's so stupid and Hera is just schizophrenic - swinging wildly between villainy and nobility), it's that I didn't identify with the characters and never really cared what happened to them. Narration by Christian Black (Heracles chapters) and Elizabeth Klett (Hera chapters) was quite good.