Here’s the seventh and last in a series of posts reviewing the 2026 Nebula Awards short-listed works in the Best Novel category. To see the complete list, go HERE. Now I’ve read all seven of these novels, and in plenty of time before the Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) announces the winner at the Nebula awards ceremony on June 6, 2026. It will take place at the SFWA 61st annual conference, held this year in Chicago.
The short-listed novels for the 2026 Nebula Awards:
When We Were Real, by Daryl Gregory (Saga)–see my review HERE
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK)—see my review HERE
Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)–see my review HERE
Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)–see my review HERE
The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh (Tor; Orbit UK)–see my review HERE
Sour Cherry, by Natalia Theodoridou (Tin House; Wildfire)–see my review HERE
Wearing the Lion, by John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia)–reviewed in this post
Wearing the Lion, by John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia)
When I first began reading this novel, I was a bit dismayed, although delightfully entertained. I started the novel with sky-high expectations, since it is by the very talented John Wiswell, winner of the 2025 Nebula Award for Best Novel, for Someone You Can Build a Nest In (see my review HERE). I had to wonder, though. Was this novel going to end up a very charming collection of zingers and one-liners, or was it really going to go somewhere?
Wearing the Lion is one in a long line of contemporary fantasy re-tellings of Greek mythology. Madeline Miller’s Circe and The Song of Achilles, Pat Barker’s amazing Women of Troy series, Claire North’s Penelope novels, and many others have enthralled readers–not to mention the wildly popular Percy Jackson children’s series by Rick Riordan. Where Wiswell’s novel distinguishes itself is its cheeky tone and attitude toward its source material, at least at first.
But a novel about Hercules (or, as the Greeks had it, Heracles), the great strongman and son of Zeus? I could see a book like that ending up sort of a snore. Heracles kills and skins the Nemean Lion. He kills a huge boar. He kills a flock of man-eating birds. He bests the Great Bull of Poseidon. Ho hum. Here comes another feat of strength. Wiswell’s novel, and his take on Heracles, is anything but a snore-fest.
Wiswell’s Heracles is a tormented hero. His very name proclaims his allegiance to the goddess Hera (Hera=the goddess; -cles=”the glory of”), and he prays to her incessantly, especially as his entire life falls apart in an act of horrifying violence. But while Wiswell gives us full access to Heracles and his despairing state of mind, he also gives us full access to Hera, the goddess of Family, the queen of the gods, immensely powerful–and maybe, also, immensely cruel. We wonder right away whether Hera deserves Heracles’s adulation, and whether Heracles himself is simply a big lug, too dumb to realize when he is being played.
After the violent act that drives the plot, the novel progresses from scene to scene of the legendary Twelve Labors of Heracles. You can follow along through a handy list at the beginning of the book. The big strong guy undertakes these ordeals to purge himself of his great sin. I won’t reveal what that sin is, too spoiler-ish–but I will say that if you know the legend well, you already know what it is. If you don’t know the legend well, you’ll know it by the end of this novel, or anyway, Wiswell’s fun take on the legend, and that makes a big difference.
In novels that retell familiar tales, the author has to give us some new perspective on it. Gregory Maguire’s Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister reframes the Cinderella story from the point of view of one of the villains. Miller’s Circe allows us to glimpse the inner workings and motivations of the witch who charms Odysseus and his men and distracts them from their purpose. Natalia Theodoridou’s Sour Cherry, also on this list of Nebula finalists, plumbs the Bluebeard story for its timeless and also very contemporary take on one of humanity’s biggest problems. Otherwise, why not go straight to Wikipedia? (or, I guess, if we are really earnest, one of the ancients, Ovid or Aesop or Apuleius or Homer. The Brothers Grimm. Charles Perrault. The original sources).
No need to do that with this novel. With Wiswell as our guide, we delve into the deeds of a man who might seem inexplicable to the modern mind. Through Wiswell, we gain insight into a surprisingly sweet-natured and complicated man. Insight into the nature of family and found family. Insight into the reasons human beings have had to create gods or, anyway, their own take on the divine (throwing no shade here on believers, especially because I am one of them) to explain the pain and tragedy of their lives, and how our human take on the divine somehow, too often, manages to get it all wrong.
Along the way, Wiswell’s witty narrative charms us. My very favorite part, for example, was the labor known as The Cleansing of the Augean Stables. A diarrhea pun! A philosophical discussion of how much the gods defecate and why they’d need to. Most of all, I enjoyed the many creatures of the ragtag found family–how Heracles encountered and learned to love each one. Why they loved him back.
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