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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Anna Lamnari’s The Last Labor is set in the legendary Mycenaean age, when Herakles returns to Mycenae believing ten years of punishment have bought back his life. King Eurystheus has other plans. After rejecting two completed labors, he orders his cousin to steal Hera’s golden apples from a garden beyond the western edge of the known world. The command sends Herakles across the ancient Mediterranean toward Prometheus, the chained Titan who brought fire to humanity, before Atlas becomes his only path to the sacred fruit guarded by the Hesperides in North Africa. In present-day Tangier, Athena meets her immortal half-brother beside the Caves of Hercules. Their conversation reveals how the gods rewrote the histories of their own children, drawing Herakles toward a final reckoning with the punishment that has defined his name.
"Heroes, of course, live forever. Their names harden into story." Anna Lamnari’s The Last Labor takes readers into two fabulous periods, from Herakles’s quest during the legendary Mycenaean age to Athena’s framing in present-day Tangiers. Lamnari does a beautiful job with cultural details, shown when Anti welcomes Herakles into his Mauri community. At a village wedding, the bride receives milk at the threshold with her mother-in-law’s blessing, placing local custom naturally within the story. The humor appears naturally during Herakles’s meeting with Hades, where Kerberos has one head, and the god remarks that monsters expand in the retelling. Herakles becomes a fully fleshed-out man whose desire for absolution is palpable throughout the entire arc. Readers who enjoy intelligently written historical fiction inspired by Greek mythology will love this book.
