HEROES by Stephen Fry

Michael Joseph, hardback £20, ebook £9.99.

★★★★★

THE second instalment of Stephen Fry’s foray into the exuberant world of Greek mythology tackles the heroes, from Perseus to Bellerophon, and is just as delightful and difficult to put down as the first. Any classics students who read their Homer and their Hesiod will know the Greek stories, whilst brilliant in their detail, depth and sense of epic

sci-fi in her latest novel. We open with Adriane Strohl making her high school valedictorian speech. But this is not just any high school: We are in 2039, where books don’t exist and even the smartest students strive hard to appear mediocre for fear of being vaporised for thought crime. When Adriane’s speech, consisting entirely of questions, is adventure, are not altogether light or easy reading. Just as in Mythos, Heroes manages to make the stories relatable without skimping on the wonderful gory details, or sacrificing the traditional truths of the myth. Heroic sons of Zeus become personable boys-next-door and malevolent kings have their motives laid bare through satirical and witty conversation.

It’s rich, it’s funny and once again you’ll feel like you’ve learned a lot along the way.

deemed seditious, she is teletransported back in time to 1959, where she must live as ‘Mary Ellen Enright’.

There she must come to terms with things she’s never seen before – trees, smoking, flagrant sexism – unable to reveal her true self to anyone. That is, until she becomes infatuated with her college Professor Ira Wolfman.