Status Updates From Hera: A Novel

'She won’t bear him any more children, on that she’s resolute. She has had five chances now to use his offspring to bolster her power and diminish his. Each one has failed. But what if, she lets herself think, he puts the child of another goddess on one of those empty thrones, while her own daughters make do with their second-tier status, and her son endures exile?'

'Hebe comes first. Cherubic, ringletted, her cheeks so rosy and her demeanour so sweet that Hera names her for eternal youth. She nurses the infant on her low couch, the sunlight streaming through her window, a far cry from the sunless cave where Typhon was born. ‘How could a child of mine with Zeus be born so happy?’ she says to Klymene, who can’t come up with an answer, but is devoted to Hebe from the start'