Which is really funny because that's basically exactly what fennel is, which was made by the same guy. I don't think he's written about it but fennel compiles to lua while janet is its own thing.
Calvin Rose made Janet https://github.com/bakpakin and https://bakpakin.com/
Phil Hagelberg made Fennel https://git.sr.ht/~technomancy/fennel and https://technomancy.us/colophon
Anyway - Fennel and Janet look very interesting, and a large thank you to everyone involved!
As a language, it's fine. I found the documentation pretty good and the language makes some very sensible decisions but I can't bring myself to use it for anything serious. The lack tooling makes it challenging.