“She had been born into a universe gone wrong. She had waited her whole life to come face-to-face with something she could blame.”

I’ve been loving the “space opera” sub-genre lately, so this book was right in that sweet spot for me. I will say that I almost put it down toward the beginning, because the main character has some extremely authoritarian and bigoted views that she doesn’t exactly hide. I continued, hoping for some intense character growth, and I’m glad I kept going to see how the MC grows both individually and in her relationships with others.

There are some hard concepts tackled in the book that include bigotry, racism, classism, sexism, authoritarianism, war, assault, societal expectations, and who gets to decide what is right and wrong.

There is also humor, tension, action, and a variety of sci-fi tropes that I don’t want to spoil for anyone who hasn’t yet read the book. While there were a few sections that dragged a bit (for me), the premise was unique and interesting, and I really enjoyed the book overall!

Thanks so much to Tor for the advanced readers copy!

4.5 stars

"Some Desperate Glory" took me on a space romp. And oh, did I have fun.

Emily Tesh’s queer space opera is all about Kyr, a young warrior who has trained her entire life on Gaea Station to fight an alien faction that destroyed planet Earth, called the majoda. Kyr is firm in her hatred of the majoda and patiently awaits her turn to come of age and enter combat. But when she is instead assigned to Gaea Station’s nursery to bear and raise children, Kyr gives herself a different mission, one that will fulfill what she considers to be her true purpose.

"Some Desperate Glory" is relentless in its storytelling and thrilling in its execution. Tesh sucks the reader into Kyr’s world on the very first page and, moving forward, dishes out nothing but non-stop action and excitement.

But it isn’t easy to like Kyr. She’s cold, unsympathetic, and prejudiced, her inner nature and belief system having been molded by Gaea Station.

What left me somewhat wanting, though, isn’t so much the character of Kyr as the depth of which Tesh addresses the heavy themes of the story. The novel is marketed as adult sci-fi and tackles racism, homophobia, sexism, suicide, and eugenics, but all with a simple, heavy-handed touch more suitable to a younger audience. As an adult reader, I would’ve appreciated a deeper dive.

Still, it’s a minor complaint about what is otherwise a fantastic read. I’m a huge fan of "Some Desperate Glory" and will sing its praises to all who will listen.


My sincerest appreciation to Emily Tesh, Tordotcom, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

<b><blockquote>Her family was her station. Her family was her cause. Her family was fourteen billion dead, and her mother was a murdered world.</blockquote></b>
I've been in such a reading slump, it's awful. I've been inching my way through SOME DESPERATE GLORY for over three months - but it was worth the effort.

Valkyr - Kyr - is a teenage warrior woman living on Gaea, a militaristic station and the final refuge of free humanity after the universe-spanning conglomerate the Wisdom destroyed Earth and most of humanity. Rigid in her belief that Mother Earth must be avenged, her faith is rocked consistently and constantly as her entire life's purpose unwinds around her.

I really loved this in the end. Starting slow, it builds to several crescendos, one after the other, and I genuinely had little clue where the story would twist next. I've not read any of Tesh's writing before but if this is a fair benchmark for her quality then I really have to seek out some.

Valkyr is a well done protagonist, and I really enjoyed living in her head as she struggled with her belief and faith. The supporting cast are on the whole excellent as well.

There's been quite a bit of hype I've seen about SOME DESPERATE GLORY being some new-age queer space opera which I'll be honest, I didn't really get. There are a couple of casually homosexual relationships in evidence, but I hardly found it to be a champion of gay science fiction. The first page opens with some trigger warnings which was a nice touch as there are some pretty dark themes throughout.

A really good, unique story. Well worth the read.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for providing me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.</a>

Some Desperate Glory makes a lot of exciting promises and yet fails to craft an interesting story. Though I can see people new to the genre enjoying this, experienced SciFi readers will likely find it boring and overly simplistic. This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year and it ended up being one of my most disappointing.

The main protagonist Kyr is clearly meant to be an unlikable character. At the beginning of the story, she is heavily indoctrinated and isolated from the world. She expresses a variety of opinions that you are meant to find offensive and off-putting. Though I understand that this was meant to be a story of growth, it is very difficult to care about a character who is so thoroughly hateable. Kyr's eventual growth—like any other major topic addressed in this book—lacked nuance and felt unrealistically rushed. She was an incredibly flat character with no depth or personality. I would have rather followed almost any other character other than Kyr. However, none of the other characters in the book were that much more interesting. There is one twist with a side character that could have been cool if there had been more of an explanation.

Tesh attempts to tackle various "isms" throughout the story. Though these topics are important the way they are discussed is almost insultingly simplistic. The discussion is limited to a "good/bad" binary that should be reserved for YA books. The lack of nuance and depth extends to almost every aspect of the book. There were many plot moments that simply happened with no explanation or obvious cause. With every new twist, I grew more and more exasperated with the story.

Some Desperate Glory felt like it was written to fit current publishing buzzwords and have as wide appeal as possible. Instead, the simplistic and one-dimensional story promises to alienate many experienced SciFi readers.

A queer space opera with differing timelines, plots to take over the world, sentient aliens, and our main character realizes she has been drinking the kool-aid her whole life?? This was quite fantastic. A little weird and info heavy at times but that is pretty standard for sci-fi. The social commentary was spot-on alongside the sort of moral dilemmas our main character faces when she leaves her rather totalitarian/extremist life behind and realizes the world is larger than anyone allowed her to know. Go into this one with an open mind and there is a good chance you will be swept away.

Kyr has trained her whole life to be a soldier in the war against the alien species who destroyed the Earth. When her brother is sentenced to die and she is sent to the Nursery to breed boy super soldiers, she begins to question everything she thought she knew.

This is a difficult book for me to review because for most of the book Kyr is a rather insufferable narrator but ultimately being on her journey with her is the most rewarding part of the book. Also, some of my favorite things this book does are probably spoilers but just know that if you stick with this book and enjoy mind-bending science fiction then you will be well rewarded.

There are so many things going on in this book both in terms of plot and character building but also just in terms of themes and real-world commentaries. I think sometimes the book feels like it is just waddling in the paddling pool of these themes and could have gone much deeper but I commend it for just having the audacity to try because I was very much invested while at the same time just as disgusted as Kyr as she discovers who her real friends are and how much trauma can shape a person.

I would honestly love an entire book from Avi's point of view as he was the most intriguing character to me.

The very end was interesting in that I thought there should have been more but at the same time we are left at a very intriguing point and Kyr's journey is at a point where she has changed dramatically and grown as a character and it is quite the experience as a reader to be along for that ride.

Thank you so much to Tor and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Taking "humans are space orcs" to its logical conclusion, Some Desperate Glory is a dark, desperate gasp searching for justice and hope. In a future where humans are faster and stronger than other aliens, their warlike nature and willingness to subjugate others has lead to the destruction of Earth and the creation of a military sect using the motto "while Earth's children live, our enemies shall fear us." Valkyr is a model member of her community, always willing to work harder, fight more, and push the other children farther in search of glory for her people. When her brother is sent on a suicide mission, Kyr abducts a prisoner and goes looking for him, only to find that nothing she was raised to believe is true. Heartbreaking and beautiful, Tesh continues her streak of impeccable writing and character development alongside groundbreaking genre work.

I’ve never read an Emily Tesh book, but with all my friends hyping up “the new Emily Tesh novel”, I couldn’t resist giving this book a shot. And what a ride it was. Tesh achieves the extremely difficult task of taking deeply unlikeable character and successfully convincing the reader to root for her by the end.

Truly, Kyr is one of the worst protagonists you can start a book off with. Raised in the fascist militant enclave Gaea Station and brainwashed with xenophobic ‘humanity’s last defense’ propaganda from the day of her birth, Kry starts off the perfect poster child for this particular group of space fascists. Which makes her not only an unlikeable and deeply unpleasant character, but an extremely boring one too. There are plenty of unlikeable characters who are fun to follow for the ‘how much worse can they get’ factor. Kyr is not one of them. Yet as the story progresses, Kyr’s slow arc of character growth is amazing to see and is truly a testament to Tesh’s skill as a writer.

The overall setting starts as many space opera-esque stories do. Humanity, having reached beyond the stars, has encountered a violent alien race they’re now at war with. Only this time, humanity has already lost and Earth is gone. Said alien race, the Majoda, host a powerful entity known as the Wisdom which guides all major decisions, including the destruction of Earth. While I enjoyed the setting and especially the excerpts of Majoda texts, the overall worldbuilding felt relatively surface. I wish we’d gone deeper into the Majoda societies and cultures. Expect something closer to YA than space opera.

Likewise, the plot felt relatively simple, and again with the trappings of a YA novel, not necessarily a bad thing. The plot and the worldbuilding really work together to tell one cohesive story that perhaps a more elaborate world would bog down. It’s hard to talk too much about the plot beyond the basic ‘brainwashed girl discovers there’s more to the world than she’s been led to believe’ plot because oh man does this book go places. Needless to say, the story is excellent and works extremely well for what it is, just don’t go expecting the space opera of space operas.

I don’t typically discuss trigger warnings in my reviews but I make a rare exception because Some Desperate Glory hit perhaps the one trigger that would instantly make me put down a book. Minor spoilers ahead. About 10% of the way in, Kyr gets told she’s going to be confined to a life of forced pregnancy and spends multiple pages attempting to rationalize her way through it. On one hand, it was almost justice to see her forced into this because of my sheer disgust with her character and simultaneously nauseating to have to read through. I continued reading with a friend’s encouragement, and it got a lot better, but those few pages were extremely rough.

Overall, I rate this book a 4/5. Emily Tesh achieves the herculean task of making the reader sympathize and cheer for one of the truly worst protagonists possible. The story is absolutely wild and is one a reader should go in with no context whatsoever.

I feel like one can't say 'queer space opera' these days without comparing a story to Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and the subsequent Wayfarers series. This is a LOT less soft and also possesses some of the mind fuck present in The 5th Wave.

I know we're still early in the year, so this statement won't have the added weight yet, but this is the best novel I have read this year. It could have easily been made into a duology, with the first half being the narrative of Kyr's life before the time slip, and the remainder being the second novel.

But, also? Having read this author's novellas before, I'm also glad to see what she can do with a fullblown novel. Definitely Emily's imagination is not lacking.

The only possible detractor I had was that Kyr seems to know so much to begin with, but there isn't any comment about a time slip being a possibility until the moment it's upon them at around the halfway mark, and then they just run into that plot. Because of the timing, it comes across that this one thing is a little too easy.

There is a bunch of plot that doesn't, though, so it definitely evens out.

Kyr is definitely an unlikable character at the beginning. We can see the antagonism given to her by the rest of her cohort, the Sparrows, before we really understand the reason or context for it. Kyr is a perfectionist, yes, and they are on a space station fighting for their lives after aliens destroyed Earth. Why wouldn't Kyr be mad? Why wouldn't Kyr want to do everything to help with getting vengeance on what happened to 14 billion people and her world?

But things like this are rarely this simple, and the thing this book does fantastically is introduce the other side of the story slowly and methodically. To say more would be needless spoilers. Just pick up this book, it's entirely fantastic.
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I genuinely don't think I will ever recover.

It took a while for me to get through this, only because life kept getting in the way. Under normal circumstances, I would've finished it in one weekend. But as I was making my way through it, I kept seeing people talking about this book, saying specifically that it absolutely devastated them in the most heart-wrenching way. I'm always so nervous when I hear these types of comments, because I cry a lot even for novels that are pretty tame emotionally speaking, so to hear people hype up a book like this, it was setting up these huge expectations for me. I promised myself that I wouldn't give it 5 stars unless it drained me of every tear my body could muster.

And, goddamn, it did.

I am exhausted. I have cried so much in the last few days as I made my way through the second half of the story. I have been destroyed, mind, body, and soul. I mean, this is what sci-fi should be; this is how you do it.

I think I could write three separate novels discussing everything that was addressed in this book: every message, every dilemma, every part of our MC's character arc. There is so much depth to it, and the story itself, while being complex and rich and full of content, was also very clear. Everything was laid out in a way that made it easy to understand, while still giving you space to make your own connections, reach your own conclusions, develop your own opinions and ideas about it all.

I loved every single character, in so many different ways. I'm obsessed with SFF novels that use their characters to talk about what it means to be "good" or "bad". People who are simultaneously severely unlikeable and yet also extremely relatable. They hate each other and themselves, and you hate them all but also you feel more love for them than you thought you could for a fictional character. And I hated how consistently this book called me out, but I also loved every minute of it. Why go to therapy when you can just get obliterated by this masterpiece of a story?

I will probably never shut up about this book, for as long as I live. A part of me is sad that it isn't a 20-part series because I would have read every single page of that. But I also think it was a genius decision on Tesh's part to write this as a stand-alone; it was perfection. I am truly obsessed with it and from now on, this is the standard to which I will be holding all other sci-fi novels I pick up.

Without a doubt, you need to read this as soon as humanly possible. I will never be able to recommend it enough.

Earth is gone. Over 14 billion people, dead. Plants, animals, everything, destroyed by the majo zi and their Wisdom, a so-called benevolent god machine capable of altering time, space, and reality itself because humans were deemed dangerous. It’s been nearly twenty years since a handful of survivors and a collection of dreadnoughts managed to set up a fragile new home for humanity on a barren rock. There, a new generation of human warriors has been born, raised to honor lost Earth and trained to kill.

Kyr is a war bred girl, only 17 years old and already taller, stronger, faster and smarter than every other girl or woman on Gaea. Admiral Jole, ranking officer of Gaea, war hero and leader of what’s left of humanity, is her uncle; she’s the top of her class and destined to avenge every human killed by the majo. Until she isn’t. Her brother betrays her, betrays humanity by refusing his assignment to a combat wing, and Kyr can’t understand why. Surely he wouldn’t leave Gaea, wouldn’t leave his duty. Wouldn’t leave her!

Kyr isn’t the sort to ask questions until she has no choice. With the help of the brilliant Ari, the only openly “degenerate” on Gaea (queer is a luxury when all of humanity must breed to build up numbers) who wants to leave as badly as Kyr wants to stay, Kyr makes a choice to leave Gaea behind and go in search of her brother. A moment of compassion has her rescuing the recently captured majo zi, along with their ship. Perhaps it’s a foolish choice, to save one of the creatures who destroyed Earth, but it’s the first choice of many Kyr will have to make, and the one that will define her the most.

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to get a book that grabs me by the throat and doesn’t let go, a book that never feels long enough, one that I don’t want to end, even as I can’t stop turning the pages. And this is one of those books. Kyr is, at first, a difficult character to embrace. She’s cold, aloof, unpleasant, self-centered, and selfish. She’s also 17, deliberately raised to be obedient and to always feel as if she isn’t good enough, strong enough, smart enough, or even just enough. No girl, no matter how skilled, holds any rank above Sergeant, and even the Sergeants are honorary titles for the older breeding women in the Nursery wing.

Kyr isn’t introspective, isn’t curious, doesn’t want to know more about the world. When she’s made up her mind, it’s made up and it’ll take a planet-sized rock to the head to make her change it. She is loyal to a fault, driven to excel, to earn even a crumb of praise from her uncle Jole. She doesn’t see her brother’s misery, she only sees that his scores are better than hers. She doesn’t see her age-mates — the girls are grouped together by ages, kept apart from the boys — as anything but tasks. Make them stronger so they don’t drag her down; raise their scores, keep them in line. She has to be a leader because it’s the only way to prove she deserves to be put to a Combat wing. But when she’s, instead, sent to Nursery where she will be forced to produce child after child after child for the good of the colony, Kyr … can’t. Won’t. The idea of children, of having her body turned against her, is horrifying. The idea of being touched like that by one of the older ranking officers … just, no. It’s not until she is betrayed that she is motivated to break out of the cycle of obedience, freeing herself from the people who have groomed her — as they have groomed all of the children — to be pliant. Dutiful. The pretty ones for breeding, the useful ones for fighting, and none of them able to question.

Kyr’s lack of empathy is, in part, her youth. It’s also the system that raised her, the calculation and the training. And watching her go from a lonely, angry, willfully blind child into a clear-eyed woman, capable of great love and great forgiveness — using everything she was taught and everything she learned — is so smoothly and subtly done you don’t realize how far she’s come from the first page to the last until the book is done.

Kyr had spent her whole life angry. It was deep inside her, the seed that Gaea had planted and nourished till it twined through everything she was; a righteous rage that said I am the hand of vengeance. She had been born into a universe gone wrong. She had waited her whole life to come face-to-face with something she could blame.

And here he was.

And he didn’t matter.

Kyr’s friends — Ari, the gay tech who has learned that cruelty is the only weapon he has, who sees Kyr as a means to an end; Max, her brother, never meant to fight, who never wanted to hurt anyone, let alone kill them and who sees Kyr as his sister, his weakness, and the goad used against him; Yisa, the majo zi whose boundless curiosity and trust are offered up to Kyr again and again, who sees Kyr as a hero; Cleo and the other Sparrows who see Kyr as a tyrant, a would-be teacher’s pet with no care for anyone but herself, and yet … she’s still one of them — all have their parts to play, and they do so so very well.

Gaea is a horrifying place, but it’s also home. It’s the place that made Kyr who she is and helps shape her into who she will one day be.

If Kyr had learned anything, it was that there was no justice in the universe, none; that nothing was fair and nothing was ever going to be fair. And here they were, alive, planning, hoping; carrying it all with them, everywhere they went, forever; living with what they had and hadn’t done.

There are many similarities between Gaea and a cult. The radicalization, the isolation, the zealotry, bigotry, and xenophobia the adults instill in their children leads to an atmosphere of fear. The children are trained to be unthinking machines, doing as they’re told, and the pretty girls are carefully selected to be used — mostly by the ranking adult officers and some chosen young men of exceptional bloodlines — as breeding stock. This is done against their will, but the young women are indoctrinated into it so thoroughly they can’t even think of saying no. Gaea is unhealthy and quite mad, and the tension and horror are there as a deliberate and additional character. Not everyone will find it to their taste, but if you give it a try and trust the author to lead you through the darkness there is light at the end, and it’s a glorious and golden light.

I loved this book. I loved the world building, I loved Yisa, the alien, and their relationship with Kyr. I loved Kyr’s growing relationship with her brother, with Cleo, even with Ari. The first half of the book was so good I’d give it a 5 out of 5 on its own. The second half … wobbles, a bit. But the wobble feels deliberate, the tonal shift, the characters’ actions, all of it is to a purpose and to strengthen the themes and impact of the end. And it’s a good end. A very good end. This is a five-star book with strong writing, amazing characterization, and a brilliant story. I just loved it. Please, please give this book a try. You won’t regret it.

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

"Some Desperate Glory" is everything I love about sci-fi! Lots of action, cool aliens, and explorations of what it means to be human and how to make the universe a better place. It asks a lot of tough questions and deals with some sensitive topics, so be sure to check trigger warnings.

I was gripped by this book from the start. I loved how the characterization was done, especially for Kyr, the MC. She is so unlikeable at the beginning, but you can see so much room for growth. All the characters were interesting and beautifully written, with none of them being truly good or bad, but instead complex people, who have often been brainwashed or manipulated, and have to make tough choices.

I don't often enjoy revenge plots as I find they can become reductive and tiresome. But I honestly loved how this book handled themes of control, grief, anger, and forgiveness. There was so much nuance in the ways that the different characters reacted to tragedy and the drive for revenge. It really made me think in deep ways about humanity and "evil" (i.e. what might cause someone to commit terrible acts).

I also loved that it had so many queer characters, while not being a romance. The representation was great, and I especially liked that different alien races had different ways of viewing gender. This book also challenged the gender binary and the backward views that often place men as "superior" to women.

I could go on and on about this book, but needless to say, it is a new favourite for me and I can't wait to revisit it one day. There was so much depth to the world and characters, while still being fun and action-filled. Never gonna stop recommending this one!

Some Desperate Glory takes some really challenging prompts - a fascist and unpleasant lead, a meditation on war and moral relativism, dimensional shenanigans that can make stakes hard to comprehend - and absolutely aces them. I think Kyr feels like such an interesting response to the stereotypical YA-dystopia protagonist, who is often instinctively morally right even in a twisted society; her story is a powerful one of redemption, mistakes, and a continued process of deradicalization. Getting the balance of this right is a huge task (and one that will doubtless have mixed results on different readers), but, for me, I think the distorted logic of Kyr's initial beliefs feels so believable and always allowed me to see the brainwashed human underneath who had the capacity to be better. A lot of phases are packed into this story, but I didn't find it rushed, with more of a propulsive sense of consequence, particularly as I clued in to where the story was going with its setup. At once a deeply personal and a highly philosophical narrative, with just the right amount of worldbuilding and tons of close characterwork, which is pretty much my ideal recipe for standalone sci-fi.

HIGHLIGHTS⁠
🌌 Space Setting⁠
🚀 Future of Earth (and Earthlings)⁠
👧🏼 Female-Centered POV⁠
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I'll be honest, this one took me a while but that is mostly due to traveling and work being insane for the past two weeks and not having a lot of time to read.⁠
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That being said, every time I picked up this one I felt absolutely transported. Space travel, cults, and alternate universes will keep you guessing and guessing and guessing.

A space opera is fun in and of itself, but complex and morally questionable characters are even better. This book tries to tackle a lot of subjects and I feel as if it was done pretty well. This book is slightly more brutal than I originally thought it was going to be, which is not a bad thing. I did not like the main character at first and still don’t harbor overly fond feelings for them. It is so interesting to see the way this system is set up with issues ranging from race to forced pregnancies under the guise of choice (Cause yeah, sure. You can choose to not fulfill the job selected for you. You’ll be known as a coward unwilling to do what is required for humanity’s survival, but sure) and to follow someone who absolutely believes each of those lies and ideals without considering if it makes her a bad person or not. Some of this kind of reminded me of The Blood Trials and Red Rising - both of which I enjoyed. It also keeps you just about questioning how much of what the Command has told the population has been a lie. It tackles interesting and difficult conversations while still remaining fun and quick for a read. If anything, I’m even more excited to see the special addition of it from Illumicrate.

When this book starts, you are not going to love Kyr. You just will not. She is cold, and even the other girls she grew up with can't wait to be rid of her. And take the trigger warnings seriously- Kyr's people (initially, anyway) really are sexist, homophobic, racist asshats. Full stop, I kind of wanted the whole society to explode. Is that wrong? Well, anyway, it is what it is.

But eventually, Kyr starts to come around, and understand that maybe her people aren't who she thought they were. Maybe they have been feeding her false information, messing with her minds. You know, as cults do. And make no mistake- this society is very culty. Idk what even the name of the Overlord is (that is not actually his title, just what I am calling him). In my head, he was absolutely giving me Jim Jones vibes, frankly. She's not exactly tickled when they send her, a lifelong trained fighter, to be an incubator. But the last straw for her is when her brother is basically ordered to go to his death. Kyr can't take that, on top of the whole "being a human incubator" bit, and she takes off to find him.

From there... well look, things get bananas. I don't know if I could fully explain it to you if I tried, but I don't want to try because that would ruin the plot. Let's just say that as the story goes on, with some help from some new (and old) friends, Kyr starts to figure out what is real and what is at stake- and it is a lot. So with the help of these friends, she sets out to right some of the gross wrongs. And it gets really intense along the way.

The character growth throughout the story is impressive, not just for Kyr, but for the side characters too. Speaking of, I loved so many of the side characters, and they injected some humor and levity into an otherwise tense story. I found the world incredibly fascinating, and the stakes super high. I also loved that Kyr had lots of moments of doubt- it made her progress seem that much more realistic, since she had spent her whole life being indoctrinated into these lies. There were tons of twists and exciting turns, and basically, I could not stop reading!

Bottom Line: Full of adventure and tons of character growth, I definitely did not want to put this one down!

The premise of Some Desperate Glory intrigued me, and I had hoped it would live up to the hype. The story felt like it fit the YA genre with how it dealt with issues (way to simplistic/basic). And if it was actually marketed for YA, then I would have less issues with how the author dealt with race/gender/fascism. That alone turned me off. There’s a seen later on in the story where I had a wtf moment, ‘did she really just do/ask that?’ So. I feel like folks in different age groups and maturity will definitely comprehend this story a bit differently. This just had too many cringe moments for me.

What I did enjoy the world building and space odyssey feel. I liked the actual plot of the story, but there was just too much in the questionable actions of the MC and how the author handled it.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

2.5 stars

I have a few thoughts about this book, but I will start off by saying that I loved the writing in this book. Any issues that I have are not with the writing, but the plot itself. I need to read more of Emily Tesh’s work!

There are a lot of things about Some Desperate Glory that I was excited about: a space colony with cult vibes, girl friendship, fun family dynamics, and a redemption arc.

I was not a huge fan of Kyr in this book, and I know that it was purposeful and because of indoctrination, but I couldn’t get myself to look past it. I felt bad for everyone around her, and even though she realized the reality of her situation, I don’t think she got any better. She never really apologized for anything.

The time traveling, multiverse part of the story was surprising to me, but it took me out of the story when, about 1/3 through, it started all over. And then once again, about 2/3 in. I did like the idea of it, but didn’t really vibe with how it ended up. And queer space opera? No, that’s not quite right.

I know there’s a few criticisms, but I do recommend this book to my science fiction lovers. Some may love it more than I did, and I always recommend stories like this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the chance to read this advanced review copy.

CW for suicide, violence, child abuse, murder, genocide, blood, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, racism, bullying, sexual assault, rape (implied, not on page), suicidal thoughts, and ableism

Months after finishing this book, I'm finally returning on the eve of its publication to say a whole lot of nothing, ultimately.

I'll start by giving immense credit to Emily Tesh's ability to hit emotional beats, keep me invested in a thoroughly unlikable character, and to write engaging combat scenes.

That said: while fast paced and action packed, this science fantasy bites off more than it really seems able to chew. The young tone read more like YA than its intended adult and the book's attempt to tackle a laundry list of social issues through the aggravatingly and regressively cult-like environment of Gaea Station was both underwhelming in its execution and pulled focus from what was already a fairly busy narrative.

As in the Greenhollow Duology, Tesh's prose is strong and her care for her main character (and a favourite side character or two) is apparent. I only wish that in this vastly bigger and broader setting, more care had been afforded to fleshing out characters other than Kyr and into giving the over all narrative a little more maturity.

Despite adoring Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory, I’ve put off reviewing it for months because I don’t know quite how to review it. If I talk about the plot beyond what you can read in the jacket copy, it takes away from the experience of reading it; this is one of those books where I believe the less you know going in, the better the experience will be.

Instead, I will say that protagonist Kyr almost certainly will infuriate you. She is, bluntly, a fascist asshole programmed in a misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic organization. If you’re anything like me, the book will go interminably slow until about the midpoint. You will wonder how much more of Kyr’s radicalized awfulness you can take. But swiftly, suddenly, and surprisingly seamlessly, the direction of the novel pivots. Tesh unfolds a complex, gut-wrenching journey that ultimately makes Some Desperate Glory an early contender for my favourite novels of 2023.

Queer space opera is a favourite of mine. In particular, I love queer space opera that digs into the comparatively infinitesimal forces of individual lives when compared to the vastness of galaxies—how single individuals can shape the trajectory of an entire universe… or not. Some Desperate Glory delivers that in superb fashion with a novel that stands out in my memory months and months down the line.

Thank you to Tordotcom and NetGalley for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.