I have always loved how scifi allows authors to reframe recognizable human conflicts utilizing unfamiliar settings and technology. Tesh demonstrates this excellently, touching on some very current issues, while also building strong crossover appeal to readers like myself who may often stay more in the fantasy lane. I see fans of Mass Effect, Hunger Games, and Enders Game all being target audiences.
Of note, this is an adult book, even if our view point is through young adult eyes. Contant warnings are contained at the beginning of the book, please read and consider these carefully prior to jumping in. When we meet our MC I found her incredibly unlikeable (which appears to be by design). She was raised in an extremis cult and this story is very much a focus on her deprogramming.

Thank you Tor Publishing Group and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh was one of my most anticipated SFF releases of 2023. I am so bummed to say that I did not love this book.

First, what I liked: this has such a strong start! I loved learning about Kyr’s life on Gaea station. It’s a fairly fast-paced and easy read. I feel SDG would be a good pick for those wanting a transition novel from YA to adult books.

I thought the concept of Some Desperate Glory was better than its execution. The book tries to tackle several “-isms” without providing much nuance. And for an adult novel, I expect there to be nuance when it comes to discussing topics such as facism, sexism, racism, etc. Another pitfall for me was that the main character, Kyr felt extremely flat. She’s a teenage supersoldier with the personality of a doorknob. I never felt connected to her or her motivations to get revenge on the majoda. In fact, I didn’t feel connect to a single character in this book.

I primarily read this book via audiobook and oh my goodness, this was one of the worst listening experiences I have had in a long time. My enjoyment of the story was definitely impacted by the narrator. The narrator sounded very choppy and kept pausing in places where there shouldn’t be pauses. It made for a very irritating listening experience. If you do pick up this book, I would not recommend listening to the audiobook.

I didn’t feel like Some Desperate Glory was doing anything new. It was a fine book. If the synopsis sounds interesting to you, pick it up and go for it but this won’t be a title I’ll be going out of my way to recommend.

3/5 stars

This was truly epic and stunning. It's one of those times I wish I could give an extra star or two on top of the usual 5 because this story deserves it.

Kyr is SO hard to like at the beginning. She's completely brainwashed and has 100% bought in to the narrative her "uncle" Joel is selling: that they're a resistance determined to get revenge and glory for humanity -- rather than a barbaric cult in the middle of nowhere. And yet by the end, you find yourself completely on her side, rooting for her every step of the way and feeling everything she feels.

Watching events play out, feeling the layers of brainwashing being stripped away as the narrative progresses, was incredible. The twists were shocking, the characters endlessly compelling, and the plot was truly stunning, once you get to the end of it and look back. I LOVED it.

The audiobook narrator did a phenomenal job giving all the characters unique voices and capturing the pain and trauma they have lived, and the transformation Kyr undergoes.

Absolutely one of the best books of the year.

*Thanks to NetGalley, Tor/Forge, and Macmillan Audio for providing an early copy and early audio copy for review.

Included as a top pick in bimonthly April New Releases post, which highlights and promotes upcoming releases of the month (link attached)

If you love sci-fi and want a book with a female main character who is tough as nails, THIS IS IT! Blew my expectations away and i can’t wait to buy my own copy. A great read for all adult sci-fi lovers who want more female & queer representation

I had a tricky time with this one. I read a few advanced chapters curtesy of Tor, and it stuck in my head. I wanted to read more and these characters bounced in the back of my head for weeks while waiting to see if I could get an ARC of the story. Thanks Netgalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for coming through with it! I devoured this book within two days once I had it.

But I almost didn't. The main character goes through some huge changes and growth, but their intensely off putting nature almost turned me off the book completely. I was so curious about the world being described and wanted to know more, but so irritated and sad reading everything from the main character's viewpoint. It took a good half the novel for them to be less horrific, and a lot of it was hard to grasp with that obstacle in the way. A lot of the changes in viewpoints they have could have been foreshadowed better too, I loved the excerpts of human history interspaced with the chapters, but it felt like once the author decided to point out something big about the society the main character is from, it got jackhammered from all angles. Go back and sprinkle it in a little, give us a moment or two to let it dawn on folks.

The world building was phenomenal and hooked me in. The secondary characters were interesting, for the most part full of depth, and I was curious where the story would go next. There was a lot of genocide happening here, a lot of child abuse, and a lot of grey morality. But there were also supremely lovely moments, like Kyr diving through the space between reality shifting engines and finally feeling free and happy.

I'll be looking out for the author's next works, and hope that the plot gets the same detail and nuance as the characters.

Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory has quite a lot to say—some of it subtle, some of it more overt—about totalitarianism, fascism, and indoctrination. It’s a post-apocalyptic novel in which the Earth and trillions of its humans have been annihilated in a war with an alien species. As in any aggression, there are winners and losers, but only one side wants the battle to rage on. The hate and poison that seeps from one human generation to the next, the children groomed to carry on a fruitless crusade which has, in effect, stolen bits of their own humanity, creates the internal and external conflict for the story’s young narrator, Valkyr.

Kyr was born and bred to be a warrior, nothing more, nothing less. She has been taught from the cradle that the majo are the enemy of humans, and the humans who live among the aliens (her own sister included) are traitors no more worthy of a peaceful life than the majoda. Liking Kyr or even feeling sympathetic toward her as the story unfolds is not an option. The only person who believes Kyr is the hero of this space opera is Kyr herself. It’s not until she begins to interrogate her thoughts and feelings independent of what she’s been taught that she begins to question. And it’s not until she learns what is expected of her that she begins to rebel. That’s when the empathy between her and I began to overcome my aversion to her and everything she’d stood for.

While there is no small amount of action and suspense in Some Desperate Glory, no few scenes of danger, tension, and drama, there is no question that this is a character-driven novel. It is the story of a teenage girl who is consumed with propaganda to the exclusion of critical thinking. In a near case of Stockholm Syndrome—near, because she wasn’t aware she was even a hostage to her uncle Jole—Kyr is immersed in the only life she’s ever known; she was nurtured to be imperceptive to anything but the mission. When she gets a second chance to right wrongs and make amends, the narrative turns to found family and friendships, love and sacrifice, and the pursuit of wisdom to achieve peace.

Fans of Tesh’s "Silver in the Wood" and "Drowned Country" will recognize the author’s knack for telling a compelling story, albeit Some Desperate Glory is worlds different in tone and voice. Engaging with Kyr, as difficult as that frequently is, and a willingness to see her through the good and the bad, is a journey of perseverance that pays off in the end.

I'm a simple woman. I see a Tamsyn Muir blurb on a book and I immediately read it.

Some Desperate Glory was one of my most-anticipated spring releases and while it didn't disappoint, it also didn't sweep me off my feet the way I hoped it would. I say this because it took me a while to get invested, as the plot was slow-moving to start and Kyr was not a particularly pleasant main character.

However, once we got into the plot and things really took off, I couldn't put the book down. Because of this, I highly recommend sticking this one out until at least the halfway mark if you are struggling to get into it but don't want to DNF.

In the end, I did really enjoy this and would definitely recommend it to fans of sci-fi and, specifically, Tamsyn Muir. The second half, specifically, had a little of the same confusion and literary gas-lighting of Harrow the Ninth, which was what ultimately grabbed and held my attention.

----4/5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillion-Tor for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

For her whole life, Kyr has known one purpose: while the children of the earth live, the enemy will fear us. But when her lifelong dedication to Gaea Station gets her landed in the Nursery and her brother sent on a death mission, Kyr begins to question what she has learned-- and might need to work with her sworn enemy to make things right.


I loved this book so so much! It has a bit of a slow start and Kyr isn't the *most* interesting character for a little while, but it starts to really pick up when she leaves Gaea Station and it gets so so good. After the first 100 pages, I was so transfixed that I could barely put this book down to go to sleep and found myself reading instead of eating lunch at work!

Kyr grows so much over the course of this book and so many of the side characters are so so interesting. The AI of the Wisdom is such an interesting concept and I love the lore of Shadowspace which makes this unlike other books I have read!

Definitely preorder this one!

CW: depressions, suicide, rape/sexual assault, gun violence, torture, murder, mass murder, war

I'm kind of obsessed with this. If I could have, I think I might have read this in one sitting. I loved this cast of characters so much, and oh Kyr's arc. Fantastic. I definitely intend to read more from Emily Tesh in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.
This was an intense ride, and SO GOOD. It was fascinating to be dropped into the world of this small group of people, who you and the narrator at first believe to be all the good left in the universe, only to slowly discover that maybe things are not as they seem, and then watch the effect of this discovery on our protagonist. I loved some of the twisty parts, and I loved how queer it is, and I basically just loved it. This is very hard to put down, and I got very involved.

Wow. Yes I requested this arc but no, I did not expect to love it so much. The pacing was phenomenal. The character development, incredible. THE STORY, absolutely amazing. This book cured my reading slump. I advise you to go in blind but check trigger warnings if you need to. In the arc content warnings we’re at the front of the books, I hope they’re in the published copy.

One of my new favorite reads, I hope everyone checks this out.

This was an absolutely excellent space opera. I am floored that this is a debut book. The fact that this book was so well rounded and concise only made the testing experience even better.

This book has it all. Time travel. Multiple dimensions. Alternate realities. Found family and real family. Second chances for humanity. I could not stop reading. A totally bingeable book from start to finish.

Thank you to @netgalley and @torbooks for the chance to read and review Some Desperate Glory early!

This book comes out April 11, 2023 and, as much as I am not a sci-fi reader, I had to check it out!

My synopsis and review:

Valkyr and her brother Magnus live on Gaea station, along with the last breaths of the human resistance. Humans have lost the war against the Majoda alien alliance, who are armed with their all powerful, all knowing "Wisdom".

Valkyr is a Warbreed, genetically engineered to be the best fighter humankind has to offer. She has worked her entire life to be the best, to make her mess the best group there is.

But that all comes to a screeching halt when their assignments come in: Kyr is relegated to Nursery. She is condemned to be bred and bear Gaea Station sons for the rebellion until she dies trying. Her brother Magnus? He's sent on a suicide mission.

Kyr can't live this way, and she does the one thing no one sees coming: she becomes a traitor to the cause. Teaming up with her brother's outsider techy friend, and a captive alien, she takes flight on a dangerous mission to rescue her brother and prove her worth.

The further she gets from Gaea Station, the more complicated things become. Emotionally and logistically.

When everything you know gets turned on its head, flipped inside out, and you know no longer what is reality.. who can you trust?

Will you die for the cause you were raised to believe in, or will you be brave enough to live for something more?

🌞🌞🌞🌞

So, this book. Wow. It went so many directions (literally) 😂 I loved it so much! Read it, read it, read it! A queer space opera. Do I need to say more?

The evolution of Kyr was enough to keep me hooked. She was stunning, beautiful, and hard to look at. Powerful, brave and raw.

Magnus 😭😭 oh Mags. How my heart hurt for him through this entire book, through every journey. He is too wonderful.

Just. *Sigh* it's too much.

My only qualm was the ending, like.. it needed an epilogue?

Fantastic worldbuilding, and the best kind of sci-fi that holds a mirror to our world and makes the reader question their idea of a 'perfect' society. The first act slows down before getting to the twist, but the following action more than makes up for it.

I haven't read any of the author's previous books, but I will definitely want to look into them after this! I really enjoyed this novel. Kyr was an excellent character, and it was very rewarding to watch her grow and learn. Tesh seems to be very good at writing complicated characters, as both Avi and Kyr are difficult and prickly.

I do wish this book was a bit heavier on the science part of science fiction. I would've really liked to know more about shadow jumping and how the Wisdom worked. I think this book would've been more successful as a YA instead of an adult book. Right now it reads more YA, especially with how the narrative engages only on a surface level with the heavy topics of indoctrination, racism, and reproductive autonomy. I expect a bit more thought and nuance from adult novels.

Good enough in the last third to distract me from dwelling on my cat who just died.

Kyr is unbearable for the first half of the book: she’s young, is an overachiever, believes she knows best, and has grown up brainwashed by the xenophobic homophobic, misogynistic breakaway capsule society she grew up in. She’s begins having experiences which force her to reconsider her beliefs, but is able to mostly subsume these beneath the principles of her upbringing.

Then, around the 50% mark, parallel universes and multiple timelines get woven in. Kyr finally becomes human instead of a brainwashed soldier, her crew rally around her, and the ending of this standalone sci-fi novel is very satisfying.

This was a wild, enjoyable, and (for this I am so grateful) distracting ride.

Thank you to Macmillain-Tor/Force and NetGalley for providing an eARC to review!

For me this was The First Sister meets Skyward - I'm not sure that I'd describe it as a queer space opera but it was definitely an incredible addition to the sci-fi genre!

I don't know that I've ever really read from the perspective of a character like Kyr before, who is basically fully indoctrinated into an extremist cult, and I really liked her development arc over the course of the book. At first she's abrasive and solely focused on being the best soldier she can be for a dead Earth, but then you see her slowly come into her humanity and realising that maybe the life she always idolised is actually pretty messed up. It was cool to see the echoes of her other selves as well, and the lives she could have had.

The parallel universe stuff wasn't confusing either which I really appreciated - I think this was somewhat mediated by coming through Kyr who wouldn't quite have a grasp on the really technical elements. We love accessible sci-fi! The side characters were complex and interesting too, and it was just such a well crafted story that I feel I immediately need to re-read. The only thing I didn't love was the VERY end, but overall I was here for the ride.

I was kind of worried because space/sci-fi stuff like that is usually not my type of thing, but this was totally great. The characters were brilliant and I loved the writing. Fans of speculative fiction need to read this one! I'll come back to this author's works very soon.

HIGHLIGHTS
~Kyr that is NOT how friendship works
~or mentoring
~listen to the alien sweetie
~two things will survive the apocalypse: cockroaches, and That Fucking Guy
~humans are the monsters of the universe

When I first read Tor’s sneak peek of Some Desperate Glory, I decided that this book wasn’t for me. The opening chapters introduce us to the kind of ick dystopia designed to make me rage, and it’s been a while since I enjoyed reading that kind of thing.

So I put it down and walked away.

…The thing is, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Some Desperate Glory opens with Kyr – the best soldier in her cohort – waiting for the assignment that will determine her future. In Gaea, a tiny space station, you don’t pick your own career; it’s chosen for you, and if you’re a girl, there are plenty of reasons to worry about what your assignment might be. Women are assigned to combat (the most-honoured sector) less often than men, and they’re the only ones ever assigned to Nursery, where your job is to be sexually available (to men) and constantly pregnant. Women never make it to command roles, it’s illegal to be queer, and the entire community only exists as a sort of terrorist commune, out for revenge on the aliens who destroyed Earth a generation earlier.

Can you see why I didn’t want to keep reading? It’s not that any of this is poorly written, but it felt like a dystopia designed to make me angry, and I just didn’t want to deal with it.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because the worldbuilding – the structure of Gaea – makes no sense. It niggled at me. The story Command is telling – that people like Kyr are brainwashed with – doesn’t match up to the reality of life on their middle-of-nowhere space station. For example, a huge amount of the combat training is built around hand-to-hand fighting. But this is a sci-fi setting way off in our future – ‘battle’ means space ships firing at each other, not wrestling. Which means your hand-to-hand skills are completely irrelevant. The training simulators ought to be about piloting and running a warship, and space tactics – but they aren’t. In fact, no one learns anything about ships until they are assigned to Combat. Physical strength shouldn’t mean much in a setting like this, but instead it’s held up as one of, if not the most important quality a soldier can have. We outright see a tactical genius being mocked and dismissed, instead of recognised for his ability, because he’s a nerd rather than a jock – even though his skills are the ones that really ought to be priceless in this set-up.

What the hell is going on?

For that matter, why this whole thing of women being lesser? The justification for that is, again, that women aren’t (generally) as physically strong as men, but that shouldn’t matter here. There’s no reason Combat and leadership roles shouldn’t be split about 50/50 in this setting – and they aren’t. And if Nursery is about making sure humans don’t die out, with each pregnancy supposedly a carefully decided match of bloodlines – then why are visits to Nursery used as a motivating reward for male soldiers? Why even have sex, rather than the much less complicated method of insemination?

Why are creepy old men putting the prettiest teenagers in Nursery and then pretending they don’t know about the assignment that they signed off on?

And the thing is, none of this reads as though Tesh has messed up and made a mistake. The worldbuilding doesn’t make sense, but it feels deliberate. Tesh knows it makes no sense. It’s all on purpose, and we’re meant to, if not break it down and write pages and pages of analysis like I did, at least be left uneasy at the dissonance we can’t help but pick up on.

Basically, I needed answers. That’s what made me push through this horrible, gross cult Kyr has been raised in. Was the Earth even destroyed at all? If it was, was it actually the aliens, or was it some terrible last-stand type call made by humans? Even if it was the aliens, was it on purpose? Gaea Station is so incredibly fucked-up, the dissonance between the story Kyr was raised on and the reality around her so intense, that Tesh had me questioning everything. I can’t remember the last time a book had me this suspicious, this braced for a gotcha! moment that would upend all that had gone before.

CONSIDER ME IMPRESSED.

This is really only the smallest part of Some Desperate Glory, though; Kyr’s time on Gaea Station is the shortest part of the book. But I’m hoping that showing you how obsessed I got – with just this small part of the story! – gives you some idea of how much this book just GRABS you. Some Desperate Glory is not just a book that you can’t put down; it’s also one you can’t stop thinking about, both while you’re reading and after you’ve finished it. Honestly, my biggest frustration with it was that I was reading it early – so I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it! Because this is very much a novel that you want all your friends to have read so you can debate it and analyse it and shriek over it in a group, at two in the morning, when you’re all just manic and wired and flaily enough to tackle the issues this book raises head-on.

Because there’s a lot of them. I’m not going to talk about the plot, because you really should get to enjoy every twist and turn for yourself without spoilers, but Some Desperate Glory goes hard. It’s a book that asks incredibly difficult questions without trying to offer easy answers – honestly, most of the questions are left open, for us to try and figure out on our own, which personally I think is the best approach to issues this emotional and complicated. Fundamental to Kyr’s entire existence are questions like–

When are you supposed to let go of terrible things that have been done to you? Ever? Never?

What’s the difference between justice and revenge?

Do the means justify the ends? The greatest good for the greatest number?

Is it ever time to stop fighting?

If it is, when?

If it is, how?

Tesh has, unquestionably, written a masterpiece here. And I’m still completely stunned that this is a standalone – that Tesh manages to pack so much story into a single book, and for that book to then blaze with a glory that is not desperate in the least, but that is deep and fervent and brighter than a sun. Most authors would need a trilogy to tell the same story with half as much impact, passion, and depth, and Tesh has done it without ever making the story feel rushed or cramped, distilling the story she wanted to tell to its most potent possible form.