Thank you to Netgalley for this Advanced Copy of Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh. While the story is very intriguing, I think I'd prefer this story as TV, rather than a reading experience.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is a bit of an odd one for me. It’s marketed as an adult sci-f, but instead it feels very reminiscent of the YA dystopian craze of the 2010s where a fleet of humanity’s survivors must be assigned to very specific roles and are trained to fight against a big, evil alien force known as Wisdom.

Unfortunately, I found most of the characters to be one-dimensional stereotypes with the exception of maybe the main character’s brother, Magnus, who was the most nuanced of the bunch.

I also thought it bizarre that some major plot twists were revealed through epigraphs at the beginning of chapters. Honestly, I feel like those revelations would have been more impactful if they were organically revealed within the story itself.

Overall, this book is an entertaining but shallow palette cleanser if you need a break from denser space operas.

MY REVIEW: DNF

Life is too short to continue on with books you are not enjoying.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

This sci-fi novel does something I've never seen outside of fanfiction: create an alternate universe of its own story and characters. And it does it *well.* Val Kyr has trained all her life to defeat the aliens and their god-like artificial intelligence known as the Wisdom. But when she finally gets the chance, it all goes terribly wrong. And everything she thought she knew about humanity and aliens and war is suddenly flipped on its head.

Big TW for suicide.

I want to inject this book into my veins - new favorite read of 2023. Emily Tesh is such a talent in terms of both character development and plotting through dimensions.

I was almost afraid to read this book because I absolutely loved the title and cover, and I was scared the actual book was going to let me down. How wrong I was! I have already ordered a physical copy of this book because I needed it on my bookshelves. A queer space rollercoaster that doesn't let you get off until the very last page.

Kyr was born and raised to be a weapon. The Majo have destroyed the planet Earth, and a last remnant of survivors lives on Gaia, a barren rock, struggling both to survive and to get their revenge. Kyr has worked her entire young life to prepare herself for war. Her test and training scores are among the best ever, male or female. She has worked hard to beat the scores set by her sister, Ursa, a quest driven more urgently by Ursa’s betrayal and flight from Gaia. She refuses to be less than the sister who betrayed her own people.

When a Majo ship is captured, Kyr meets the sole occupant, an alien named Yiso. Yiso is small and slender, particularly beside the genetically enhanced body of Kyr and the other children of Earth. Far from being the menacing figure of legend, Yiso is comparatively weak and timid. If this is the best among the aliens, how did the humans lose the war?

Kyr’s brother Mags is sent on a suicide mission while Kyr herself is assigned to a much more domestic role, a role she believes she is particularly ill-suited for. In a desperate attempt to rescue her brother and to escape her own unwelcome fate, Kyr flees the outpost with Yiso and Mags’s friend Avi, and together they travel to the human-colonized planet Chrysothemis.

Emily Tesh writes a space novel that is part thriller, part mystery, and all adventure. Kyr is perhaps the ultimate bad-ass. She is a warrior who has trained obsessively to be the ultimate human weapon. Somehow, though, her training has completely neglected areas of human feeling: love, compassion, understanding, thoughtfulness. She is a jerk. People do not like her, and she doesn’t really care at first. By the time she recognizes that she has a problem, it may be too late. She is driven by hate and arrogance: hatred for the aliens that cracked open the Earth like an egg and killed over 14 billion people, and arrogance toward those she considers her lessers–which is just about everybody. It would require something unthinkable to alter Kyr’s mindset.

Tesh deeply explores what hate can do to a person and to a group. She also writes with compassion toward her completely uncompassionate protagonist. Kyr was raised to be exactly what she has become. Can she–can anyone–overcome their upbringing, find redemption, change the course of their own history?

Can they do it without their world ending?

3.75 stars -- a very fun, very queer space opera, where the end goal is to essentially save the planet, or human existence as a whole. i enjoyed the story, tuned out in some places, but ultimately had a good time.

dnf @27% — life got in the way, absolutely nothing against this book

The set-up and writing were intriguing, I just took too long to read it and lost interest,

This is one of those books where you THINK you know what's going on, and then stuff goes down and you're like, wait. Hang on, hang on. What just happened? Like that scene in the Matrix where the cat crosses the stairwell twice.

Kyr is a brainwashed soldier, raised in a Fascist space station, trained from birth for vengeance over the destruction of Earth. Except she gets assigned to "Nursery" instead, forced to give birth to more supersoldiers until she dies. Faced with that kind of fate, she decides to take matters into her own hands and strike out into the world in search of heroism -- and slowly realizes along the way that nothing is what she thought.

And then finds that what she thought after she realized that was also not quite right either.

And again.

It's a wild space opera with deep emotions, rich worldbuilding, and super feisty girls. What's not to like?

In Gaea station, the last remnants of humanity are being trained to fight to avenge the murder of planet Earth. The space alliance called the majoda destroyed the Earth, killing 14 billion people and the handful of survivors on Gaea are determined that humanity will rise up again to destroy the majoda. They are bred for war from genetically enhanced humans and brainwashed from birth to accept that their role is to destroy the majoda and their most powerful weapon, the Wisdom, capable of altering time and space reality. Only the strongest fighters are be selected to join the squadrons sent out to battle the majoda. Those who don’t make the cut will become technicians or cleaners on the station, or in the case of women, breeders and child carers.

Kyr is 17 and, along with her twin brother Mags, about to graduate from Gaea’s intensive warrior training and be assigned a role. They are two of the best fighters of their generation, both tall and powerful, and with their Uncle Joel being the station commander, they are in no doubt they will both be picked for combat squadrons. Except things don’t turn out quite as predicted and when Mags has no choice but to leave Gaea, Kyr must decide whether to stay and serve her people or leave to search for the brother she loves.

Emily’ Tesh’s first full-length novel is space opera at its best, packed with plenty of action and suspense. The world building is excellent, especially the closed, dystopian world of Gaea, cut off from the rest of the universe and ruled by an autocratic military dictatorship. The novel will also transport us to beautiful worlds where complex communities live together in peace. Kyr is a well written character, initially difficult to warm to as she is indoctrinated to be ruthless and resilient and show no feelings. She lacks empathy and is hard on herself and others and it’s no surprise she is not popular with her classmates. However, she will later come to question her upbringing and brainwashing on Gaea and grow to become more compassionate and caring. There is a strong cast of supporting characters including Mags, his nerdy, queer friend Avi, as well as Yiso the alien whose craft has been captured by Gaea and who will play an important role in helping Kyr.

The novel is not overly dense with weighty facts and would also be suitable for a YA audience. Throughout there is a lot of wry humour, mostly at the expense of the characters and a lot of fun is had in playing with the multiverse. Although described as a queer space opera, this did not feel like central element, with gender diversity is tackled fairly superficially. Many other important themes are also raised including racism, bigotry, corruption and misogyny, as well as the way we choose to structure human society, although again not dealt with in great depth. One of the delights of the novel is the major twist in the middle which takes the novel in an unexpected but very entertaining direction, eventually resulting in an original and satisfying ending. There is plenty her for fans of scifi thrillers to enjoy.

I had a bit of a hard time writing this review, because there were SO MANY amazing elements to Some Desperate Glory that I struggled to select only a handful to talk about. Frankly, this book is one of the single best stories I have ever read. From the raw and sometimes painful character development that Kyr undergoes, to the utter unpredictability of where the story would go next, Some Desperate Glory had me enraptured. I had to fight against the urge to read the entire book in one sitting, as it was an experience worth savoring. Emily Tesh created a hauntingly realistic future packed with fascinating tech and humans making the same poor choices they do in our world. Even while dealing with the massive concepts of war, revenge, and justice, Some Desperate Glory manages to stay rooted in a reality comprehensible to readers from all backgrounds.

My Recommendation-
Some Desperate Glory won’t be released into the world until April this year, but you should absolutely start getting excited about it right now if you’re a fan of Gideon the Ninth or The Traitor Baru Cormorant! If you’re a sci-fi reader wondering what to preorder for the coming year, make sure that Some Desperate Glory is on your list!

Since the release of her novella Silver in the Wind in 2019, I've been a fan of Emily Tesh, so her debut novel, Some Desperate Glory, was high on my anticipation list for 2023. In this science fiction thriller, contact with aliens has happened, and it ends with the destruction of Earth. Now Valkyr is one of the few humans living in Gaea Station. The remaining human refugees have formed a militarized society revolving around surviving and getting revenge on the aliens who destroyed their world. Now Kyr, the girls of her mess she has trained and grown up with, and her brother are about to graduate and be given their mission assignments. Unfortunately for Kyr, this is when everything goes wrong.
It should be noted, as far as trigger warnings are concerned, this book has many, and Tesh presents those warnings before the novel begins. This review will discuss some of those subjects. There will also be spoilers.

The truth is, Part I of the post, set on Gaea Station, is difficult to enjoy as its setting is utterly depressing. Kyr, likewise, is wholly unlikable. She is cruel, homophobic, xenophobic, glory hungry, ignorant, self-centered, closed off, selfish, obsessed with being the best, and as her closest rival, Cleo, puts it early on, a "horrible bitch” that "everyone hates." The only value Kyr sees in herself, and others is how useful they are to the cause. Unfortunately, the cause doesn't help. As far as Kyr knows, all that remains of humanity is military training, eugenics, and hatred, and where women's lives are reduced to whether they'd be better as soldiers or breeding stock. The combination of the two made sticking to the book, in the beginning, challenging, but as someone who advocates for stopping a book if you don't like it, I'm glad I stuck with it. Once Kyr has her assignment, everything begins to change. Once the setting moves on from Gaea Station, the book hits the ground running.

It's in Part Two and Three on Chrysothemis, the human colony planet first to surrender to the Majoda, the aliens humanity lost their war to, that my opinion of Valkyr began to change. Kyr's utter enthusiasm for the cause is a defense mechanism to ignore everything wrong about Gaea she doesn't want to see. Emily Tesh doesn't change Kyr to quite likable yet. Still, through her change in environment and interactions, it's easier to sympathize with Kyr and how brainwashed she is. She can rationalize her homophobia towards fellow Gaean, Avi, a technical genius, because she sees him as weak but has to come up with new rationales when her brother comes out to her that it's simply "sex stuff," not what is truly important; the mission. From Avi to her reunion with her so-called traitor sister, to the nephew whose age has implications Kyr doesn't want to think about, to the alien Yiso Kyr doesn't want to admit is a person, let alone accept their non-binary pronouns, red flags are littered about Gaea that make it harder and harder for Kyr to ignore. Kyr is not just a zealot but a sad teenager who has shied away from the truth her entire life because it would hurt too much.

Kyr feels like a lost cause in the beginning. It felt as if she'd never entirely break out of Gaea's brainwashing. By part three, Kyr is standing on the threshold of understanding the truth about her precious Uncle Joel and all the adults who have turned her into an extremist for the human race. In part three, there was a growing emotional tension, a desperation for her to make that final push. There is a likable character in Valkyr, but everyone's patience with her will vary, and I can't argue with them if it drives them away from the book. At this point, it's heartbreaking to see Kyr being on the verge of a revelation several times only for her to retreat into the safety of the mission, one given to her brother, not her, and one that'll result in her death. By the time Kyr finally has her breakthrough about what Gaea has done to her, her sister, Avi, her brother, and all of those other girls from her mess, it's too late. Everything goes completely wrong, and the book drastically changes the setting.

At the halfway mark, Emily Tesh takes the book in a bold direction. The Wisdom, the artificial intelligence that leads the Majo to what they see as the greater good, plays a pivotal role in this part. The civilization created by The Wisdom is reminiscent of Iain M. Bank's The Culture books, a mix of sentient races and technology living together. However, the Wisdom itself plays a much more significant role in Kyr's journey in the second half of Some Desperate Glory. Kyr gets to see the other side of humanity, the side that gave the Majo a reason to destroy the Earth. She also gets to see the other side of herself, which isn't so different from Avi or her brother Magnus. She learns what it's like to live where her sexuality, her training, her usefulness, or what her being a woman can do for the survival of humanity.

The book often feels at a point between a Young Adult and an Adult science fiction book. It has more nuance than is often seen in a YA book. Still, it is not quite as nuanced as science fiction can be, perhaps because the main character is a teenager, and it's mostly told from her perspective. Rather than being black and white like most YA books, it feels dark grey and light grey but not much more complex than that. Still, its climax is a satisfying conclusion that brings redemption and a new lease on life to Kyr and many of the young people of Gaea Station.

Yes, Some Desperate Glory is about the aftermath of a war humanity lost that cost them the Earth and led to the rise of a fascist terrorist cell hellbent on revenge. However, it's also about that what indoctrination can do to a person and the lengths to which one can lie to themselves to keep the protection that indoctrination provides for them: safety, a purpose, a meaning to their life, to feel useful, to feel needed, wanted, a place to belong, a mission that is bigger than oneself. Emily Tesh's debut novel delivers complicated characters and fascinating science fiction technology with maybe a less nuanced plot than the subject matter deserves. Still, I have no regrets about sticking with it or with Valkyr.

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Joshua was provided an advance copy of the book by Tor books.
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The murder of planet Earth must be avenged and Kyr has trained for days to do so. Kyr has been raised in Grea Station that encompasses the last pieces of humanity. She has been preparing herself for a while to face the Wisdom, which just happens to be an all-powerful and a reality-shaping weapon that allowed the Mejoda to win against humanity. Kyr's brother becomes assigned by the The Command to certain death and on top of that, The Command assigns her to the nursery so she can bear sons. The only thing Kyr can do is plan to avenge humanity and will escape into a universe that she does not know and does not understand.

When I first heard about this book, I knew I just needed to read it. I do not read much sci-fi and want to get more into it and I had a feeling this would be one to add to my tbr so I can explore more of this generation.

I really, really wanted to like Some Desperate Glory, but I neither hate it or love it.

Some Desperate Glory has a lot of potential, but I feel like it did not go into full depth into what it really wanted to be and to take some risks to elevate the plot, world, and characters.

I really love this premise about Kyr wanting to avenge humanity and to become a warrior. I felt like the first quarter of the book does engage you and feels fast paced. Then, the queer representation was great as well.

For Kyr, I feel like she was an unlikeable character, but her development was good and made her feel real based off of the circumstances she was going through.

However, as I kept reading, I kept feeling like I was being transported out of the book and not really liking the characters or really caring what was going on.

I enjoyed this book. Marketed as a Queer Space Opera i found that tag accurate. The main character isn't very likeable but the story is. I was totally caught up in this fast quick read. I was engaged thorough.

Wasn’t able to get through this one, unfortunately. Ended up having to DNF around the 20%.

Hopefully I can come back to it in the future.

This is a an absolute thrilling science fiction story with an amazing world. It was really interesting to read and to follow the main character, Kyr, how she unlearns everything she has ever been thaught.
I needed some time to really get into the story and understand how everything worked, but onve I did I was hooked and couldn't wait to find out how everything was going to be resolved.

DNF at 175 pages. I tried to come back to this a few times throughout the course of a month but just could not get into it. It had a hard time keeping my interest and lacked characters that I really connected with or even liked.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2023, and it did NOT disappoint. I saw Shelley Parker-Chan describe this book as being for "people who loved Ender's Game, but Ender's Game didn't love them back." That is totally true.

This book is very unique in that it focuses on humanity not as the conquerers or the builders of a utopian space empire, as so many other sci-fi books do - it has Earth be wiped out by an alien force and the surviving members of humanity scattered around the galaxy as refugees. The inner workings and worldbuilding of Gaea station were fascinating and well-developed. I loved the politics that Emily Tesh built into the worldbuilding as well.

Kyr was a fascinating protagonist to follow - she starts out very difficult to love (although I love books with unlikeable female main characters) but her character development was so satisfying to see, and you end up really rooting for and feeling for her at the end.

The twist in the plot around halfway through the book was completely unexpected and SO fun and cool, I actually gasped. No spoilers, but I wish every sci-fi book could manage to shock me like that. It added another layer to the story that really made it feel meaty and unique.

This isn't a perfect book. I've seen other reviewers say that its "social justice agenda" could have been done more subtly and with more finesse, which I do agree with, but I know this is Emily Tesh's first full-length novel, and these kind of hiccups are understandable. I also wish that it were MORE queer, although I appreciate that Kyr was specifically stated to be on page. All in all, this was incredibly enjoyable and a wonderful space adventure story with real stakes, wonderful characters, suspenseful plot, and a unique premise that I will remember for a long time.

Are we the baddies? is one of my favourite tropes in fiction. Emily Tesh plays this trope straight to great effect in Some Desperate Glory. This is a story of deradicalization, and it’s one that in this day and age needs to be told. If we as a society are going to continue making progress on issues of social justice in an age where misinformation online abounds and assists in radicalizing our friends and family, we need to learn how to have difficult, nuanced conversations with people who have succumbed to such causes. This book explores that while also delivering action and no small amount of tears. Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the eARC.

Kyr is a warrior dedicated to a cause. She is one of a handful of true humans—Gaians—left in a galaxy where aliens have destroyed Earth and dominated the remainder of humanity. Or at least, that’s the story she was told. As she approaches graduation into the ranks of Gaia’s elite warriors, the facade built around Kyr for her entire life begins to crumble, and she begins to question everything she knows. The resulting doubt will catapult her on a journey across space and time in search of what justice actually means.

I didn’t like Kyr at first. We aren’t supposed to—she is a product of a world that this bio-essentialist, rigidly gendered, homophobic, and racist. Tesh warns us of this up front with an author’s note, and I get it after reading the book. In order to truly show us the experience of deradicalizing and leaving a cult or hate group, Tesh has to show us where Kyr starts from: as someone who has internalized all these ideas because that is how she was raised, and even when she starts to question these ideas, often she still falls back on them. That, in my mind, is what makes her a sympathetic character—it’s the struggle against what she “knows” to be true because that was what she was told her whole life.

For me, the book’s brilliance is a slow burn indeed. The first part feels like a traditional tale of insurrection: Kyr wakes up, realizes she is one of the baddies, and takes it upon herself to fight back the only way she knows how. It’s the second part of the book, after a cataclysmic event and Tesh’s introduction of time/dimensional travel, that really causes Some Desperate Glory to take off. I love when a story that I think is one thing ends up hopping subgenres to become something else entirely—sure, it doesn’t always work, but when such a leap of faith lands so gracefully, as it does here, it is sublime.

From deradicalization we go to bigger philosophical questions of what it means to be human, to be sentient, and who should have the power to decide what course is “best” for the greater good. Though Kyr was definitely on “the wrong side” before, Tesh asks us if she is now on “the right side,” if there is a right side.

I’ve been watching a lot of The Flash for the first time alongside my rewatch of Supergirl, and I have to say, it’s making a strong case that time travel—at least, time travel to the past—is straight up unethical. No exceptions. Time travel is an act of hubris that asserts that you, as the traveller, have some kind of right to rewrite the experiences of countless other lives simply because you want to take a jaunt into the past. On the other hand, I wonder if my perspective is biased—no, scratch that, I know it’s biased, but I guess I wonder if that bias actually matters—because I experience time linearly. Maybe entities who see the entirety of time simultaneously do actually know better. I don’t know.

I just know that I like stories that make me think about this stuff while also giving me fight scenes and explosions. It’s why I like The Flash and Doctor Who, and it’s why I like Some Desperate Glory.

In addition to Kyr, there’s a truly interesting cast of characters, all of whom are flawed and fabulous. I love how, much like Kyr, most of them are hard to fully like—a lot of them are kind of assholes or rude—yet they are all so interesting. I really appreciate the way that Tesh sympathetically portrays how difficult it is to overcome prejudice—even in little ways, like how Kyr has to get used to using they/them pronouns for Yiso, etc. Without making excuses for people who are prejudiced, I also think we need to make space for the fact that it takes people time to work through prejudice and fear—another good example of this is Captain Shaw from season 3 of Star Trek: Picard. Tesh expertly depicts the complexity of the human experience, the ways in which we are all messy and contradictory, whether we are trying to do better or simply obsessed with power and revenge.

Then there’s the ending. Some Desperate Glory stands on its own as a novel, which I appreciate. I love me a good standalone science-fiction novel. Yet there is also room for sequels, and honestly the way it ends between Kyr and the Wisdom, that cute little conversation (and who doesn’t love a sentient spaceship with a sense of humour?) … gosh, I would read more. I’m just saying.

Some Desperate Glory is some of the most original, delightfully incisive science fiction that I have read in the past few years. I went into it expecting it to be good, to be a fun read—I walked out blown away by the storytelling, the characterization, and the themes. What a great experience.

I enjoyed this book and overall thought it was an engaging read. I will say that I agree with the reviewers who think this was more YA than adult but overall loved the intro and the last half was fast paced and engaging. Some of the world building was lighter than expected but again, overall a book I enjoyed.