Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is a sci fi book that startles into a beginning. At first I was like “what? What is happening? What is that?” but soon the confusion was (mostly) swept away by the secrets that are revealed & the magnetic plot that keeps serving twists & jolts & somersaults.

The book opens with Kyr, a soldier on a station called Gaea Station. Kry & the other people living there are descendants of Earth, a planet that was deliberately destroyed in a war against the majo. Throughout her life Kyr has been taught to wage war & to nurse the vengeance & hope that she’s been told is her due.

But she’s only 17 & we can see—& gradually, slowly, Kyr too—that things aren’t quite as they seem.

This book is complex—immediately after reading I felt a bit awed & very aware that it would take a while to wrestle with what happened & what the implications are. It’s one of those books that has the shine of brilliance to me—you know those wildly inventive books that go places you aren’t expecting?

This book definitely did that. & did it again.

4.5⭐️. Out 04/11.

CWs: please see a trusted reviewer’s list of CWs.

[ID: Jess’s white hand holds the book in front of a white metal cart filled with books. Behind that is a brown roll top desk & white curtains covering a window.]

Genre: science fiction

Valkyr, called Kyr, has been raised on Gaea Station, training to become an elite warrior for the protection of humanity after the majo aliens destroyed the earth. She’s near the top of her class, ranked only behind her twin brother and several other males, and she’s worked tirelessly to shake the reputation of the turncoat older sister, who deserted her post. But when she receives her own posting, Kyr is stunned at the results, and in the process begins to see that much of how she’s been raised and trained is war-hawk propaganda.

Some Desperate Glory is multiple timelines done absolutely right. At times it reminded me both of Ender’s Game and of The Space Between Worlds, this is military science fiction at its finest. Kyr recognizes her role as a cog in the great war machine, and she’s always accepted this because of the destruction of earth. She’s starchy and proper in the way I like my military heroes, but she’s young and stubborn enough that it takes some convincing for her to see where Gaea Station has erred. It takes repeated encounters with majo for Kyr to recognize that her venerated uncle may have been lying about a great many things related to the war, and for her to push through to find a moral path.

There’s a lot of self-discovery in Some Desperate Glory. Some of that derives from the youth of the main characters - Kyr and her brother Mags are only seventeen. At the same time, though, Some Desperate Glory never felt like a YA novel, despite the sometimes naive behavior of Kyr and her messmates. There are moments of realization scattered throughout the novel, as Kyr discovers cover-ups and tries to forge a path forward, she realizes that without her original Cause and belief in the mission of Gaea Station that she is incredibly lonely and highly unlikeable.

This one was tough to review.
While it was well written and had a very interesting premise, I didn't find myself connecting with any of the characters until very close to the end. Maybe that was intentional, as Kyr did a lot of necessary growing and changing throughout the story.
There were times when it felt oversimplified, and I was a little disappointed that one of the most emotional moment of the books was almost immediately taken back - don't worry we have time travel!
But overall, a good story with some new ideas and strong character development.

I read this on a recommendation from a coworker, and while it took me a minute to get into it I ended up quite enjoying it. Interesting premise, great character development and plot twists that I never saw coming. Overall a very satisfying read, a solid space sci-fi novel.

This starts out as post-apocalyptic sci-fi young adult, with a sullen indoctrinated teenage girl starring in a hardscrabble resistance cell. It does not stay that way. By the end my brain almost hurt keeping track of who had been where when, who knew what, what powers were working where... I was carried along with Kyr's desperate ride to make sense of her world, to make something good out of a lot of terrible things, to maybe salvage a life worth living. I was also really happy to see adults actually having motivation and agency in a YA dystopia! Some of them are awful people, some of them are actually working on their own goals. Finally, an answer to "where the heck were the adults while the kids were stabbing each other."

There are some themes in this that a reader should know about going in. There is an extensive content warning. Read it. These are not topics that are lightly brushed over, they are major recurring elements.

Glorious. Divine. Just wow.

The range emotions Tesh had me feeling is insane. I went from HATING the mc to rooting for her with my entire soul. An amazing queer space opera. I recommend to every scifi/fantasy lover.

What a mind bending flip of the standard space opera trope of Earth's survivors defending the tatters of humanity from alien aggressors! You think it's one thing, then the universe flips and you see it all differently. Sometimes you just have to fall in love with an alien and accept it.

One of the best ending lines in all the SFF I've read!

I think that this book really hit the ground running from page one. However, around the middle, it takes a...weird turn? Everything takes a sort of strange psychedelic turn that is such a sharp turn from the more hard-Heinlein-based-sci fi that the first half of the book, and the general synopsis, promised. I really, really enjoyed the first half of the book and I can definitely see where people will love this, it just didn't end up being my thing. I would absolutely love to read more by this author, though! I'm looking forward to it.

I really wanted to love this book. Dystopian autocratic space station isolated with a complicated backstory? Love it. Strong female lead in a militarized setting that is clearly informed by Heinlein? Love it. Looming twists that you're just waiting for the main character to discover? Fantastic.

I loved the first half of the book, for all of the reasons above. Valkyr, our problematic lead, is convincingly written as a woman living within a morally compromised society--we are allowed to feel with her and understand why she believes and acts as she does without being tricked into *siding* with her allegiance to that society. The gradual unfolding of her society's founding is done smoothly and with some very satisfying reveals. The first half is a delightful military space opera set up.

I got bogged down in the quasi-psychedelic turn this novel takes around the middle of the book, and just couldn't climb my way out from there. I lost some of the clarity that the initial, relatively hard-SF first half offered.

It's a book I may revisit in the future, knowing the shift in focus will be coming may make the transition easier. But right now, I'm just looking for some good hard SF that still manages to speak to social justice.

[3.5 rounded to 4] SOME DESPERATE GLORY is a stand-alone science fiction novel about the lengths humanity will go to seek revenge. This story follows Kyr, the female main character, on board Gaea Station where she trained through young adulthood to carry on avenging the human race. She awaits her final assignment, which she will carry out for the rest of her life. A warbreed, specifically bred to be large and strong, Kyr expects to be assigned to an action post. But behind-the-scene events result in an unexpected assignment to Nursery. There she is expected to produce babies to carry on the species and ultimately annihilate the majoda, who carried out the demise of humanity. However, a series of events lead to Kyr's avoidance of Nursery, catapulting her off of Gaea and onto an adventure she never anticipated.

The story is mainly through Kyr's point of view. But some information is presented in a textbook-like format to provide the reader with an anthropological point of view. The voice in those sections analyzes humanity's general propensity toward war and a host of other semi-philosophical angles. I actually found those parts the most interesting because I felt they summarized the various themes presented in SOME DESPERATE GLORY.

Two themes dominate this story. The first is revenge and how strong of a driving force that is to sway emotions and allegiance. Revenge is not usually a good way to solve a problem. But it's especially dangerous when wielded by those who crave control, particularly in an isolated environment. The second predominant theme is whether artificial intelligence should be used to play god. The Wisdom, created by the majoda, is a machine that runs scenarios about what is best for the universe. Should we use AI to make our decisions? Or should the amalgam of races throughout the universe decide on their own fates, however good or bad the outcome?

Overall, this was an entertaining introduction back into science fiction for me. But there were times I skimmed the text because I wasn't interested so much in the tech aspects. (Though, for sci-fi, it's relatively light on descriptions of weapons and ship systems.) I also got a little bored with the various reality iterations. Kyr definitely experienced character growth, but for some reason I didn't connect with her as much as I expected to. Rather, I was more sympathetic to the alien she picked up along the way.

I think the biggest sticking point for me, though, is SOME DESPERATE GLORY tried to bite off more than it could chew. It tries to tackle a lot of different themes. Some it does well, like the revenge and AI elements and learning to think for oneself. It also explores the mental strain of needing to hide one's sexuality when queerness is frowned upon due to the need to propagate one's species. But there is also the incorporation of systemic racism and default White-ness, which Kyr recognizes near the end of the book and felt sort of like an afterthought. There is also mention of the decision to abort female fetuses so that there are more males to fight for the cause. This was also relatively unexplored territory.

Despite this, I still recommend SOME DESPERATE GLORY for those who prefer lighter science fiction fare in terms of technical descriptions. Also keep in mind that I am a critical person. Themes that I thought were relatively weak might not seem as such to other readers. SOME DESPERATE GLORY is an exploration of whether artificial intelligence should have the responsibility of deciding the future and whether revenge is the best way to move forward.

blog post will go live here at 7am UK time 20-Mar-23: http://www.nerds-feather.com/2023/03/review-some-desperate-glory-by-emily.html

A surprisingly emotionally complex novel about the stories we are told about the world around us, and how those stories survive contact with our own experiences of life.

Kyr has grown up on Gaea Station knowing that she and her fellows are the last scraps of humanity, their asteroid the solitary bastion of a destroyed world and culture, holding out against a hostile universe that killed their planet. She's one of the best fighters of her generation, and knows she's destined for one of the elite military roles when she finishes her training. Kyr is, more or less, happy with her lot.

Then her brother, her shining, perfect soldier brother, disappears, and she's relegated to a role she never thought would be hers. Everything about the life she thought she'd live and the world around her comes crashing down, and she is forced to seek out her brother's strange, irreverent, potentially seditious friend and a captive alien to find the answers to her newfound questions. When she leaves the station that's been the only home she's ever known, she begins to understand that what she's been taught is only part of the story, and that the world outside her own is a more complex place than she ever thought possible.

Unsurprisingly, given the title, Some Desperate Glory is a story about war and propaganda, and about the complexities of conflict. It's a story about the beliefs we're raised with, the stories we tell ourselves to survive, and growing up to realise that maybe, just maybe, what you've been taught isn't necessarily all that's out there.

It is also a stunning, surprising, intensely compelling novel, and an unflinching character view of someone with some really quite unpleasant beliefs.

It is a story that asks - what would it be like, to be someone brought up to believe the propaganda? What would it be like, to think you're the best of the best, and have a duty and a destiny to fight, to kill, even if triumph is beyond you, because everything outside of your own little world is evil, and lesser, and alien, in a literal and a figurative sense?

It's not a fun story, let me put it that way.

But, difficult and uncomfortable though it is, it is a fascinating story and a unique one, and not just because of its chosen character perspective. Tesh plays with our expectations throughout the story, and balances some interesting chronology choices - the closest parallel I can think of isn't another novel, but the game Bravely Default - and, critically, the gorgeous prose that made Silver in the Wood such a joy to read. Though here she's bringing to life the dull corridors of a space station, the algal bloom on an alien world and the vivid experience of fighting for your life in a simulated battle, something of the wonder that she wrote into the woodland of the Greenhollow duology is still here. There's a magic to the world she writes, and it brings a joy even to the grim and gritty parts of the universe she's written.

The pacing too, and those interesting chronology choices, are well handled (though they may not always seem it in the moment). Reading as an e-book, I had a couple of double takes, thinking the book was almost over and then... oh not there's 40% left? Huh? But once you reach the end, it all slots into place, and I honestly cannot fault the choices. Trust the process.

And this is all great, but in my opinion, the truly, bafflingly best bit of this whole story is the character of Kyr herself. Because Kyr... isn't very nice. Kyr isn't good, or pleasant, or particularly likeable. She's definitely not charming. On paper, Kyr is primed to be hateable. And yet... I never could. I was so embedded in her thoughts, in the way she was experiencing the events of the story, that I could never find it in myself to truly rage at her, not matter how much I disliked or disagreed with her opinions and actions. More than any sad emo boy with a sword, Kyr is an anti-hero how they ought to be done, morally tainted to her core and thoroughly compelling in her journey.

Because the book is, for the most part, about that emotional and moral journey Kyr is undertaking. It's not quick, it's not easy, and it makes it all the more satisfying, because the reality of these sorts of changes isn't the lightswitch moment of revelation we get in many stories. People don't become different people overnight. People don't necessarily become different or better people for the right reasons. Sometimes it needs to be personal for them to see what's really going on, no matter how we may judge them for it needing to be there.

Though we are settled very firmly in her perspective, this doesn't cut us off completely from the other main characters, all of whom bring something to the table and play off each other really well. Kyr's squadron mates are an eclectic bunch, and being able to see how they relate to Kyr - sometimes before Kyr realises it for herself - is really enjoyable. Her brother isn't the most exciting man in the universe, but his friend certainly makes up for that, and provides one of the best counterpoints in opinion and just vibe that Kyr gets through the whole story.

And it's a book that's really thinking about how the environment would shape the characters. They all fit - or do not - so perfectly in the world that made them, and it's very clear why they've become the people they have, responded to the pressures of the world as they have. Whenever I come to imagining them all, I can only think that Tesh has put so much careful, considered deliberation into who and how they all are, and it's great.

Which is somewhat my overall impression of the book - down to the last detail, it has been considered and thought over and examined from different angles to make sure each piece fits neatly into the whole.

Safe to say, then, that I loved the book. But I don't think it's going to be one for everyone. There are moments in the story when we have to watch something really difficult occurring, and deal with the fact our perception of it as the reader isn't necessarily going to align with our viewpoint into it. You have to be willing to sit with some ugliness, some just wrongness, to get through past it and see the story for its value in the end. Which, for me, was worth it, and at no point did I feel like Tesh was letting you think those opinions were right. There's no apologism here. But that doesn't always make it easy or worthwhile, so if you're going in, go in aware that it's not a happy fun light joyful time.

But if the grim and awful - which gets, at times, really grim and awful - and sitting inside the head of a character thinking deeply unpleasant thoughts at times is something you can get through? I truly think this is a fantastic book, and likely set to be one of my best reads of the year.

I was interested in the conceit of Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, and mostly enjoyed the book, but at times the execution was a bit uneven. However, overall this is a satisfying novel and one I would recommend to fellow readers.

This book is grim, well written, but grim and I didn’t enjoy reading it. I know plenty of other people will like it, because some people enjoy grim. I nearly abandoned it several times. Emily Tesh’s main character, Valkyr, starts off Some Desperate Glory as a joyless, intolerant fanatic who thinks she is better than almost everyone else. To be fair, she has been raised to be so, in what we come to realize is an extremist death cult.

Earth has been destroyed and a small group of humans cling to life on a barely livable rock. Some human live on habitable planets, but they are considered collaborators and traitors by Gaea Station. They live by the motto, “Earth’s children endure and while we live, the enemy shall fear us.” Kyr’s cohort is on the verge of receiving their assignments, the roles they will play for the rest of their adult lives. Kyr has trained relentlessly to be the best so that she will be assigned to a combat squad. The greatest glory would be to die fighting the enemy, the majo. The worst assignment would be the nursery, where Kyr would spend her time being pregnant to hit “population targets” and raising the babies she did not give birth to.

Gaea Station is a fascist military dictatorship, controlled by Aulus Jole, whom Kyr thinks of as an uncle, a mentor, and a hero. The core message that Kyr learns in many iterations, is that fascism is bad and worship of the military allows petty people to turn the populace at large into meat for the grinder. Gaea Station is gender essentialist, stripping Kyr and most of the people there of bodily autonomy. Though Kyr has turned herself into a highly skilled soldier, she is only valued for her child bearing abilities. The fascist obsession with genetics is fully on display here too.

In addition to being grim I’m not sure it entirely sends the message it wants to send. Part of the problem is making one man the lynchpin for everything bad. In truth there is never one man at the root of all evil. Complex issues are flattened until they are almost meaningless. If you are looking for a Sapphic space opera, Some Desperate Glory, is technically that, but I found the Sapphic part of that description very underwhelming.

CW: a couple of genocides, murder on page and in past, violence, suicide on page, torture, queer phobia, transphobia, forced pregnancy, sexual assault, rape of minor discussed.

I received this as an advance reader copy from Tordotcom and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.

DNF @ 57%.

Content notes for what I’ve read so far includes mentions AND committing genocide, homomisia, a lot of transmisia, violence, suicide, deaths, brainwashing, ableism, sexual assault, mentions of sexual abuse/rape of a minor, forced pregnancies, and mentions of frequent deaths in childbirth.

I’m sorry, this is the worst book I have ever read. Or at least in a VERY LONG TIME. I went into this thinking we’re going to get a queer romance book in space with the MC learning to escape from a military space cult and who will finally get to live her life in peace and comfort. BUT NO. This book is awful and I would never recommend it.

I got into this book because it’s a monthly pick for a book box, and they’ve done queer books I’ve liked before like Winter’s Orbit and merch for Murderbot. But I will have you all know this book is NOT like those books at all. This book is miserable. Even for a book about escaping a cult. Almost makes First, Become Ashes look like a masterpiece and I can at least say I finished that book.

This book is just the worst. I like a book that has an unlikeable heroine. We don’t get enough of those. But Kyr here is truly awful. We only get the story from her third-person POV, and there’s really nothing all that likable about her. She is DEEP into this military cult and everything she thinks or feels is still through that lens. For almost 50% of the book she’s deeply transphobic because that’s what she knows. The book does point out that she’s not homophobic though. But that doesn’t make it any better to “save” her character because her love interest is a nonbinary alien called Yiso and Kyr spends way too long calling Yiso “it” or “he” or even “she” at some point even after knowing Yiso prefers “they” in the T-standard language Kyr speaks. The transphobia in this book lasts too long before Kyr comes around and refers to Yiso with they/them and it’s only after realizing she might like them. I’m over Kyr and Yiso deserves better.

The rest of this is spoilers but also the thing that breaks the camel’s back for me in this book.

*****SPOILERS AHEAD*****

Okay. So the whole reason there’s a military space cult in the first place is because the aliens decided to commit genocide on most of the human race. 14 billion humans dead. Then years later, we’re in this storyline and Kyr, her brother Magnus, and their new friend Avi who is a computer genius (Magnus also likes Avi) decide to work a mission and winds up doing genocide on trillions of people of the alien race (they’re called the majo or something, I still can’t tell you the specifics if they’re the majoda, the majo zi, etc.).

I CANNOT believe that this book decided MORE genocide was the answer, kills off Magnus (by suicide), kills of Avi (Kyr kills him), and then decides that they need to undo everything by TIME TRAVEL.

There’s nothing more I hate from books than time travel. I HATE it. This book made the characters so unlikeable by the end of what I read that I don’t even care for any of this to be “fixed” and they can all rot for all I care. They already made their choices in this one timeline, and going back in time to try to fix things is so ridiculous. Part 4 starts out with everyone back in another timeline and Kyr with a different name and now we have to go through a whole different storyline with the same characters again. I AM SO OVER IT.

I wanted a fun f/nonbinary space romance and a fun m/m side romance because the characters did have potential for, like, the first 25% of the book. But now that I’ve made it to 57%, I’m over all these assholes.

***Thanks to the publisher for giving me an e-ARC for review on Netgalley***

So, so good! Tesh's clear, compassionate writing places the reader square in the action, pulls you along, never lets up. I read with my heart in my throat for the entire last half of the book. Kyr Marston is "a child of Earth," one of the last of her kind, waiting, training, honing herself to become humanity's vengeance against the aliens who destroyed her homeworld...or so she thinks. Devastating world-building and character development, an exquisite blend of moral questions and sci-fi end of the world scenarios.
Favorite quote: "What a waste it was, what a terrible waste, to take a person who dreamed cities and gardens and enormous shining skies and teach him that the only answer to an unanswerable suffering was slaughter."

This book had me feeling all sorts of things. And one of those things, like is typical for me, is whether I need to round this up or not. Because even though this took me a week to read, the good parts were pretty good. Almost great. But what keeps it from being actually great are the bits that if you look too hard at.. kind of fall apart. Maybe. Unless that’s just me.

I will say that the way this story went wasn’t remotely what I expected. Events take a turn that definitely shocked me and also very much intrigued me — even though the very presence of this element is part of what I’m trying not too look too hard at for fear of it all disintegrating.

In some ways what SOME DESPERATE GLORY offers isn’t anything particularly new. But through Kyr, our main character, we have what feels like such a painfully authentic character arc that somehow things do still feel fresh. Everything she experienced, and then re-experienced, felt true. Most of the time in these extreme perspective shifts, breaking away from the mentality or the indoctrination or the belief, whatever, it doesn’t always feel genuine. This one did. Because we see her work through it, re-evaluate, and own it.

I can’t really claim to have enjoyed any other character, though. Maybe that was hindered by the single POV and because of how Kyr looks at the world in the early chapters? When we finally do understand more of those around us, it’s a little too late to be invested in them. Yiso might be the exception. But that’s a gimme. I think we’re not given a choice on whether or not to like them.

While there was a lot I couldn’t picture — mostly the engines, the Wisdom, the shadowy jump things — I didn’t really let that be a stumbling block in the enjoyment of it all. Or I tried not to. Though it does go hand in hand with the bit I mentioned above about just not looking too hard at it all. I understood enough from context clues but the whole existence of them, and how little (really) gets explained, well. Maybe if I was a little smarter, a little more invested in the whys, one could pick some things apart, open up some literal and plot holes, but I just shimmied on by and let it all happen.

And I think it was easy to do so because of the writing. Tesh tackles a lot of topics and concepts but also does it with a really accessible kind of style. There was plenty of emotional resonance when required and there were some devastating stark realizations, too. It felt well balanced and compelling. Which makes the reality of the romance, or really lack thereof, a bit disappointing. But it’s hard to get into the why of it without being spoilery. Better reviewers than I could probably hint or explain this and I’ll leave that to them.

Overall, I did have a good time reading this and I will absolutely read this author again. I enjoyed so much of what this story was doing and can see myself revisiting this again in the future. So if this sounds like your thing, I would definitely give it a chance.

3.5 stars

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Tor Publishing Group for an advance copy of this novel that really expands the limits of what stories can be told in science fiction.

Space opera was always a subgenre of science fiction that seemed to relish in the fact that they were old school, and that the ideas hadn't really changed since the days of Perry Rhodan or Edmund Hamilton stories. Aliens, humans, let's get it on. And I am not putting on airs, my introduction to science fiction was comics Star Wars, which led to Flash Gordon one with Queen's soundtrack the other with Buster Crabbe. I liked space opera, but the stories could be limited. Recently as science fiction has, in some cases grudgingly changed and given more people of different voices and backgrounds a chance to play in the future, space opera has become as full of ideas as hard science fiction. I really do think it is the fact that there are less Lensmen based stores and more diverse authors. Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is a a big sprawling story that jumps time, pocket dimensions and shadowspace to tell a story of humans, aliens, accepting things that can't be changed, and accepting others for what they are, in all sorts of ways.

Kyr, short for the name Valkyr, is the best in her class, though what she does is not very nice. Kyr and her fellow Sparrows have been trained since birth to fight their alien enemy who have destroyed the Earth, killing over 14 billion people. Life for Kyr is hard, she is a perfectionist, always training, she is almost always hungry as supplies are short for the troops, but not command, her home is on a rock far in space, and her sister is considered a traitor for fleeing, something that drives Kyr on. Kyr does have a brother, who is the better soldier, but for the most part Kyr keeps to herself, using discipline and training as her outlet. Kyr is given the assignment of Nursery, meaning that her active life of soldiering is over before it began. Kyr is now to help supply and raise the next generation of soldiers, something she is not a fan of. At the same time her brother is assigned to what might be a suicide mission, or maybe not. Life is starting to not look as clear cut to Kyr as it once did, and many secrets seem to be coming to the surface.

A book that has a lot of plot, a very rich story and fascinating characters that really grow on the reader, and in fact almost all of them grow as people as the book goes on. The writing is very good, with Kyr starting off as a character that well, is annoying. However as the world is opened up to Kyr, Kyr does change a lot, and becomes the hero she always wanted to be. The supporting characters are very diverse, and a few of them I really would like to know more about, even the less savory characters. Aliens are alien, with some very good ideas, and why they developed the way they did. The universe is worthy of more exploration, and the technology and some of the uses of it are quite unique. Plenty of oh wow moments, thought the middle does seem a little over long, but that is a minor quibble. There is a lot of time jumping and moving through dimensions, but Tesh has a firm grasp of where things are going, and doesn't lose its way. A very good science fiction novel, with a lot of great ideas.

There is a trigger warning page, so readers should look at this first, if that is their thing. Some situations might lead to uncomfortable thoughts, but everything fit the story and what the author was trying to tell. Hopefully this will be the big book of the season, and I can't wait to see what the author has planned for the future.

This is going to be one of my favorites of the year!

Fantastic main character with palpable growth; incredible moral dilemmas that keep you on your toes; a powerful mechanic to subvert our expectations multiple times... I loved every bit of this book. I'm honestly obsessed with characters who are so strongly convinced of their convictions and who slowly learn to see other perspectives before turning their lives around. Every time I thought I could predict the ending, it changed! I couldn't not put this book down.

My review is a mess if only because I loved the book so much.

In this hauntingly good science fiction novel we are following a female warrior, aptly named, Valkry, who is a genetically designed human built and trained to defeat the omnipotent and omnipresent AI that MURDERED Earth. Having come of age and assigned her position on the floating spaceship she was born to, we follow her journey as she delves deeper and deeper into the society she was born into. It quickly becomes apparent that not all is what it seems.

This book is incredible, one of the best science fiction books I’ve read. Firstly, this book is such a readable science fiction book, I’d recommend this to any reader, it is HIGHLY accessible. Then, following Kyr through her journey as a character was thrilling. Each and every plot twist and revelation we got to experience by the side of Kyr. Funnily enough, Kyr is not a likable character, it’s through her journey and development that I fell in love with her. The subtlety of her character growth was beautifully done, honestly, it was perfection. Finally, there were so many quotable and poignant moments in this book that I could’ve annotated and dissected every interaction between characters and plot development.

This was top tier.

An amazing work of art that should be considered a modern classic of the genre. This book is what science fiction was born to be; using tomorrow's ideas to reflect today's world and how it might trace its way to the future.

In the first few chapters I was worried I was going to have trouble with this book because I need to be able to like the characters I read about. I was really interested in the world building, which is excellent, but initially I was not a fan of Kyr, our protagonist, at all. But the speed with which Tesh flipped me into a complete 180 on that was astounding and after that I was all in, ride or die, for all of the characters.

The structure of the book was also fantastic, constantly keeping me guessing and throwing up new possibilities and revealing galaxy-brain twists I never would have seen coming in a million years.

The emotional core of the story was as intense as molten rock, and extremely cathartic. Simply cannot be recommended highly enough.