Emily Tesh’s debut novel!! Her Greenhollow novella duology was an instant favorite and I was eagerly anticipating her next work, and it was a stunner.
Title: Some Desperate Glory
Author: Emily Tesh
Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ+
Pub Date: April 13, 2023
Publisher: Orbit Books (UK) and Tor Books (US)
Content Warnings: Genocide, Sexism, Transphobia, Racism, Ableism, Sexual Assault, Child Abuse, Suicide, War
Thank you NetGalley and the UK publisher for the review copy.
★★★★¾
While we live, the enemy shall fear us.
Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity.
They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands.
Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.
A sci-fi space opera I actually 1) finished and 2) loved!
This was a, I won’t say fun because it is dark and dystopic, but definitely engaging read. I can’t say the characters are lovable because they are far from that, especially Kyr. And yet, she’s an incredibly unlikable heroine whose adventure you still want to follow along as she learns and unlearns truths, battles with beliefs and convictions, and makes impossible decisions.
I think Tesh did a great job of showing Kyr being a brainwashed child soldier and how she grows as she’s exposed to what’s beyond all she’s ever known. And that too through Kyr’s unreliable POV. It’s not a clean, straightforward process, it’s messy and full of conflict. The overall execution of the plot and characters was extremely well done.
I really loved how multi-faceted all the characters were. There are some twists and developments that took me by surprise. I loved Kyr as a character though I did not like her, and you’re not supposed to, especially at the start.
I was a bit disappointed in the ending. It felt abrupt and a bit too open ended. I don’t mind ambiguous endings, and this story definitely would have felt cheapened if it had a firm end, but if it would have carried on just a little more, it would have been perfect for me, personally.
But overall, this was a fantastic debut novel and standalone sci-fi space opera. Quite different from the Greenhollow Duology, but I still really loved this for different reasons. Highly recommend if you love complex, troubled characters and commentary where the lines of right and wrong, good and evil, are messy and blurred and complicated.
escapistlit 