Reviews with content warning for Racism - Some Desperate Glory

Look, I have been delaying writing this review - it's been over a week since I finished it - because I am so unconfident in my ability to do it, and my feelings about it, justice. Immediately after finishing, I waxed poetic about it enough that my partner now has it on his bedside table, planning to read it (which rarely happens...this novel is an example of a perfectly placed slice of our overlapping interests). And I wish someone had recorded what I said in that monologue, becasue I am struggling to (re)find the right words (or even those long-winded, but at least remotely representative, words) now. But, as I'm me, I'm going to try anyways.

Calling on Goodreads for the assist with this blurb: "All her life 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 all-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. But when Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands. Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, she escapes from everything she’s ever known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined."

This novel is one of the most absolutely fantastic things I've ever read. It is so unique and creative and nuanced, not in a general sense (this story of Earth and its people entering into a larger “space” community/governmental system has been told many times, it captures all imaginations), but in the details. The details, the path the story takes (and takes again, and then takes one more time), is completely its own. It took so many unexpected turns! Like, every time-bending jump involved both the obvious *and* twists that caught me unawares. There were so many subversions of what I expect from sci-fi (Tesh never shied away from making the hardest/ugliest calls) and yet it was also so clearly and recognizably what makes the genre a classic. I purposefully slowed down my reading of this to savor every moment.

And through it all there were a few themes that just hit, over and over and over. The cycle of violence is strong and present. And, of course and as always (because it's too unrealistic to not have a dystopian-tyle situation that doesn't highlight this), no matter what the situation and setting and time period, a woman's worth is always brought down to her ability to reproduce which is then (of course) never taken as seriously as other societal contributions, *despite( all supposed argument to the contrary. My god it’s depressing. Is a people/future worth the full loss of reproductive self/determination? Is anything worth that? Also, the trauma is...a lot. But I enjoyed the exploration of the way that everyone responds differently to it, made manifest on a scale so grand it’s honestly unimaginable (the destruction of Earth).

I loved Tesh's choice to make our MC, Kyr, mostly deeply unlikable...without excuse. And yes, as the story goes, she develops and learns and gets angry and decides to make herself different...and yet she never does dwell much in regret for who she was or the place that made her. It was pragmatic and unapologetic AF. That POV is not a popular one - not quite a hero, not quite a villian, just a product of an environment and a harsh coming of age - and the nuances with which Tesh wrote it were spectacular. By the end, I was both cheering for Kyr and still hesitant to trust her new presentation. What literary finesse. Many of the side characters get their own complex journeys and growth. I particularly loved-to-dislike, similar to Kyr herself, Ari and Cleo. And I appreciated what Max and Yisa brought to the development of the plot and Kyr herself, though they were less compelling to me, individually. This was definitely a novel carried by the less likable characters - the space they took up was large and loud - and I have always loved reading that style of character. And I really liked the way that, in every possible iteration of a life, Tesh made the core of a person that shines through - perseverance and evil/power-hungry will find their ways, no matter the individual circumstances or difference. A nice touch.

Let's see... I took a lot of random notes while reading and want to way all the things, but some don't really fit with anything else. So, I'm going to lump a bunch here. First, I had some real Ender's Game vibes, from the militaristic society of Gaea and the VR game-style training (and then the ways it's used later/beyond that). Though the brainwashing/cultishness in this book definitely takes the cake for "worse." Ooff. Gaea is what I imagine the world would be like if all the “math/science are all that matter” people won and there was no more space/funding for arts and literature - cold and heartless and uninspired. The world needs a bit of it all, to be full and meaningful. I am always here for sci-fi that is quality but not based on “real” science - that’s my sweet spot, I can just sink in and it’s not trying to hard to be believable, it just is (like great fantasy, which is my original comfort genre). The world-building was solid, even without Tesh burying the readers in all the specs on how the science worked, thankfully. (And actually, as she writes in the Acknowledgements/Afterwards, the shadowspace "science" is pretty much made-up, so no specs even exist. Lovely.) The way that the meaning of “we’re Earth’s children and while we live, the enemy will fear us” evolves over the course of the novel is super well done.

This felt, to me like the in-between of Martine's A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace (which have similar intensity/seriousness vibes, with higher levels of technicality and world-building, but possibly less creative twists and more distant character development) and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (which is softer/homier, and less intense on storyline, but similar space opera and science/world vibes). Oh, with a splash of the different world iterations from The Space Between Worlds and some similar vibes, though I can't quite put my finger on how, to The Vanished Birds. Along with Ender's Game, I would say they are not necessarily readalikes, but I'd recommend each to others who have enjoyed one of them already. Does that make any sense? Anyways...

I appreciate a view of humanity from the external like this, distilling things we think make us unique and special into elements that are hard to be proud of, heartbreaking truths that you don’t want to believe and would be easier to turn away from and ignore cognitive dissonance from, but are necessary to face head on, in order to recognize where we can/should work to be better. I’m always impressed with authors who can step outside and be observational like that and Tesh is exemplary on that front here. Overall, this was just an epic in three parts, spectacular and mind-bending and absolutely stellar (pun intended). I highly recommend this one.

While we live, the enemy shall fear us.

“Proving you were capable of saving the world didn’t mean you could, or that anyone would let you.”

“It is perhaps best to understand honor as operating optionally and on the individual level, while the authoritative driving forces of human military design work perpetually on the most ruthless calculus of cost and benefit.”

“A peace brought about with the threat of violence is only a war in waiting.”

“Kyr felt suddenly and forcefully the weight of legacy. [...] she owed her duty not to some abstract unknown planet but to the women who'd come before her.”

“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.”

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abarnakwn_ourcolourfulpages's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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schnaucl's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I really liked this novel. It started with the destruction of Earth and tells a story about the perils of Fascism, white supremacy, homophobia, and xenophobia. It tells a story about what blind spots are developed when one grows up in that system and the price you pay for having those blind spots.

I liked the characters and I enjoyed seeing them in different incarnations. I appreciated that growing up with very different circumstances didn't necessarily change certain fundamental truths of who the characters were and just because Kyr learned from her mistakes and tried to do better, she still didn't necessarily see the whole picture or naturally see the how to be as inclusive as she needed to be, although she did come to the realization of what needed to happen after it was pointed out to her. She wasn't magically perfect even when raised outside of a Fascist State (though still definitely inside an Imperial one)

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miavrml's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

4.5

The book was written really well and it was so exiting to read. In the beginning it was hard to like Kyr, but now i love her deeply. The story is really awesome and i like all the twists and plots… Also really loved how humans greed and disgusting sides were portrayed in this.
Over all a 4,5/5 because it was a bit too slow in some parts of the book where i was a bit bored.

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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Excluding a few awkward bits each, the worldbuilding and plot are both fairly strong -- one twist especially spiked my enjoyment -- but I don't honestly feel like the themes, heavy-handed as they are, delved quite as deep as they could have. In particular, certain tenets of the criticized ideological systems go unchallenged and even almost tacitly confirmed as true. I guess you could argue that they were meant to be more subtly folded into the rest of the overarching criticism, but since other things are directly addressed just fine, I find it a bit odd.

Also, maybe I'm just oversensitive about F/F relationships rarely being afforded the same complexity as M/M or F/M ones, but the distinct handling of Kyr and Mags's identities and relationships does rub me the wrong way. Mags and Avi's relationship is consistently one of the more plot-relevant (and a bit fucked up for various reasons), and despite not being perspective characters, they each get in some brief thoughtful dialogue on their identities and realizations thereof. Kyr, on the other hand, gets some repressed subtext and

a single date with a relatively minor, extremely underdeveloped character in a different timeline

, and her introspection about her sexuality is pretty much limited to that aforementioned repression/dismissal and fleeting surprise, which comes across as especially odd given the worldview she starts out with.

Kyr's bigotry in general felt a bit... diluted, as if the author wanted to write a deradicalization arc but didn't want to start her off as so obscenely awful that many wouldn't be interested in reading -- the point gets through, just judging from how many reviews are complaining about how unlikable she was (that is the point!), but to me it felt like a pulled punch. It's not helped by how quickly her development occurs, either, with some token resistance and lingering vestiges afterward not quite enough to make it feel truly realistic or cathartic.

Fine as a story, but falls short in its scaffolding social commentary, which is neither especially unique in concept nor exceptionally powerful in execution. Might have been better marketed as YA, though I feel some further nuance than is provided would still be expected there.

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30something_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Maybe? Maybe lower? Maybe higher? Idk. I need to think on it.

There were some really interesting and exciting things happening in this story. It took turns that I was not expecting and really enjoyed. And it was compulsively readable. Emily Tesh has a great pen.

But I also think the author maybe took on too much with only surface level resolutions for all of it. The -isms and -phobics were off the charts and I don't necessarily think all of them were handled appropriately. (An d by that, I mainly mean the way racism is discussed. It definitely feels like a white woman wrote it in that regard.)

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juliana2's review

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adventurous dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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