For those of you who are interested in such things, the title of this science fiction timeshift adventure is taken from Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ describing a gas attack in WWI in terrible detail. The final four lines read thus:
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

It’s a wonderful poem, I urge you to look it up if you don’t know it. And the subject matter and sentiment is absolutely spot on for the tenor of this story.

Gaea Station is one of the final holdouts for humanity that remains true to our species, now our home planet has been blown up by the alien’s sentient governing A.I., the Wisdom. Although there are traitors who have thrown in their lot with the majo who are responsible for killing fourteen billion human beings, Gaea is still raising children with the warbreed genetic strain. So they are bigger, faster, deadlier than the average human and committed to revenging themselves upon those who destroyed our world and its military might. And one of the most committed and loyal is Kyr, who is determined to serve by training the hardest. After all, she has a point to prove – her elder sister fled the station in a disgraceful act of disloyalty. This is where Kyr is at the start of the book.

And from then on, she finds herself confronted with nasty truths that increasingly undermine this version of her life and her ultimate aims. It forces her to act in ways that would have been unthinkable only a short time previously… And yes – this is familiar and oft-trodden territory for sci fi space opera adventures. But rarely have I seen it done so well. While Kyr is a teenager, I really like how her sexuality is handled. It makes perfect sense that she is so incredibly committed, she has locked down her aberrant sexual desires. For starters, like every other youngster on the station, she is malnourished and worked incredibly hard. She doesn’t have the time or inclination to start wondering why she isn’t remotely attracted to any of the boys and men training alongside her – other than to feel resentment at their inbuilt extra strength. This is a refreshing change from so many books dealing with youngsters in dire circumstances, where they constantly are examining and acting on their sexual desires, no matter the dangers they are being exposed to.

The other characters are also vividly portrayed with perception and depth, so I found myself rooting even for obnoxiously clever Avi, who does something terrible. The storytelling is fabulous – the descriptions of the station and the nearest planet are wonderful and this book reminded me all over again just why I LOVE science fiction so much! My one sorrow… it’s a standalone, so I won’t have another slice of this world through the eyes of Kyr. Very highly recommended for fans of superb science fiction adventure. While I obtained an arc of Some Desperate Glory from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
10/10

Some Desperate Glory is a well-written science-fiction standalone that explores what it means for someone to be a *person*, and they're my favorite kinds of scifi stories. Set years after Earth has been obliterated by an alien force, we follow Kyr, a young woman who grew up with a sole goal in mind : avenge humanity.

Without spoiling the story, here's what you can expect :

✔ A+ character development: the MC starts off as VERY unlikeable and slowly growths : this is one of my favorite kind of character arc so I was a happy camper, ngl. It did make the beginning a bit hard to get through however, but once I realized what kind of story it would be, I flew through it. Indeed Kyr is forced to question *everything* and if the focus is on her personal journey, it made for a fantastic exploration of the concepts of responsibility and ethics.

✔ For some reason I didn't expect the plot to be so wild??? Anyway I loved the unpredictability even though it threw me off at times (some scenes changes were rather abrupt and would have benefited from better transitions in my opinion) and I'm definitely going to reread it someday.

✔ Some Desperate Glory deals with very dark themes and I highly recommend you check content warnings. It explores loyalty, hero worship, cult-like upbringing and the horrors of war, among others, and questions the choices one make when forced to reexamine everything they've been taught. This story is about how terrible humans can be, to the surprise of absolutely ✨nobody✨, but it's also about the friends and families we make along the way and how sometimes we don't deserve them but oh, how much we want to.

These characters will stay with me for a very long time.

Final rating : 4⭐

🔴CONTENT WARNINGS🔴 : sexism, homophobia, racism, sexual assault (on page), child abuse, suicidal ideation, suicide (on page), eugenics, genocide

After having read the authors Novella duology I was excited but also hesitant for this full novel. Because a fantasy novella is quite a different thing than a full novel science fiction story. And I didn't love it. Right away.

The thing about Some Desperate Glory is that you aren't going to like the characters, especially our main character Kyr. She was raised to be a facist, radicalized. It was the only view she knew and she never questioned it. There was no room. It isn't until her brother dissapears and she doesn't get the assignment she wants (breeding factory instead of soldier) that there is slight room for critique.

Kyr spends this book trying to unlearn everything she has been raised to believe and it takes quite a few different realities for her to be able to discard some of that. The saving of the universe is just a backdrop to that. It shows an interesting look at how internalized some of those teachings can be and how hard it can be to realize, analyze and then actually do something about it. The mind is a funny thing. It also deals with all kinds of abuse and suicide. In that way it can be a hard book to read.

That doesn't mean it is all seriously. There is a whole lot of bonding between the characters and room for some humor as well. And that created a whole book that I ended up loving for a variety of reasons.

Some Desperate Glory follows the story of Kyr, one of the greatest warriors of her genetically-conceived generation, following the destruction of Earth and humanity, the remnants of which lingering on Gaia Station. But when Kyr is forced into the Nursery, so she can spend the next two decades bearing the new children of humanity, despite having the best scores in battle simulations in her entire cohort, unfortunately coinciding with her brother's not-so-subtle disappearance, Kyr takes the chance to escape her fate, when she realises the stories she's been raised on have a sinister underbelly.

Space operas tend to be a hit or miss, but this one worked for me! Kyr was an unlikeable protagonist, sure, and she definitely made me want to facepalm more than once, but I don't think this story could've been done without her being kind of obnoxious, arrogant and reckless. So, her character didn't actually bother me too much. I really loved the loss of bodily autonomy prompting her character arc. The themes of community and hubris and authoritarianism play at the core of this story, and the author managed to do justice by them quite well, in my opinion. Oh, and the worldbuilding was very interesting, especially with the concept of the all-knowing Wisdom.

Definitely would recommend!

For about the first third of this book I was going to rate 2-3 stars - Kyr was unlikeable, snobby and made incredibly poor decisions, and the plot felt reminiscent to other stories I'd read before. But then there comes a switch to the narrative and it.was.genius. Things that didn't make sense suddenly slotted into place, and I found myself utterly rooting for Kyr at the end. Really glad I stuck with this one!

Thankyou to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK, Orbit for an e-arc in exchange of a honest review

This is the first book iv DNF'd (40%) It just wasn't for me and felt like i was forcing myself to read something i just didn't enjoy. I don't think this is necessarily about the book itself or the writing, the genre is very hit or miss for me and when i dislike sci-fi, i REALLY dislike sci-fi. There is a lot of world building in this and its done well... i just found myself not interested. I didn't like any of the characters and actually actively disliked the main character (I love a good character led book)

I can see why people would like the book as its written very well and if sci-fi is for you and if you dont mind some unlikeable characters then definitely give it a try.

Some Desperate Glory is an ambitious space opera with extensive world building. I did not find the main character to be likeable at all, but her naive and pretentious personality is important to the story line. It was good to see some character growth but Kyra had me groaning throughout the whole story.

Overall as a sci fi enthusiast I would recommend if you like dystopian books.

While Earth’s children live, the enemy shall fear us.”

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is a fast paced & action packed sci-fi story set in a time where Earth has been destroyed.

This is the story of Kyr being led to believe that they are the last of humanity and their only hope. Kyr lives in a highly militarised society called Gaea Station, where everyone gets put in a specific role when they turn 18 and have no access to anything outside of the station they live on.
Her escaping leads to a domino effect of her learning that everything she has been told is a lie and realises she has been brought up in what is essentially a cult.

Kyr is such an interesting character because she isn’t very likeable. She thinks that she is above everyone and her opinion is the correct opinion. She is rash and quick to judgement. But we do see her grow and change throughout the story and realise how she behaved wasn’t okay and learn to think things through before acting. A lot of her story is unlearning the trauma of being raised in a cult.

This book does get really dark at times and does not hold back in delving into what it takes to unlearn everything that has been drilled into you. And whether we should rely on an AI to make life altering decisions and let it choose how to build a utopia because this is what led to Earth being destroyed.

There is a lot of build up in the first half of the book and then when we get to the second half it is pure chaos and I loved it! Things click into place and just it was so good!

TW: suicide, genocide, sexual assault, rape, being raised in a cult, sexism, racism,

There is a hell of a lot of worldbuilding in this book, and I think it left me just confused. There was way too much going on that wasn't properly explained, so throughout the whole book I was reading and just not understanding what was happening. Like, what is a shadow engine? There is a... machine? Something, called the Wisdom, which is introduced at one point which is very important to the plot - but the reader is kind of just expected to know what it is without any explanation of it? Is it magic, is it science? Who knows, not me! It was well-written, and I think maybe I'm just not that much of a scifi girl, because it just didn't work for me sadly.

I also thought that Kyr was a main character that I just didn't get along with; she's very selfish and narrow-minded, and it seems like all the side characters exist for is to teach her how to be better; how to not be sexist or xenophobic or homophobic... they didn't feel like they existed as characters in themselves. And Kyr was so indoctrinated, that even with some character development it didn't feel like she had really changed all that much.

Personally, I think that with even a bit more worldbuilding, I would have enjoyed this book a lot more, just so I wasn't really confused while reading it!

Some Desperate Glory is an ambitious multi-verse hopping sci-fi following a deeply unlikeable main character as she tries to forge a path to a fairer universe.
I really enjoyed this book, especially once I hit the half-way point and the story went storming along to its grand, mind-bending conclusion. Its a strong, thoughtful look at indoctrination and how we move past the ideals we are taught from birth, reconciling for our past wrongs and working to be better people.
If I had one criticism it would be that Tesh tries to grapple with too many serious topics and doesn't always meet them at a level that they should be dealt with. More time needed to be given to some of the subjects raised, as opposed to the occasional throwaway "oh this is a problem here, too" that the reader gets.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK, Orbit for providing me this book in exchange for an honest review*

Ok hear me out. It's not that I loved this book but I didn't hate it either. It was meh. The stars are balancing between 3 and 3,5 just because. I love space opera sci fis. This is my thing. But this didn't captured my attention. I wanted to punch Kyr so many times! I don't mind the Chosen One trope but Kyr was so obnoxious that made me so so mad. So yeah, if you're looking Illuminae files but LGBTQ+ don't read it.

I originally dismissed this book as it was it was described as Sci-fi and I am not an avid sci-fi fan. After the debacle that was reading ‘Red Scholars Wake’, I was resolutely avoiding anything described as a space opera because it clearly was not my bag. However, there was something about the blurb that kept me coming back and thinking it might be worth a try. And I was glad I did.

Some Desperate Glory is set in a near-future alternate world, where Earth is no longer habitable and humans, along with other species are overseen by supposedly benevolent aliens, under the guidance of an all-knowing computer system known as ‘the wisdom’. The story follows our MC, Kyr on a rebel space-station society in microcosm, as she tries to be the epitome of a model rebel citizen. When her efforts are not rewarded and she is not given the assignment she feels she deserves and her brother Mags rejects his own duties, she goes on a quest to prove herself, save her brother and fufil the role she believes she was born to play.

It is true, it is set mostly on spaceships - but it is also a dystopian tale about what happens after the end of the world as you know it. How society can be organized on a small scale and what repercussions this has for gender relations, sexuality and how your worth is perceived by your output. The protagonist seems more an antagonist at first, I absolutely hated her and with trigger warnings around homophobia, sexism and sexual assault I wondered how the story was going to turn round and make her someone you could sympathize with. But what unfolded was ultimately a tale of redemption, for society as a whole…but with highly unlikable characters at the helm. I found this interesting, because surely you should be rooting for and seeing yourself in the people whose journey you are following? But this didn’t affect my enjoyment of the story as a whole and in fact elevated this from a generic sci-fi to being a little more original. I wanted to know, to understand what made these characters the way they were and whether they would have a redemption arc, in one reality or the next.

I must admit, the science/mechanics of this society seemed to be quite underdeveloped and I did finish the book with questions that went unanswered and I would have liked more world-building in terms of how things like “The Wisdom” worked. However, this did not stop me from enjoying the story as long as I didn’t think too much about it. This is quite a fast-paced read at parts and full of action and I did read it in one sitting.

There is very little relationship building which wasn’t the books focus anyway, but there is some exploration of family relationships and the importance of found family. Queer representation was pretty good and there were also Enby characters who used ‘they’ pronouns

I would recommend this book to sci-fi lovers, to people who enjoy dystopian literature and people who are interested in queer discourse, if they can get past homophobia as an essential plot point. You may not enjoy this book if you prefer to relate to the characters and like real world settings.

Emily Tesh is the winner of the World Fantasy Award Best Novella for Silver in the Wood in 2020, an Astounding Award winner and Crawford Award finalist. Some Desperate Glory is her debut novel.

From the publisher: [Some Desperate Glory is]“…a thrillingly told space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and the path you must forge when every choice is stripped from you.

All her life, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the destruction of planet Earth. Raised on Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet.

Then Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons, and 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, Kyr must escape from everything she's ever known. If she succeeds, she will find a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could ever have imagined.”

It's not an easy thing to begin with a main character that is rather deliberately so unpleasant. Of course, Valkyr/Kyr is a product of her own environment and upbringing, and this means that she has been brainwashed from a very young age into upholding a certain point of view. The big reveal at the beginning of the book is that Kyr is a descendant of the remnants of Humanity when Earth was destroyed by an entity known as the Wisdom, and so life exists in a militaristic way towards exacting revenge on the Wisdom and the alien Majoda that are looked after by the Wisdom, existing on thousands of worlds outside the realm known as Gaea Station.

The first part of the book, dealing with Kyr and her brother Magnus’/ Mags’ life in Gaea Station, reads rather like a Baen Books/Heinlein juvenile novel in evolution  - albeit one where children are trained to fight in warrior groups, discipline is fierce and forced pregnancy is accepted as important for the continuation of the human race. It is logical, ordered, disciplined and yet seen as the only means of securing human survival.

The pace picks up once Mags, Kyr, queer geek Avi and alien Yiso manage to escape Gaea and get to the planet Chrysothemis, where those humans who have left Gaea have been placed. Chrysothemis is very different to Kyr’s life in Gaea Station. After initial denial, Kyr’s life and beliefs are turned upside down by meeting her ‘traitorous’ sister Ursa, and discovering the reality of life for humans outside Gaea Station. Such a volte-face means that Kyr, her family and lifestyle are reassessed, and there is an almost Truman Show reappraisal of life outside the ‘reality’ that is Kyr’s life.

The next part of the book runs at a much faster pace. Despite all of the change, Kyr is determined to complete Mags’s aborted Strike mission, an assassination of the Prince of the Wisdom as an act of revenge for the killing of 14 billion people on Planet Earth.

Kyr then manages to get Avi to activate the dormant Wisdom node on Chrysothemis, and at this point there is a twist in the story that you may not necessarily see coming.

The rest of the novel deals with the consequences of this. Kyr finds that she can travel between multiverses, using the Wisdom as a vehicle to go back and change things – or to cause the destruction of thousands of worlds. The dilemma is then about what does she change, and by how much. Can she change things to before the Earth was destroyed? Or use it to wreak revenge on the majo?

By the end, with various plates spinning at once, Tesh manages to resolve the key issues, even if some of the conclusions are a little too convenient. There’s the odd jarring moment amongst all the good stuff – a bizarre scene involving touching hair that seems rather controversial towards the end, for example.

Although Some Desperate Glory is being presented as an adult SF book, the novel seems a little undecided on who it wants to be read by. Whilst many of the themes are determinedly grown-up - radicalisation, death, suicide, xenophobia and racism, eugenics, amongst others – I can see that it might be attractive to older young adults, especially as many of the characters would be of a similar age. Her world of set values and beliefs, and the way that it changes, may also be rather engaging to anyone who feels like an outsider.

However, the book loses points in its attempts to be an adult SF book. When used, sexual expletives and sexual talk seemed jarringly out of place in the narrative and there to serve little other purpose than to determine that this is a book for adults rather than the Young Adult atmosphere it mainly resides in.

At times I also felt that there are one too many deaths that aren’t deaths that may make the reader feel a little cheated or at lest misled, and one character too many that is saved rather than sacrificed, which may give a lesser value to such matters than a reader may expect. But in the end, Some Desperate Glory is a crowd-pleaser, determined to highlight and right the wrongs of radicalisation, xenophobia and dehumanisation, even if other elements are left discarded along the way.

As an LGBTQ Space Opera, Some Desperate Glory is good, solid stuff, even when there are elements of the science fiction that are soft on the science, a little wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey -  up there with unobtanium for me. This allows the social aspects of the characters to develop, rather like those in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkoisgan series. It does what it needs to do to drive the plot forward and allow the focus to be on the characters.

Really, this is a book that lives or dies (often more than once!) on its characterisation and their respective redemptions. Whilst there are undeniable issues, Some Desperate Glory is a book that readers will remember for the depiction of its characters rather than anything else.

In short, Some Desperate Glory is an engaging LGBTQ Space Opera that ticks all of the boxes for contemporary issues in SF. It is not earth-shatteringly original, but is a solid character-driven read which builds intensity and grabs your attention as it deals with issues of radicalisation, dehumanisation, family, loyalty and revenge.

Some Desperate Glory is one of the best books I have read in my life. This is exactly what I want from my science fiction.

If you love a good wet rat lesbian, this is for you. I wanted to shake Kyr so badly. I will think about her for years to come.

I sobbed my way through this book in the middle of the night. It is the perfect balance of heartbreaking and hopeful. Emily Tesh is not afraid to Go There. Absolutely impossible to put down.

This book starts slow but then takes off at lightspeed. We follow Kyr, who is an aspiring soldier in Gaea Station. She has been raised to believe she is the last of humanity and their mission is to kill an alien species that killed the Earth. When she’s given the Nursery as her assignment, she decides to leave in order to find her brother who has gone missing to prove she should be part of the combat division.

Kyr is a very strong main character: both physically and mentally. She is basically a wall. No one ever really knows how she’s feeling, including herself. She’s never let herself stop and reflect. She has always be a do, do, do person. And maybe that makes her unlikeable, but it made her incredibly relatable to me. Kyr is very naïve as we find out she has basically been raised in a cult, but seeing her react to the world at large was so fascinating to watch.

This book is expansive, and action packed. I absolutely loved every second of it. I couldn’t wait to see what Kyr would do next and how the consequences would play out. This book has a very interesting take on time travel and I enjoyed the way the timeline was played with here. There is also very little romance in this book, which I found refreshing. The focus of this story is much more the plot and platonic/familial relationships between characters. Overall, I loved this book and highly recommend it!

Thanks to Netgalleyand Orbit UK for providing me with this ARC!

This was the first book I read by Emily Tesh even if read raving reviews of The Greenhollow Duology.
That said this book left me on the fence and unable to say if I liked it or not.
The world building and the storytelling are excellent but I've got some issues with Kyr, a sort of Chosen One but on the arrogant side. She's strong but there's also a lot of hubris and she's not my favorite character.
I liked the story and wanted to know what was going to happen.
It's a good YA but I was expecting more by an adult sci-fi that deals with some very serious issues.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Tesh's Greenhollow Duology is still sitting patiently in my tbr, and I cannot even tell you why I haven't read it yet because it comes so highly recommended. So highly even that I immediately recognized the author's name when I stumbled upon this book, and I was interested on the spot. Then I read some more about it and well - it's science-fiction, it's queer, and I saw it likened to Mass Effect at some point, so really I didn't stand a chance.

And I did enjoy my time with this book so much! It's downright heartbreaking at some points, it's thoughtful and complex and didn't leave me after I finished the last page. Now, it's not one of those books that managed to grab me by the throat on page 1. It took its time, and the pacing is rather slow in the first half. I wasn't entirely sure where this book would lead me, though I was never bored. And then the Big Thing happens and I almost screamed at my kindle. From then on, I was completely hooked and could NOT put this down. I devoured it.

On the surface, it tells the story of a young soldier in training on the last human bastion in space. She's not particularly likeable, definitely on purpose, and she's very dedicated to the cause. The cause being, training to become a human super soldier able to finally get revenge on the alien race that destroyed Earth. Pretty early on it's clear that maybe not everything on this space station is as it seems, there's a certain eerie atmosphere following the plot. Nothing more should be said about that, though, because this book deserves to be experienced. Some of the twists are more obvious, but even they are masterfully done.
The character writing and development is strong, and while the side characters don't always get enough screen time - I would have loved to spend more time with some of them, get to know them better - Kyr is a really strong protagonist. The dynamics between the characters are incredibly intriguing. And all of this is written in gorgeous prose, too.

All in all a very enjoyable, well-crafted sci-fi novel with an amazing protagonist and much to say, though it does sometimes pretend to be a little more complex than it actually is. 4 stars.

Thank you Orbit UK and Netgalley for providing me of an e-ARC of this book!

This one sadly did not work for me:( To be honest, I really enjoyed the beginning even though I did think Kyr was unlikeable since the start. Yet I was a little charmed with her and the writing was just fun.

However, the more I read the more I felt deeply uncomfortable with how Kyr was written. Kyr was a bully from the start, and was homophobic (the way she used the word queer to describe a person she doesn’t know was just not it i’m sorry) and fascist. She kind of reminds me of Spensa from Skyward but in a bad way because where was the character development? I get that this book was trying to tackle on these issues but it wasn’t working for me.

The book stated there will be found family but for me to be able to call something found family, you’d have to like the characters first. Which I didn’t. I did however liked the girls in the beginning and was sad they’re not a big part of the book. Also Mags was okay? But the rest… ugh.

One positive thing about this book for me was just the writing. It was easy to follow and I would even say it was fun to read. I got a bit confused with the world building and plot though, and was a bit overwhelmed about it even when I was already halfway in.

However, I know a lot did like this so maybe take my review with a grain of salt. It just wasn’t for me.

Some Desperate Glory is a slow-burn space opera with a nice found family vibe that follows Kyr a young soldier raised on Gaea Station who has trained her whole life to avenge the murder of planet Earth. While it tries to tackle some very serious issues it addresses them by having the main characters actually be racist, homophobic, xenophobic and more, with the idea that by the end of the book the MC recognises that this way of thinking is wrong. Unfortunately, the depth and sensitivity it needed to pull this off were lacking so the characters are often offensive.

This is a good sci-fi adventure story, with a fierce, female protagonist. Kyr is part of a colony of the last humans to survive Earth, bred for her strength and prowess as a soldier. But when she receives her assignment, she realises the colony is not all that it seems.

There's plenty of action and emotion in this story, along with a cult-like indoctrination among those of the colony. When an alien is captured, Kyr's view on her world changes. There are some interesting aspects, and human nature is explored in the narrative.

A fast-paced read that fans of sci-fi will enjoy. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the ARC.