I was expecting to love this book, but right from the beginning it started off pretty slow. Still, I’m glad I kept reading because after about 40% this book really picks up.

The story follows Kyr, a seventeen-year-old soldier who has been bred on Gaea station, and is trained with her fellow soldiers to fight for humanity. The alien species Majo have destroyed Earth and now humans fight back by gaining small victories under the command of Kyr’s ‘uncle’ Commander Jole. But after her brother is assigned to his own mission and essentially runs away being named a traitor, Kyr challenges everything she’s ever known to find out what really happened and to keep him safe.

I thought the pacing was the biggest issue with this book, but it was understandable. This book is 448 pages long, and Kyr is an unlikeable character. She’s loyal to her fleet and what she’s been taught, no matter how wrong it is, so it does take time to both love her and hate her. I loved a lot of the action scenes in this book, particularly the twists and Kyr’s interactions with the majo alien she rescues. I just felt so warm and fuzzy whenever they were together, because their friendship is rocky and slow to build, and this story has a lot of elements of found family that made it memorable. There is plot device in this book that was unexpected but what eventually made this story so engaging for me. No spoilers, but it literally changed EVERYTHING and introduced a new perspective.

There are a ton of themes discussed in this book. Some in depth such as loneliness, war, morals, brainwashing, breeding, and some themes aren’t discussed too much in detail such as race, trauma, and acceptance. However, I found that the former were done really well and were introduced in a subtle way that didn’t scream ‘this is what i’m trying to show’ and wasn’t in your face kind of approach.

The writing was super easy to follow. This story is very smart. It’s not for smart people, but it’s very smart, and the world-building was excellent. I enjoyed that we got scenes from both the space station, as well as on-planet.

In terms of characters, I think there was a fair mix of diversity. The characters interacted well and it was easy to distinguish them from their different personalities and their backgrounds. By the end I really liked Kyr and her decisions, despite her resistance to think differently at the start. But as I said, you can love her and hate her, and I think the author achieved their goal with what she was meant to represent, which is that no matter what you’ve been taught, there’s always an opportunity to fight for what’s right, and take that leap of faith.

Overall, I found this to be a thrilling sci-fi, which I can’t say much to other sci-fi books I’ve read in the past, save a handful. I enjoyed the writing and the world, and the ending was fantastic. This is a lot of what I want in a sci-fi action and it’s what I got!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an e-arc!

A very engaging plot, with some intriguing twists. It was nice the way the author blended her hero's journey of personal development, with the evolving adventure in the plot. Clearly, a lot of thought went into this book. If there's a fault in it, perhaps it's the tendency of the protagonist to engage in a lot of introspection. I'd have preferred to see more of her thoughts revealed through dialogue. But I'm nit-picking TBH. The book works well on many levels.

What starts off as a dystopian sci-fi story about (a genuinely unlikeable) brainwashed teenager assisting in the battle for the survival of the human race morphs into a tale of acceptance and friendship across previously uncrossed borders. By the end of the book I was rooting for Valkyr to figure out what she was missing/what she had avoided and it was all resolved which I really appreciate. I think the storyline was sometimes difficult to follow with things being explained away in a way that don't necessarily make sense, but overall I enjoyed it.

Reading Some Desperate Glory was a strange experience. I dove into this expecting it to be a sci-fi book for adults in the vein of A Memory Called Empire but found it to be more of a YA novel filled with thought-provoking concepts and ideas that were neither fully explored nor deeply discussed. It was all portrayed in a very dichotomous way, without much room for further analysis or reflection.

Although I found the lack of depth to be the book's weakest point, I feel this is also its strength. It's a sci-fi story, but it was pretty easy to digest, and I never felt like the story was slow or the concepts were too overwhelming. I don't know if this is a book I see myself coming back to, but I enjoyed the plot and am looking forward to reading more of the author's stories.

Check out this book if you're interested in sci-fi but would like a light and entertaining auto-conclusive story.

2 stars

Let me start off by saying that I had been waiting for this book to come out ever since the publishing rights were sold and it was announced. Previously I had read Tesh's Greenhollow duology, which is among the list of my favourite books. I was so ready to love Some Desperate Glory, it sounded great just from the premise. Teenage supersoldier Kyr is born for battle at their militant planetoid community, but once her brother is assigned to be a suicide bomber and Kyr is sent to breed soldier babies, she leaves behind the Atwood-ian life she has grown up in to save her brother.
That all sounds lovely and great, we have a brainwashed child soldier, hell-bent on revenge and everyone's excited to see Kyr realize all that brainwashing was just propaganda. I would say the plot is pretty enjoyable till the 30% or so mark which is how long it takes for the events mentioned in the blurb to take place. That should have been warning enough of the kind of book this would turn out to be, but I was an optimistic dumbass.

From that moment on, the plot unravels pretty fast, there is so much going on and the reader is just supposed to shut up and take it all in, because asking questions of how A worked or how B was possible will just be pointless because frankly enough none of it makes sense. I love the scifi genre and am able to suspend my disbelief for quite a lot of shenanigans. But sometimes, fantasy authors assume that scifi is not much different from fantasy except it's just set in space. But even in fantasy, you have to explain the magic system etc and how the world works. In Glory, however, some fancy mumbo jumbo like "shadow engines" and "reality distortions" are thrown around and the reader is supposed to just nod along and assume it makes perfect sense. The plot holes are so glaringly obvious that it all ends up being painful.

The debates and discussions on the nature of fascism and propaganda were interesting enough but were not enough to carry the weight of the novel. I didn't really care for any of the characters except maybe for Avi, though it was less liking his character and more being intrigued by what war crimes he would commit next.

The wonky science, the absent yet forced romance, and the messy plotting made Some Desperate Glory to be a disappointing novel for me. Readers of YA sci-fi might like it if they like jarring plot twists and philosophising about the aspects of living under a dictatorship. Some Desperate Glory comes out 06/04/23.

Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit UK for sending me an advanced readers' copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

— 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 —

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: Some Desperate Glory
𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: N/A
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫(𝐬): Emily Tesh
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: LGBT Sci-Fi
𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝: 11th April 2023
𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: 4/5

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

How could I have ignored the Sci-fi genre for so long without really giving it a chance? Whilst I ponder my own stupidity, those who love Sci-Fi should read this and then stare into the Gaea-shaped station void that it leaves in the soul.

It actually felt like I just read three books in one because so much went on. I got to the halfway point and lost my mind. Exactly what I love in fantasy has proved the same in Sci-fi; the infinite possibilities.

This must be how Alice felt. Because I feel like I’ve just slipped into a rabbit hole and now I have to climb back out—even though I don’t want to quite yet.

The main character was pretty vile at first and was really hard to root for, I thought it would be a problem but after the halfway point my opinion began to gradually change until it snapped firmly into the opposite camp of ‘rooting for’. The plot was strong, the character development was sublime (and sorely needed), and the world building was good. I did expect romance but whilst there are m/m and f/f relationships, the romance is extremely limited and mainly non existent.

But, that was fine, there was too much going on to get too invested in any love interests, anyway.

I would have really loved an epilogue, I feel that a lot of plot points feel rather ‘unfinished’ without one. And a story like that, deserves the best ending.

𝑲𝒂𝒚𝒍𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒉 @ 𝑾𝒆𝒍𝒔𝒉 𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝑭𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒚
🧚‍♀️🤍

In Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, a brainwashed young woman in a paramilitary organisation tries to take action that is denied to her and finds herself in a conflict much more complex than she could have imagined. This sci-fi novel takes place in a universe where Earth is destroyed and an enclave of humans fight to avenge their loss.

Valkyr is brainwashed to the point that she doesn’t realise that others might not share her same strident dedication to the cause, and when she finds herself given an assignment that she doesn’t want, she finds an excuse to put herself on her own path to further the cause of revenge for humanity. And she’s pretty annoying, especially before she inevitably starts having minor doubts about what her group is doing. Narratively it makes sense, and it’s great that there’s no cheap ‘oh no I’m brainwashed’ instant revelation, but it can be hard to follow a POV that for a good third of the book is pretty straightforwardly unlikable.

But stopping early would be a mistake, as this book goes places I never expected in ways that made perfect sense towards the themes and opening chapters of the book. It’s hard to say much more than that without spoiling things – I for one loved the journey Valkyr undergoes, and the increasingly complex mental state it puts her in, leading to an apt finale.

The side characters have depths to them that create interesting complications for the plot, and help explore the major themes of the book. The question of whether you can truly escape the place that made you is posed in different forms throughout the book.

There’s some predictive/virtual reality/modelling technology integral to the plot that gets increasingly handwavey as the story goes on, but that didn’t really harm the experience for me – hard sci-fi nuts beware.

I think there’s an early hurdle to this book that might lose some readers, but overall it’s a rewarding read that goes to some unexpected places. While it doesn’t quite have the same feel as her novellas, Tesh’s writing here is just as competent, and I hope Some Desperate Glory is the first of many she writes in the genre.

Rating: 9/10

Kyr has lived her whole life on a makeshift base in space with the remains of humanity after Earth was destroyed before she was born. The whole time, she has prepared as a soldier to face the enemy, who are still out there. Until the day everything changes and she discovers she may not really know the whole story ...

This was such a brilliant science fiction story! Kyr is a conflicted character but that just makes her all the more interesting to read. And the non stop action plot (with bits of slightly incomprehensible technology thrown in) makes for a wild ride. Would definitely recommend for anybody who enjoys a good space epic!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

4/5 Stars

What a ruthless, reality-bending, time-twisting, character-changing journey this book has put me on. I want to thank Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Some Desperate Glory tells us the story of Kyr, the golden girl of Gaea station, who knows two things for certain: that she is the best at everything she does, and that Gaea's cause is righteous. Her planet was murdered and she has been raised to fight the Wisdom, the alien evil that secured the enemy their win over Earth with its reality-shaping powers. But when her brother is chosen to die fighting the aliens by himself, Kyr knows she needs to take matters in her own hands and escapes everything she has ever known to discover the world beyond the wreckage that is her home.

This story was complex and confusing, heartwarming and appalling, skillful and completely bonkers. Kyr was a very cleverly used unreliable narrator and one I didn't know I needed to read about in my life. She is the best, the most brilliant, the one that is everything Gaea station taught her to be. She's unemotional, she's harsh and calculating, she's such a terrible person but the way it's written is truly masterful and was highly enjoyable. Character development, too, was done in a delightful way and let us read different characters in different ways from Kyr's perspective as she changes while the world around her changes, too. The characters were all very satisfying to read, and while they did not portray many different areas of this very big world the book is set in, they show us many facets of the parts we do see.

The world, which is affected by the actions of Kyr and company on a very grand scale, is shown mostly in very few places that are vastly different from each other - it all contrasts nicely. The plot was all over the place in ways that were scary and exhilarating, but often a little confusing and can lead to a reader simply feeling a little stupid, which is something I feel is inherent to a lot of sci fi. I have a lot of mixed feelings about all of the reality-bending that is happening, but overall it was manageable.

All in all, the utterly awful personality of various characters (mostly at the beginning of the book) was something I had a lot of fun reading about, and if you're willing to be upset by a book, this might be worth a try for you!

This review will be posted on March 30th on Instagram and Read-O.

Way before I was a fantasy nerd, I was a serious sci-fi nerd (think early Star Trek and stuff). So I was really happy to receive a sci-fi book with a unique story and wildly interesting characters.
The story starts out with Valkyr living in a dystopian space world, having the sole goal of revenging Earth's destruction by an alien race. This is what she's been born for, raised for, trained for. She thinks she has it all figured out. But when her brother disappears, her whole world gets turned upside down.
Even though you might think you can figure out where the story will evolve from this, believe me you can't. When you've finished about 50% of the book, your - the reader's - world will be turned upside down as well.
And if you've had trouble rooting for Valkyr up until now (you probably will), then everything is about to change and the rest of the book will be a wild space ride. And even though Valkyr is tall as hell, what she's about to face is bigger than her alone.
As every good sci-fi story, there are observations and lessons about real life. About humanity and society. And there is a lot to take away and unpack from this story, showing humanity at its worst and at its best. Its content will stay with me for a long while after closing the book.
The only critisicm I have is that the nature, technology and goal of Wisdom and shadowengines remain mostly in the dark. However, the author herself has pointed this out in her acknowledgement, saying that it's running on purest narrativium. And I'm okay with that.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Should I start with: "THIS BOOK TILTED MY BRAIN OFF ITS AXIS AND COMPLETELY WRECKED MY WORLD?"

or perhaps I should start with this:

<b>If you want a book where the women, the gays, and the most adorable being in the entire universe dismantled and tore apart some pathetic, pitiful, hateful, delusional white men, THIS IS IT. </b>

This book owned me from the beginning. It was love at first sight. And the moment where I felt the "this, this book is everything" came very early on.

The world-building was great! The author made it easy to follow and even for sci-fi newbies like me! The pacing was amazing. I was never bored and I was constantly panting as I read the second half of the book. I didn't dare to leave these characters alone because SO MUCH HAPPENED. This book really sucks you in. I read it in two sittings, and that was me restraining myself. 🫠

The friendship between Kyr and Yiso, oh my goodness, it's one of the most precious things in the universe. I'm not even into aliens in books, but deities help you if you dare hurt my Yiso!!!! I loved Kyr's character arc. It was so masterfully done. She turned from a loyal boulder of a person to someone who critically saw everyone and everything, who understood her shortcomings and actually changed. And the author accomplished it without it ever feeling like a writing decision that was unavoidable for the greater good of a story that has to follow the guidelines, know what I mean?

I loved the Sparrow girls. Every girl is different from each other, and while there wasn't the sweet kind friendship between them, they really had each other's back when it counted.

I also think that this book broke the record for How Many Plot Twists A Single Book Can Have, and oh how I loved every second of it.

This book has the most adorable alien ever? Yiso, I love you so much.

THE LAST COUPLE OF CHARTERS DESERVE AN AWARD!!! I LOVED IT SO MUCH. I HAVE NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE HOW MUCH I LOVED THIS BOOK AND THESE CHARACTERS *horrible white men excluded ofc*

The themes in this book left me breathless. The ways people change when they have the chance to make a decision between change and revenge. The lengths people go to protect themselves and survive in an environment that is against them. The way misogyny, racism, and greed can take, take, take, and take some more from people *women and the marginalized communities* and those people will still persevere. Survivors are heroes, and I am in awe of you.

Some Desperate Glory is one of the greatest books I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and given this is an ARC, my fangirling self is very honored. This book will forever stay with me.

Kyr is my girl. Yiso is my heart. And KyrYiso is the very soul of this book. Along with <b>survivors' outstanding and awe-inspiring perseverance.</b>

This book is so addictive it should come with a warning- I devoured it over two days and actively resented anything that dragged me away. In unfolding the story of Kyr, Tesh performs the feat of flipping the narrative inside out several times so that the story that begins out as recognisable YA fare becomes a kind of cross between the Wayfarers series and Harrow the Ninth. Nothing is as it is first introduced, characters that you think you know are developed in rich, unexpected directions and the whole thing is deeply affecting and, as I said, highly addictive.

I’m so glad I got to read this- I’m going to reccomend it to everyone I know!

Thank you Little, Brown Book Group U.K., Orbit and Netgalley for the arc of Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

This is a totally intriguing space opera that steps beyond the traditions of good vs evil, human vs alien as it digs into the consequences of war, humanity, power, radicalism, gender essentialism, sexual constraint and more. This book does not fear to venture into those spaces you wouldn’t expect, the darker side of space and humanity and for the majority I would say it’s really successful. There’s only one part towards the end that I struggled with. I got the message but, it felt clumsy.

The story itself is a total Space opera and if you only read it for the adventure, then this book is definitely worth plunging into. The protagonist Valkyr (Kyr/ Vallie) is not likeable, she’s a true construct of her society. She lives to serve humanity through her war skills, her control of her fledgling squad and she knows nothing different until one day things change, the path she expected to tread in life is blocked and she learns that things and people may not be what she’d been taught.

If you’re looking for a space ride that takes you on a ride across worlds, space and more, if you fell for Enders Game, if you want a space opera that steps it up a notch, pick up Some Desperate Glory!

Really great, thought-provoking sci-fi about the nature of humanity, war, revenge and power. It was intriguing until the halfway mark, then a plot twist took the whole story in a new direction that managed to feel fresh and impactful (as opposed to distracting). Kyr was a realistic protagonist, though not a likeable one: an indoctrinated bully who’d never needed to learn empathy…but did eventually find some within her. The story goes to dark places without dwelling in the darkness - Tesh leaves plenty for the reader to deduce on their own.

The only mild criticism I have is that I’ve seen Some Desperate Glory described as a “queer space opera/sci fi” and I don’t think that’s accurate. There are a number of queer protagonists (“space opera with queer characters”), but the story wasn’t inherently queer, and queerness wasn’t a major focus/theme of the story. That’s less an enjoyment criticism on my part, more a branding one.

Esta novela de Emily Tesh venía haciendo mucho ruido y he de reconocer que es imposible escapar de las primeras páginas como si hubiéramos superado el horizonte de sucesos, pero con un comienzo tan arrebatador iba a ser muy difícil mantener el nivel y Some Desperate Glory va decayendo poco a poco.


Hay que advertir que el libro tiene al principio un listado de avisos más largo que mi brazo (aunque, admitámoslo, esto no es decir mucho) y puede herir susceptibilidades, ya que trata temas como la violación, la eugenesia, maltrato infantil… Por suerte, no es que Tesh se recree en ello, pero como son elementos inseparables de la narración, se agradece adentrarnos en la lectura con conocimiento de causa.

La autora cambia alguna de las tornas más habituales en la ciencia ficción militarista, por ejemplo, los aliens son físicamente más débiles que los humanos, a los que ven casi como gigantes monstruosos por su extremada constitución. Pero claro, cuando tienes la tecnología de tu parte el poderío físico queda un poco en segundo plano. Los humanos están acorralados en su última base, bajo un severísimo regimen militar que es un lavado de cerebro institucionalizado y la protagonista Kyr está esperando saber cuál será su destino dentro del ejército. Es la mejor de su grupo y de su edad con diferencia, pero pronto descubrirá que las decisiones de los que ejercen el poder no se basan solo en los baremos en los que ella brilla…

Some Desperate Glory es una obra absorbente con varios giros de guion pero que cada vez nos sorprende menos, porque lo que a primera vista puede resultar novedoso si se sigue utilizando como recurso, pierde frescura. Acaba cansando un poco seguir asistiendo a las peripecias mentales a la que tiene que acudir Kyr para seguir justificando lo injustificable, pero tiene otros elementos atractivos como la evolución de sus relaciones con sus compañeras, su hermano y los aliens conforme va abriendo los ojos a una realidad que le estuvo velada por mucho tiempo. Quizá no cumpla las expectativas que había creado, pero no deja de ser una lectura entretenida que utiliza tropos de la ciencia ficción para mandar un mensaje feminista y de comprensión.