1/5 stars! Woof! I know the intention was to show character growth, but I couldn't get past the main character being a judgmental, discriminatory POS.

A very satisfying YA style space opera. I loved the worldbuilding - it reminded me of the film version of Starship Troopers and shades of various feminist dysptopias, with a young military group being trained up to fight. As the main character learns more, the story becomes much more gripping, with some very unexpected elements. One for you if you enjoy thrillingly plotted scifi - even if there are some definite YA type fairly heavy handed moral lessons.

I'm seriously kicking myself for not picking this book up sooner. I really loved everything about this, and it's a new favourite of mine for sure!!

While I think all aspects of the book were done really well, it was especially the character arc of Valkyr that really made the book shine. She starts of as extremely unlikable. She grew up in the mini version of a fascist tyranny, yet has bought into the story this culture is selling. Not only that, she is actively enforcing it - till the system goes against her. I know many who DNF'd the book around this point because it was just too exhausting to be stuck in her head, but I implore you to keep going! Her arc is so well done, and it depcits perfectly how you can go from being fully indoctrinated in this extremist mindset to breaking free of it and thinking for yourself.

My only very light criticism is that the anti-fascist messaging got a bit heavy handed at times, but this is such a small thing. It didn't really bother me.

Everything else? Flawless. Had me at the edge of my seat all the way through, and at some points I actually dropped my jaw open in shock. Read it!!

I love sci-fi so this was perfect for me, especially with the saturation of the fantasy market at the moment, it was a breath of fresh air.

The beginning was quite slow and hard to get in to but just persevere with it, it does get better.

My biggest problem with this book was that it should have been a YA book. The way that major issues were dealt with would have just fit better within YA rather than adult sci-fi with the way it's written. This does not mean that it's a bad book in any means but it's just something to watch out for.

Reading Advice

I don't read much science fiction. I'm most a Fantasy Addict, although I'm getting a bit more into it this year.
I really liked the world. created here and all the characters. It was very easy to dive into the story and this universe, I devoured this book during my holidays and I want more !
Can't wait to read more books by this author

This was a slow burner to start, but did it pull me in.

The further I read, the more intriguing it became with some great characters and wonderful world building.

A great Space opera / Time travelling story.

It took me a few chapters to get into this as I didn’t like the main character to start with. As the book continued I found the story engrossing and I couldn’t put the book down, I needed to read more! By the end I loved the characters and the found family aspect and overall thought this book was brilliant

Dnf @ 60%

Some Desperate Glory is a sci-fi novel featuring a female main character who is bred to be a soldier, designed to fight for the human race against the evil majo civilisations. This book tackles some difficult issues including discrimination, indoctrination, fascism and gender roles in a militant space environment.

For me, reading this book was a chore. I didn't connect with any of the characters, the storyline left a lot to be desired and honestly, I barely knew what was going on. I've read a decent amount of Sci-fi so I'm quite happy to suspend my disbelief to a degree but it felt as though I was just expected to accept some of the tech terms without any explanation as to what they are. The world building was okay but this is definitely more of a plot driven book. It's just a shame I had no clue what the plot was.

Ultimately I decided to give this up as I had no desire to pick it up and see where the story went.

One of the best space operas I have read this year. It took me a long time to read because I did find the beginning quite slow and struggled to get into it, but after about 25% it really came into its own. I think it would be best suited for someone looking for a book between YA and Adult scifi as the main character is quite young and the writing feels more geared towards YA even if the topic was more adult.

i'm so shook I was screaming from 5o% of the way through right to the last page!!

Some Desperate Glory tells the story of Kyr, a girl born into a fascist doomsday space cult, and her journey to escape. She's heavily heavily indoctrinated at the start, a really awful person, and it was so wild to watch her grow throughout the story and come to care for others.

Like I said, this story goes absolutely off the rails (complimentary) at around the 50% mark. I was sat in a cafe with my mouth HANGING OPEN and I was LATE to work because I needed to know what happened. It's rare I get super sucked into a book but this one had me picking it up and experiencing my own time slip because suddenly 3 hours had passed.

I loved the characters, <spoiler> I love how we get to see how they turned out differently in a different timeline and how that affects them, and then I love how Kyr gets placed back in her old timeline as a changed person and we get to see her agency it's so good omg</spoiler>

This book has drop kicked me into a sci-fi era. send tweet

I was delighted to have been given the chance to read this book as it sounded exactly like my type of book and the cover was gorgeous. I really loved following the story of Kyr as she escapes the life she was being forced into, and discovers who she is without the sense of authority tying her down. I was hooked as soon as I started reading and am eager to read more, either in this series or just anything by the author, as this book was beautifully written and captivating, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I would definitely recommend this to any sci-fi fans or anyone looking for a fantastic female protagonist.

This one is a tricky one to rate for me, because I went in after having read the wonderful "Silver in the Woods" and was probably expecting something similar albeit in the scifi genre. I did like "Some Desperate Glory" but felt I would have enjoyed it more had it fallen under the YA spectrum.

Maybe pausing my reading from time to time didn't help either, as I kept forgetting who was who. The names kept me confused until the very end. The writing remains as phenomenal though, so again, take my rating with a grain of salt.

Some Desperate Glory is a wonderful new space opera, with many unexpected twists that cement the book as one of my favourite debuts of 2023. The story mostly takes place on Gaea station, a last outpost of humanity after the majo destruction of earth, determined to keep fighting the alien threat. Our lead character is Kyr, a young warrior with exemplary training scores who has sacrificed all of her time (and friendships) in the name of the cause. She therefore finds herself at a crossroads when her formal adult assignment is to the Nursery, permanently away from the front lines, while her brother is assigned to a suicide mission with no hope of return.
Some Desperate Glory is truly is a book of two halves with the second half taking a direction I was not expecting. It would be all too easy to spoil chunks of the book if I go into too much detail, so instead I’ll simply describe it as a wholly unexpected rug-pull that makes you re-examine what you’ve already read. In retrospect, I have a lot of respect for whoever managed to write a blurb that describes the book without dropping a single hint as to where the plot will go! I’m super impressed with Kyr as a character, because of her character progression over the course of the novel. At the beginning, I found her inherently unlikeable, and was a little concerned for the rest of the book since I found myself disagreeing with a lot of her actions and viewpoints. Were the book to progress in a predictable manner, this would be a major downside for the novel for me; however, because of the unexpected turn the book takes, it justified the character’s motives very well, and made me see her in a different light with a lot more sympathy.

I’m not usually one to not finish books (especially if it’s an ARC I try to avoid it, and if I then later own a special book box edition) but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Unfortunately this book was the rarity and I was unable to finish it — I just couldn’t get in to it! I tried for a few chapters but the writing style wasn’t for me, and there were a few comments that had me raising my eyebrows.

I do try and not let reviews influence me too much, but reading what others have said about this book and my experience led me to determine this wasn’t for me.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book, and my apologies for being unable to finish it.

Reviewed on my blog:

https://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2023/10/recent-reading-some-desperate-glory-by.html

It had the potential to be amazing but it ended up being soooo on the nose, I'm really disappointed. This book set out to talk about several subjects such as racism, sexism and fascism and the way it was handled would've been fine in a YA novel but an adult? No. You can be a lot more nuanced when addressing an adult audience, it just felt like the author was taking the reader for an idiot. And that hair touching scene with the alien was just not it, just no. The characters had barely any personality, like nothing at all, not even the bare minimum. The world was never explained in depth which would again be expected from an adult sci-fi novel and the overall plot was so messy and chaotic, it made no sense. Would not recommend this one at all. 1 stars.

I really, really wanted to love this book. I was beyond excited to read it and it sounded amazing. However I really struggled to read it, it had all the ingredients to be brilliant but it fell short. It started strong and I did enjoy the first 40% of the book. I thought I knew where the story was going and it made sense. Then as the story continued, I felt like it was an info dump, it didn't read well and I couldn't enjoy the story because of how it read. I'm sure others will love it but it wasn't for me.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for this honest review.

All I can say about this is that my feelings were incredibly mixed come the end. It had an incredibly strong start, fully immersing us in the world through a prose that was very blunt, just like the brainwashed child soldier who’s our protagonist. Normally, I don’t like prose as blunt, much preferring when it’s lush and lyrical, but for this it worked incredibly well and felt like an extension of the main character; blunt like a soldier and hitting all the marks like a strong fist. But I found that around the 40% or so mark my interest waned, I didn’t enjoy it as much and suddenly felt bored. The interest, however, eventually returned, only for this cycle to continue throughout the rest of the book, sometimes quite rapidly. Immense enjoyment, waning interest, bored senseless, repeat. The themes, however, were strong and well woven into the story, so I applaud the author for that. I do have one nitpick though: the author uses several names rooted in greco-roman and norse history and myth as a device for the themes about white facism, however two things fell flat for me, being both a classics student and a Scandinavian. Cleo mentions that the only classical name they could come up with for a black woman was Cleopatra, a ruler of Egypt, which is in Africa. Though several spring to mind for me, the name Dido especially, as it has a bit of a history of being the type of name the author is using Cleopatra as. Another is Magnus, which felt so off reading as a name in a sci-fi, especially one intimately tied to a regime, considering how popular it is in Scandinavia. It’s like,,, the most basic name you can come up with. Whilst it did work as intended, both threw me off just a little. However, I don’t think many other readers will take notice or any issue of this. Like I said: it’s a nitpick.

Usually I avoid Sci-Fi like the plague but I have heard so many good things about this book and I am so glad I gave it a go. The ending hit hard straight to the chest and I loved the world building.

Even the prologue sets tone brilliantly. A lot of sci fi can be a little jarring to start, getting to grips with the world as plot begins, but Emily Tesh does so beautifully