Solid 4 stars.

I will say first of all that whenever a book comps itself to Mass Effect it's a double-edged sword for me: on one hand, I immediately want to read it, on the other hand I'll unfairly raise my expectations to an impossible standard. Some Desperate Glory gave me Mass Effect vibes to a certain degree, which worked in its favor and against it.

I'm not typically a fan of narratives about a prejudiced character learning to be less of an asshole, but the context here matters. Some Desperate Glory is about living, surviving, and escaping a fascist regime, and that means our main character is B
brainwashed with a capital B at the start of the book. Kyr is an infuriating character, but her evolution is truly mesmerizing. I grew to love her and cheer for her, which is not an easy accomplishment. Also, honorable mention to Avi for being the morally grey character of my dreams.

I do wish we got more time to explore the universe and learn about other alien species - again, my favorite part in Mass Effect - and while I admire Emily Tesh for discussing heavy topics like fascism, eugenics, genocide, prejudice, war, etc, there was so much going on that it occasionally read as superficial.

Despite that, the plot moves at such a frenetic speed and with such impactful plot points that I'll have to forgive those other flaws. This book is entertaining from start to finish. There's a moment exactly at the halfway point that truly caught me off guard and solidified this rating, it was awesome.

Can there be a development in sci-fi over the past twenty years to celebrate more than its diversification, to become a more truly inclusive genre. So, as an enterprise there’s much to admire about Emily Tesh’s attempt in this novel to diversify one of the most hardcore sub-sets of sci-fi: military sci-fi. This subset - perhaps from its founding text Starship Troopers, focuses on space marines, alien attacks and fleets of dreadnoughts. I will admit it does little for me, though highpoints such as Ender’s Game are the equal of any in the genre.

Tesh’s set-up is very familiar: in an entirely militarised lone enclave of survivors following the destruction of the earth in an alien invasion, genetic sub-soldier Kyr comes of age. When her expected posting doesn’t materialise, she sets out to find her brother, who has mysteriously vanished. Along the way she encounters an alien who challenges her pre-conceptions about the enemy, humans who are co-existing

Tesh - whose first sci-fi novel this is after previous fantasy works - has been critiqued for her world-building and there’s nothing particularly original in her world of converted planetoids, dreadnoughts and alien settlements. What she invests a lot of plot and character capital in is her multiverse ideas. If you’ve been defeated, and you could go back and win, what would that do to you? This is an interesting idea, along with Tesh’s spin on the all-powerful AI that lay behind the alien alliance’s victory.

The last third of this book works well - as Kyr gains some maturity and perspective on the actions of those she has held up. But I can’t deny that the reader has to put some work in to get there. If you’re interested in the queering of scifi then this will give you much to get into, though for a book where sexuality is such a key theme it’s surprisingly sexless.

Review copy provided by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

I don’t like to DNF ARCs but unfortunately I was unable to continue reading Some Desperate Glory, stopping at 25%.

I would like to make it clear that there will be many people who adore this book, but I don’t think you will know until you start reading whether it is for you or not. So if in doubt, give it a go.

This had the potential of being my type of book so I’m disappointed to say that I did not like it at all.

The main character was unlikeable in a cringey, cannot read on kind of way. She was nasty, judgemental and elitist, clearly racist and homophobic. Having read some reviews since stopping I hear that she has some degree of a redemption arc but as a Character focused reader, there was not enough for me to invest in her journey.

The world building in many Sci-fi books takes a bit of getting used to as we acclimatise to new words and descriptions of elements outside our understanding, but this story felt confusing in a different way where we were left without enough information to understand the world. Perhaps this is because I like to delve deeply into a world and understand it well and this may be better suited to those who enjoy an atmospheric read rather than one that focuses on detailed world building.

Having read only 25%, the fact that the story was clunky and hard to get into may be a pointless statement but had it flowed more and the character interactions felt more connected I may have been able to overlook the nastiness of the main character to move on.

3 stars

Content warnings: homophobia, rape.

Overall, this is a very fast paced book.

Some good aspects of it, like the development the main character goes through. Kyr goes from a cold, apathetic bully along a hero's journey, only the journey is escaping from a fascist space cult and realising you've been brainwashed.

The book is marketed as an adult sci fi, but I found that it read more like a YA book. I suspect this is to do with the pacing, but it could also be because we just get plot point after plot point and don't really get time to digest what happened and the implications of it. The mentions of rape are certainly more of an "Adult" plot than a YA plot, and the end of chapter 28 and beginning of chapter 29 repulsed me so much

I have also seen this marketed as Sapphic, and whilst there is a small Sapphic interaction around 60 percent in, this book deals more with the journey of Kyr escaping a lifetime of brainwashing, than romance. There is a lot of homophobia and xenophobia in this book and sometimes it felt heavy handed and there to reiterate the fascist space cult.

I would have liked more explanation to the world building. More depth to aspects like shadowspace.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an arc.

Disclaimer: e-Arc provided by Little Brown Book Group UK, Orbit, via Net Galley for Review. All thoughts are my own. My thanks to Orbit, for providing me with the arc for review. I also received a final copy in my Illumicrate subscription.

Rating: 3 Stars

Plot
This book follows Kyr who lives on a space station among the last of the human race. She is a super solider awaiting to receive her assignment. However, when she and her twin brother, Magnus, receive assigns that mean certain death she flees the station in search of answers.

Thoughts
This book was a hot mess!!

I loved the first 40%, but at the 50% mark the book went in a different direction which I wasn’t expecting. It was at times very confusing and convoluted.

The last 20% of the book was brilliant and made me cry!! Disappointed that the middle section of the book did not live up to the incredible beginning and ending.

Some Desperate glory was included in my Illumicrate subscription in April 2023 and I had not reached it in my tbr pile therefore receiving this eARC was the perfect opportunity to read it. In a nutshell this is a sci-fi space opera focusing on Kyr or Valkyr, a trainee soldier who awaiting her assignment. She’s hoping for a more hands on assignment where she can use her combat training and other excellent qualities. After receiving her last choice for assignment, her brother Magnus refusing assignment and vanishing and an alien known as Majo being captured and kept alive. What ensues is a dark tale of family, learning to love after being conditioned into Kyr being almost robotic and fighting for what’s right, not what she was taught. There’s varied timeliness, exceptional beings and just general drama.
I found it difficult to enjoy. Kyr was emotionless and difficult to connect with at the beginning. The world structure and system was very difficult to learn in a short amount of time and it was easy to get confused with what was happening. In my opinion there’s other sci-fi space opera novels that I’ve preferred but I see many readers that loved SDG and I’m glad they did! This time it wasn’t a book I loved but receiving it in a monthly subscription gave me the opportunity to read a book I wouldn’t have bought myself. Thank you for the eARC!

This review contains spoilers for Some Desperate Glory.

Emily Tesh's debut novel, Some Desperate Glory, starts in a world that will be enormously familiar to readers of YA dystopia and YA SF - so familiar, in fact, that it almost feels like a parody of itself. Growing up on a renegade space station, Gaea, Kyr has been trained since birth to avenge the destruction of Earth by the majoda, a confederation of alien races. Single-minded, and genetically engineered to be a 'warbreed', she's sure that when she finishes her training, she'll be assigned to a combat position, rather than one of the other less desirable posts - Agricole, Systems, or worst of all, Nursery. She obsessively replays a simulation of the destruction of humanity's planet, desperate to beat it, even though it won't change the outcome - or so she thinks.

While the opening chapters of Some Desperate Glory, then, are intensely readable, I was pretty dismayed by all this. Kyr also seemed to have been set up to go on a simplistic journey of redemption as she realises the values she's grown up with are wrong. Tesh is much better than most at showing how these ideas infiltrate minds - Kyr's struggle with the idea of thinking outside binary gender roles, for example, is nicely done. But Gaea seemed like just another super-militaristic eugenicist breeding dystopia, and what else is there to say? This is where the twist near the midpoint comes in. When Tesh introduces the idea of multiple worlds played out by the Wisdom, an alien technology that allows you to assess future outcomes, and allows Kyr to jump into one of her alternate lives, Some Desperate Glory really comes into its own. This clever device means that Tesh delivers a genuinely interesting take on the brainwashed child soldier (though this is still no Ender's Game). As Kyr acquires the world-view of her alternate self, she can start to question the narrowness of her previous life in a way that is much more illuminating than a laboured redemption arc where she learns Homophobia Is Wrong. We really see how the things she's been taught have genuinely limited the way she can think, symbolised by the way she reacts when she returns to the tiny dormitory where she grew up, which had never seemed so small to her before. And Tesh is too clever a writer to leave it there - Kyr is not totally won over by her alternate self, finding her smug and intellectually arrogant.

The character work in this novel is streets ahead of most YA or indeed much adult SFF. As I've already suggested, Kyr is a beautifully-written protagonist, who changes, questions, and changes again. But Tesh doesn't skimp on the secondary cast. Reluctant ally Avicenna and brother Mags are fully realised, with their own character arcs, as are Kyr's rival, Cleo, and uncle, Aulus. Even tertiary figures like Jeanne, Vic and Arti, Kyr's fellow cadets, have a strong presence in the story. This is what makes Some Desperate Glory work, when it does - Tesh's commitment to allowing all of her characters to be complex moral beings. Unfortunately, this makes the slips stand out more. I was uncomfortable with the idealisation of cadet Lisabel, who is clearly intended to address Kyr's not-like-other-girls superiority, but Tesh pushes the message so far that she almost ends up suggesting that the strongest women are those, like Lisabel, who are naturally nurturing. The final third of the novel was also a big disappointment to me. Having raised fascinating ethical questions with the mid-point twist, Tesh sweeps them under the carpet. In particular, the revelation that the majoda destroyed Earth because the Wisdom predicted that otherwise humanity would kill far more people in revenge is just dropped. Is it right to kill people in anticipation of the wrong they will do? Was there another choice that could have been made? We get nothing. And while Some Desperate Glory mostly avoids the simplistic takes on humanity that plague a lot of SF - humans are always the worst, most violent race ever or incredibly capable and advanced - it leans a bit towards the former simply because we learn so little about the majoda and what they are like. By the climax of the novel, we're firmly back in YA SF territory.

This was a frustrating read for me because it swung so far towards greatness and then swung back again. The gender politics also made me uncomfortable, especially as the book starts with a quote glorifying motherhood. I wish Tesh had built on the huge potential of her midpoint to deliver something genuinely different. On the other hand, she can clearly write people, and that alone is enough to make me want to pick up her next book. 3.5 stars.

I absolutely loved this book! I am not a massive Sci-Fi reader, I must admit. So I don't have a lot of the Sci-Fi knowledge and background. However, this book was written in such a way that it was easy to follow and it was able to completely immerse myself in the world created by Tesh. The characters were very interesting, flawed and complex. Once I got through the first couple chapters, I was unable to put it down and devoured it in one go. Highly recommend, even for not avid Sci-Fi readers!

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is one of the most suprising books I read this year. Despite it being an action driven book, it has so much depth and the character growth is *chef’s kiss*. First things first: the earth is gone. Like gone gone, including everyone that lived on it. A few survivors remain aboard a series of attached patched up space ships, and everything in this left over society is aimed towards raging war on the aliens who did this. It is very military style, think Sparta with a hint of fascism, where everyone is raised as a warrior, and there is no place for questions. Our main character, Kyr (“Valkyr”) thrives in this environment, she has the highest score and is on her way to Command, or so she thinks. She doesn’t question everything like some around her do, like her brother and her friend, but when something happens even she can’t close her eyes to, the trouble begins. I really can’t say much more about the synopsis without spoilering, and it’s gonna be a hard review to write as there are so many amazing twists and views throughout the book that would be a total spoiler but they’re EPIC and amazing and made me feel all the feels.


The worldbuilding is done so well! I loved how humans were the big scary warmongering baddies of all the aliens, it was a nice change to the normal sci fi. And the Wisdom, epic. We’ve seen a concept like that before with all knowing machines, but the way this was handled, wow. It really made me think about the choices we make and how they impact the world. Oh and yay for all the feminism! The theme of radicalization is also very prominent in this book, and it’s very intense. I recognized a lot actually, being a sort of ex-vangelical, it felt healing reading about someone else going through the process.


But I absolutely loved the characters, they were all so real and fleshed out! In the beginning you kinda want to slap Kyr for being so naïve, but as she grows and gains more knowledge, and all her inner turmoil and desperate need to do the right thing, you just have to love her. Her journey is truly special and I loved it all. The side characters were amazing, even one that is slightly evil or at least morally very dark grey, he was so interesting and you get his choices, and that relatable evil gets under your skin. And Mags, her brother, is such a cinnamon roll in a killer machine body, gotta love him.


Something happens at the midpoint that’s quite a shock and turns the entire story upside down. However, there are some trigger warnings that you should definitely check, because it’s quite intense.


I’m thinking really hard of a downside, but I just can’t find one, hence the 5 stars. I loved everything about this book, it resonated so much with me personally, and I recommend it to everyone.

I received a free e-arc of this book (thanks to the publisher and Netgalley) but it hasn't influenced my opinion.

3.5 stars

In my quest to read more sci-fi, I came upon Some Desperate Glory . I had stumbled upon this book in a bookstagram post and I was really intrigued by it, so when I got approved for the ARC, I was pretty excited for it. It starts off really interesting and Emily Tesh's writing had me hooked onto the story from the first chapter. Especially in how it introduces the world, the characters and the conflict. I started off really liking it, by the time I finished this, this book was just average in my opinion.

Look, Kyr's character in the first few chapters is done so well. It showcases her obedience for the rules as a brainwashed child soldier, her need to gain glory and more. However, this stops once the action starts. I don't know why, but her character arc just appeared to have disappeared and only makes an appearance towards the end.

Personally, I found the worldbuilding to be a little bit strange, in a sense. I was able to understand the world in the first quarter of the book, but after that, I felt as though way too many things were being thrown at me. Most of them didn't seem that believable to me and some left me feeling kind of confused. This also affected my reading, because suddenly, at least towards the second half of the book, I felt there were these random things thrown in. This book also tackles some heavy topics, but the way they were dealt with felt so shallow and it really just felt like a poor job. In terms of the representation, I did like that this was a queer sci-fi space opera and I liked the representation, but there were certain scenes that were just a big no to me.

Some Desperate Glory started off as what could be a great sci-fi space opera, but ultimately fell short due to the many issues with the worldbuilding and the plot. Nevertheless, I'd say it's worth giving a read for the plot twists and the way it deals with life under a dictatorship.

Dnf around 65%. I really wanted to like it but I just couldn’t get myself to care about the main character. I understand that she is not meant to be likes le at the start because she is literally a part of a death cult, but she barely redeems herself. I do feel bad for her but she still feels very static to me and I didn’t care to find out what happened

The literary equivalent of one of those reversible figure images that’s either a rabbit or a duck, a vase or two faces, Some Desperate Glory is either a stellar, strikingly grownup YA novel or a strangely callow, un-nuanced work for grown-ups. And every time I start to zero in on one of those takes as the “right” one, the lines blur and I begin wondering if maybe it was a picture of a duck after all.

A good case study in Some Desperate Glory’s ambiguous quality is the totally unambiguous totalitarian microstate / doomsday cult / splinter cell that is Gaea Station, the heavily militarised last bastion of a defeated spacefaring humanity. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say Gaea is obviously A Bad Place, but Tesh invests it with enough specificity and plausibility —the genocidal details of humankind’s current situation makes it hard not to feel the Gaeans have at least something of a point— that it’s not just a paint-by-numbers-mid-2000s teen dystopia. And like a cult, Gaea’s ethos of revenge has a nasty and all-too-believable habit of getting its hooks into people, even after they have the chance to grow and change in less oppressive environments; there’s a late scene where our heroine Kyr is tempted by the simplicity of it all that’s genuinely chilling even if we’re not in much doubt of how she’ll choose (wisely!).

Still, Gaea’s not _not_ a teen dystopia either, replete with high-school-style cliques of jocks, geeks and freaks (and incredibly trope-y jock/nerd pairings), up-to-the-minute social concerns and language, shadowy adult administrators, and all-important Assignments to lifelong careers straight out of the Sorting Hat. It’s a horrible place in pretty much every way from any kind of modern perspective, rigid, racist, homophobic, sexist, gender-essentialist and more, though Tesh does us the favour of making it clear Gaea’s a small, mean hovel too and not some grand Miltonic imperium. So yes, definitely A Bad Place enabled by compromised adults turning a blind eye to injustice and the banality of evil. Which is a bit of a YA dystopian cliche, but morally speaking it’s also a totally unopposed layup. We’re repeatedly reminded fighting Gaea is brave, and it might be for the characters, but is it really for the reader?

Practically every aspect of the book has this pushme-pullyou quality to it: queer and nonbinary characters are all over the book, but the narrative’s so passionless the labels feel basically pasted on; Kyr has gradual, believable character growth that suddenly gets fed plot Miracle-Gro in the final third to make sure we reach a satisfying endpoint; the plot goes to some surprisingly dark places but we walk the bleakest steps back immediately (and repeatedly), and so on and so on.

All in all? I’m honestly glad I read it and will watch Tesh’s career with interest, but I’m not going back. SDG is going to justifiably blow some (younger?) readers’ minds, it’s retreading well-worn old ground, it’s an amazing first book, it’s overhyped, It’s a rabbit, it’s a duck.

——————

Some stray observations (minor spoilers):

• So there once was an offworld human population of 8 billion, but the largest remaining human settlement is 2 million (and the next seven hundred thousand)? This is probably just the writer not thinking it all the way through, but if interstellar settlement sizes scale anything like how they do on Earth that’s a total surviving human population in the ballpark of 10–100 million. Which means there’s been some really, really, really serious genocide beyond the one-off Big One we keep hearing about, like 99%+ mortality territory, literal mountains of bones. Just sayin’.

• The aliens really aren’t, and it’s a bit of a shame.

• Even when we get off Gaea the humans aren’t much of a stretch either, it’s a very Anglo picture of the future. (P.S. Seriously, what happened to Spanish, Arabic and Hindi to make them no longer some of humanity’s main languages?)

• I was wondering if we’d get a Phyllis Schlafly / Maggie Thatcher female defender of the reactionary Gaean order, but I’m not sure the book’s sometimes un-nuanced gender politics can really accommodate that sort of figure. Tbf, I guess that’s arguably Kyr at the start, but that’s clearly a function of indoctrination.

• One of the strongest pieces of evidence for me SDG really is YA is the explicit closing moral that you shouldn’t make choices for other people. Which is an appealing guideline, but as an actual principle it collapses the moment you want to have kids, or, uh, any kind of functional government. Uncut teenage glibertarianism.

I’m not 100% sure how to rate this, there were times I really enjoyed this book and at other points it was more frustrating.

It was well written and well paced so I read through it quite quickly. It addressed so many different topics and I think this is where it fell down a little because I think these could have been given greater depth.

Still, it’s a good sci-fi novel with an interesting plot and characters and I kind of want to reread just to see what I think of it a second time around.

Fantasy escapism perfection! I loved this so much that I have ordered a hardback copy to be displayed proudly on my bookcase.
The worldbuilding, story telling, characters is outstanding. Defintely one of the best books of 2023!

It's pretty rare that a book leaves me almost breathless after reading. This is a rare book that pulled me away from my gaming and had me sitting for 4+ hours completely absorbed.

From the synopsis, I thought I knew what I was getting into - sci-fi dystopia with a healthy dose of rebellion and coming-of-age. When what I was expecting abruptly closed at around 40%, and I still had over half the book to go, I knew I was in for a treat.

The characterisations in this novel are particularly strong, and even though you may not immediately root for a character, Tesh has a way with the inner psyche of her creations that you undoubtedly come to understand them, with all their faults and flaws.

The fact that this is a debut is particularly impressive, and I look forward to whatever this author chooses to write next!

Sci-fi space drama. Kyr only sees one future for herself. But the Universe is more complicated than her restricted life has suggested. Will she, and the universe, survive when her eyes are opened? Thank you to Little Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely.

I could not put this clever, thoughful action packed space opera down.
Imagine a universe of many different species co-existing peacefully thanks to The Wisdom, an intelligence who can foresee all probabilities and advise on the right course of action. Who puts the many before the few, even if the consequences for the few are catastrophic. A universe struggling to manage the technological advances of humanity with its propensity for war, colonising anfd xenophobia.
Kaia is one of a handful of humanity left. She and her fellow survivors live a grim, militaristic existence hidden away on a planetoid, training for the day they will avenge the bombing of Earth and all 14 billion inhabitants. She is strong, focused, ruthless and dedicated. The perfect soldier - although, as a female, there is a chance she will be assigned to nursery instead, passing down her perfect warrior genes to the next generation. But when an alien ship is captured along with its one passenger and her brother escapes rather than accept his posting as a soldier, doubt starts to eat away at her certainty. What if everything she has been taught isn't as clearcut as it seems?
This is a novel about hate, about consequences, about second chances. about forgiveness wrapped up in a breathtaking brilliant, tense scenario.
Creative, original and fastpaced, highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group UK for approving my request to read an arc of this book.

I had heard a lot of hype over this book over on queer bookstagram and so I was very excited when I saw it available to request. However, once I downloaded the book and started reading, I noticed the content warnings and really wished these had been listed on the book’s description page on NetGalley so I could have know this before I requested it. Obviously everyone can tolerate different things, but one of my most triggering words was used on only the second page and so I decided to skip this one for my own benefit, I’m not giving it a bad review, as while a different word could definitely have been used, they did list that the book contained ableism and so I’m not blaming the author for what is probably, due to the hype, a very good book. However this is definitely not the book for me and I would have known this if NetGalley posted content warnings on the request pages.

I am still reeling from howe much I loved this book! Sci Fi was the first genre I fell in love with but recently I haven't read much that I've liked. I was lucky enough to be sent an advanced copy of Some Desperate Glory, which I hadn't heard of beforehand, and reading the blurb it sounded like just my kind of book.

Kyr is a brilliant MC. The growth she goes through is incredible as she realises all is not what it seems on Gaea station and decides to fight for what is right instead. Kyr kind of sucks for a good proportion of this book, but I definitely related to her - I've been her before. There are some tough issues brought up in this book, and it didn't always make for nice reading, but ET dealt with them flawlessly.

I also really enjoyed that this book wasn't romance focused - don't get me wrong, I enjoy it, but a lot of the times authors have romances overshadow their story and it was a refreshing change.

Thank you so much to Orbit UK for sending me an early copy!