Some Desperate Glory
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4.8 • 16 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Instant National Bestseller and International Bestseller!
A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is Astounding Award Winner Emily Tesh’s explosive debut novel.
"Masterful, audacious storytelling. Relentless, unsentimental, a completely wild ride."—Tamsyn Muir
"This is the sort of debut novel every novelist hopes to write."—John Scalzi
"Deserves a space on shelves alongside Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Sunday Times Bestseller | An Indie Next Pick | A LibraryReads Pick | With three starred reviews!
A Best Of Pick for The Guardian | Publishers Weekly | Amazon | Audible | Gizmodo | Book Riot | LitHub | Financial Times
While we live, the enemy shall fear us.
Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity.
They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity's revenge into her own hands.
Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
World Fantasy Award winner Tesh (the Greenhollow duology of novellas) jumps from quiet fantasy to ambitious sci-fi in her raw and action-packed full-length debut. Raised on Gaea Station with the last of humanity, Valkyr has been indoctrinated from childhood into intense hatred of the majoda—the alien race that destroyed Earth—and thirsts for vengeance. When Kyr comes of age, however, she's disappointed to be assigned to Nursery rather than combat, her body designated to breed future supersoldiers. Meanwhile, Kyr's brother, Magnus, is assigned off-station to certain death. Kyr takes justice for humanity into her own hands to save Magnus—but once she's away from Gaea Station, the principles she's been fed her whole life are called into question. Tesh's sweeping epic wrestles with the nature of hatred, vengeance, and radicalization. The political theme of breaking away from fascist ideology pairs beautifully with smart sci-fi worldbuilding—which encompasses shadow engine technology and time slips—and queer coming of age. This riveting adventure deserves a space on shelves alongside genre titans like Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler.
Customer Reviews
Transformative Space Opera
“Some Desperate Glory” is the first full novel by Emily Tesh. It’s quite a departure from her previous works. This consists of the Greenhollow Duology, which is a pair of excellent fantasy novellas. “Some Desperate Glory” is a space opera and a deeper and more complex story. This story is disturbing, uncomfortable, suspenseful, and very different.
In this future, Humans are not good people. They began expanding into space and encountered a galaxy with a number of mostly peaceful alien species. The humans were both militaristic and xenophobic, so warfare was inevitable. The aliens had a higher level of technology, and the war did not go well for Earth.
Gaea Station is a last holdout of rebel humans. These true believers never surrendered and live on a form of toxic militant extremism. Valkyr is a child of this ideology, and embraces it fully. She is reaching the age of adulthood and assignment to her role within this society. However, when things begin to occur outside of her limited worldview, she has to question everything she believes in. Will she be able to accept the revelations she experiences?
This was a hard book to read in many ways. The humans of Gaea Station, and their predecessors were not admirable, and exhibited many of the worst attributes of our species. This was all too believable. Valkyr’s world changes completely, and she struggles to change her understanding to keep up with it. Overall, I think it was an ambitious narrative that largely succeeded. I’d recommend it as a complex novel with a surprisingly positive outcome.