Review: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
While we live, the enemy shall fear us.
All her life 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 all-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. But when Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the 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, she escapes from everything she’s ever known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.
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 award-winning author Emily Tesh’s highly anticipated debut novel.
SPOILERS There are spoilers for the book in the review.
Review:
Dear Emily Tesh,
This was an impulse purchase for me. I saw John Scalzi recommending it on Twitter and I went something like this in my head – “Queer space opera! Want now.”
After I finished this, what I am telling myself in my head – “Maybe not so fast next time.” The blurb summarizes the plot pretty well. What we know initially about this world is that Earth was destroyed as a result of the war with aliens and the only survivors of that war are a couple of thousand people on Gaya station with its leader Admiral Jole, and our main character Kir is one of the best soldiers on the station.
As we start to look a little deeper at the Gaya station (really, you don’t need to look very deep, just a glance is enough), you see that something is very, very wrong. Because you see, it is mostly kids, starting with five- or six-year-olds, who are being trained for war and how does Gaya station produce new members of humanity? By assigning some of the eighteen-year-olds cadets to “Nursery” where they are supposed to give birth to “Earth children” who can become Earth soldiers, once every two years till they are dead. I did not get an impression that any of the women of the nursery could refuse any officers or soldiers who will visit them. So if you will decide that Nursery is where mass rape takes place on a pretty regular basis, you will be correct.
Nursery though is only one of the things that are deeply wrong with Gaya station and its command and to get into this will be revealing more spoilers so I will refrain from that.
Our main heroine Kyr lives and breathes preparation for war and she wants to make a good impression on Admiral Jole, whom she calls her uncle. She is a war machine at the beginning of the story, you can say, and she is abrasive with her fellow cadets. Relationships don’t interest her much. She is basically very brainwashed in her head and why won’t she be? She grew up at Gaya station. She did love her brother but that’s the only human like behavior I noted in her in the beginning.
The events that pulled a rug out from under Kyr’s everyday routine do start with her brother’s disappearance from Gaya station and it forces Kyr to leave the station too, trying to find him and she takes some um companions with her. Both of those companions are very important to the plot, especially Alien, so once again I should be keeping quiet.
I have read the reviews before I started mine. I could not NOT do so, as many issues as I was having with this book despite it is being a fast-moving adventure, that I needed to see if at least some other readers were having similar problems, so I guess apologies if my thoughts will sound similar to somebody else’s – it is not intentional.
First of all Kyr was giving such a whiplash as a character. I for once was not troubled at all by her not being very likable in the beginning and I guess maybe for some time into the story. Gaya station is a bad place to grow up and she did not have any good role models for several years. It *made sense* to me for her to be unlikeable. But when the events start to unfold, it is as if Kyr suddenly became awesome. Why? I guess the good genes of her real parent kicked in? I am being sarcastic here, I know who her parent was, but her parent did not have much time with her. For example, at some point in time one of her compatriots engages in a little torture of the prisoner (again, I know there is no “little” when it comes to torture). Why does Kyr immediately feel bad if that being is someone she was told all her life to hate? The bigger examples are once again even more spoilerish, so I will refrain. Does she require a redemption arc or she does not require a redemption arc and if she does then why did the redemption arc felt so easy?
Also, I feel like the book wanted to be Young Adult and changed its mind along the way, but did not acquire a complexity in characterization and plot as it decided to be not young adult and no, I am not saying that YA book cannot be complex, it absolutely can, I just cannot explain it any better.
This book has at the center (in addition to the war of course) some horrible things done to kids and of course the villain justifies it by higher ends of winning the war. If anything, it reminded me of the Ender series (no, it is not the same story, but it gave me similar a feel). It tackles some heavy heavy subjects as many reviews said, but I feel like it was painted with a very broad brush so to speak. Take the main villain, he is a HORRIBLE person and not just HORRIBLE, but VERY HORRIBLE on so many levels.
Obviously, the villain is the villain, but considering the fact that a very real war with billions of people dead was part of his alleged motives for doing all the horrors that he did, maybe a less cartoonish characterization could have been used?
Also, we have a young man in love with another young man as part of the plot (not the main part of the plot and as much as I love m/m romance I did not expect it to be in the book at all, this storyline, so I am not upset that it was not a romance), but this story was just so very depressing to me, so hopeless and thinking, my god, one boy surely deserves better.
I also was so disappointed that the main character was not dead at the end. And I love happy endings and if not happy, then at least hopeful and I hate the main character dying usually. I did not hate Kyr, please do not get me wrong, but the way she survived just felt so silly, so tacked on.
I am just disappointed. C/C-
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I’m glad for this review. My grade was higher but I agree with most of your criticisms. I really hated the ending – having that kind of happy ending to such a dark book made no sense to me.
It strongly reminded me of Ender’s Game. On this month’s open thread, I said it also works as a feminist reimagining of Ender’s Game and I stand by that. It is it’s own book but there are so many subtle and not so subtle call outs – from the child soldiers training to fight an alien enemy to the mysterious virtual training program to the three gifted siblings in a culture where three siblings are not usually allowed.
I’d probably give this book a slightly higher rating as well because it was fast-paced and had some interesting twists. Despite its flaws, I did want to keep reading. However, I agree with all of your points, especially character development. This book had a lot of potential which it didn’t quite live up to. And I think you were spot on about this book vacillating between being a YA book or for adults.
@Daran: I definitely enjoyed the twists! I haven’t been that genuinely surprised by a SF book in a long time.
But yeah, it didn’t live up to it’s potential.
I’m at 36% and inclined to agree with all your criticisms, Sirius, except with the added issue that I don’t like Kyr. I was okay with her as long as she was on the station (as you say, she was formed by her environment). But now she’s on the planet and seeing another side of things as well as hearing different opinions yet she is still close minded. It’s getting harder and harder for me to stand. Can any of you give me an opinion of how her soon her beliefs will crumble?
Minor spoilers:
Right now in the part I’m in she’s left the apartment building and went back to the place where she was staying only to find her a stuff is missing and that the two people she was living with cleared out. She’s decided to execute her mission on her own.
I think the latter might be the proverbial last straw for me unless you tell me she will turn around very soon. I can’t stand her at this point.
@Janine: hi Janine. See for me she turned around waaaay too fast. for me one appearance on the planet and seeing who she saw should not have been enough to overturn many formative years of conditioning, but yes, she will turn around fast.@cleo: I went and read your review on the thread, I have not seen it before, but yes it gave me Enders feel.@Daran: I am just glad to see that there readers (I mean I saw it on GR before as well) that share my criticisms, because when the book is hyped, I am not exactly worried about being an obvious outlier, but wondering what I missed.
@janine you’re getting to the part when things started getting interesting. I think you’re supposed to dislike Kyr, and she does starting changing as a result of her “ mission”. The pace picks up quite a bit.
@Sirius the character arc that bothered me was Avi. I had a hard time buying his persona/actions at the end of the book as he was fairly consistent until that point. And you’re definitely not an outlier. This book works better for me if I consider it YA.
@Sirius: Oh, I don’t disagree with you–in terms of the character’s growth arc and its believability, it will be too fast a turnaround if it’s coming soon.
However, in terms of my tolerance from reading about someone who is pretty close to a Nazi, it can’t come soon enough. In fact if it came on the first page–that is, if the author had started with one of the other girls in the group who hadn’t drunk so much of the Kool-Aid, I would have liked it better. I feel like I’m reading about a Nazi youth program and one of those eugenics breeding programs. I wonder if she based it on the Nazi Germany programs that existed under Hitler. The world on the station is chilling and the heroine is really off putting.
I agree with the YA comments too, or rather, it reads a lot like current YA, not necessarily older YA. Lately a lot of YA has gotten simplistic in the way it conveys its social messages and also the dystopian settings can lack nuance. I don’t think all recent YA is like this but a lot of it is. So in that sense it does remind me of newer (last decade) YA novels.
ETA: Thanks Daran, that’s good to know.
@Janine: I agree with Daran, things are about to start getting more interesting. I don’t remember exactly when Kyr’s beliefs start to crumble but it shouldn’t be much longer.
@Daran: yes he was fairly consistent I agree, when you say his actions at the end bothered you which actions do you mean if I may ask@Janine: interesting. While I agree that the whole program in general reads Nazi like, Kyr herself did not read to me like a Nazi at all. Not sure why, maybe because I considered her as much a victim of the situation as everybody else? not sure. Like I disliked Avi way more than I did her, even though his actions overall made much more sense to me in terms of the character – he behaved as I expected the character who grew up on that station to behave and imo only closer to the end started to show signs of change which to me again made much better sense than Kyr’s quick turnaround
@Cleo and @Daran–I’ll see if I can stand to continue, then.
@Sirius: I think if everyone else from the station was as into the philosophy as she was I would view her more as you do. But others brought up the same way made different choices. It’s possible I’m being unfair and it’s just my sensitivity to the Nazi topic because of family history. Either way it’s hard to read about her.
@Janine: I don’t think you are being unfair to her we are just viewing character differently I think . Not sure if this is family history or not – in some ways we have similar family history ( obviously not the same ) but nazi killed a lot of my family members too and I am just not seeing her as Nazi. Just to be clear I am mostly indifferent to Kyr I certainly don’t hate her I see her as a victim but neither do I care for her much . She is mostly an inconsistent character for me . Her character arc is mostly a head scratcher for me .
@Sirius: I’ve read further. She is changing and is a lot more tolerable now. I agree though that her transformation is rushed. It’s especially hard to buy because she was so undoubting in the beginning. I would actually have bought it more from someone like Avi because he was, while not a nice person, at least seeing his world with more open eyes. I may keep going or I may not.
@Janine: if you end up finishing the book I would love to know if you find Avi’s character arc convincing.
@Sirius: I’m still reading but I’m dragging my heels. My main problem is that I’m not connecting with the characters except maybe Yiso. So far (63%) they lack depth.
@Janine: that I agree with too.
I’m at 65% and I think I’m going to quit this book. It’s just boring me! These characters are paper thin.