Some Desperate Glory

"Ironically, this may be the one where queerness is most central to it, and yet, of all of these books, it’s the furthest away from romance . It’s a good place to start. Some Desperate Glory is a science fiction book that has been compared to Ender’s Game . It is about what happens after the world wasn’t saved. This book starts with the main character, who’s a young soldier, desperately trying to stop the weapon that is coming to destroy Earth, and she fails. This is chapter one. Then, you find out she’s running a simulation. She is a child soldier on this space station with the remnants of humanity who have escaped Earth–and they think they’re the heroes, but you, the reader, immediately understand they’re not. These are the human holdouts who refuse to live with the aliens who destroyed their world, and their charismatic leader who uses this idea of revenge to keep them under control. “In recent years we’ve seen a flowering of queer representation in mainstream science fiction and fantasy” Kyr, the main character, is a child soldier who has become enormously radicalized, and you can see she’s radicalized, and you are shrieking at her the entire time. She goes through the process of going into the wider universe and having her mind levered open, and you can see the whole deradicalization process. She’s awful. I love her. She’s not queer in a way that we would necessarily recognize as queer representation, she is shoved so deeply into the closet that she doesn’t even know there’s a closet. Her brain has been so much shaped by this pressure cooker around her that seeing these seeds of difference in herself is an enormously fulfilling journey. I’m going into the queer themes and the concept, but this runs as fast as a thriller . It’s an action book through and through. It’s a very strong, very dark, very character-centric novel. I blurbed this book; it was one of my favorite books of the year, it’s incredible. You do not like Kyr in chapter one. I started liking her about a third of the way through the book, when she gets shoved from a world that hates her to a world that doesn’t understand her. She is getting battered from all sides, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh sweetie, I can see the way forward for you, but you can’t see it because your growth has been so stunted.’ You can see exactly why she’s like this, and you’re cheering her, on every step of the way, to becoming someone else. Eventually, she does, and that’s amazing."

"This is a cleverly crafted book, uniting several well-loved sci fi themes: space-station life, alien contact, AI overlords and alternate universes all come into play. But the overall result is fresh. The Chicago Review of Books put it well: “it’s hard to overstate how good this novel is at what it’s doing. Some Desperate Glory takes tried-and-true material and elevates it remarkably.” Earth is destroyed, and our protagonist Valkyr is part of the vengeful human contingent left behind, living a meagre existence on their space station base. This militia is shot through with bigotry and cruelty, and faithful Valkyr reproduces all of this in her beliefs and actions. I wouldn’t go that far; she’s a sympathetic character. You feel for her, but you can’t entirely like her – at the start. There’s a clear character-arc for her throughout the novel. This is cleverly moved forward when the universe ‘resets’ to new timelines, which allow Valkyr to meet herself and her friends in different possible realities, and be exposed to new ways of thinking. But this isn’t a ponderous character study: the action is pacy throughout, and the stakes high. It’s very fun."

"Yes! It was a tough field this year, so we have a very worthy winner here. Again we’re in the future, in space, with AI , but it’s an entirely different take. Earth has been destroyed, and we follow a young woman from the space station housing human survivors. They’re wronged, they’re angry, and they’re clearly being run as a tiny illiberal personal empire by their idolised leader. Valkyr only begins to wake up to this when she’s assigned to ‘nursery’ – child-bearing – instead of the soldierly posting she’d been expecting. From there, the unravelling of her world begins. You think you’ve got the measure of the book, and then you meet the central AI and its capabilities, and a whole new sci fi element is introduced that re-opens the game. From here we see Valkyr and other characters in different alternate timelines, wrestling to change the final outcome. Some Desperate Glory is pacey, imaginative and very enjoyable."

"There’s a slightly daunting trigger warning at the start, which I took as a bit of a hint not to take the main protagonist at face value. Much of humanity has been wiped out by an alien species, with a surviving rump of humanity divided into the military and ‘breeders.’ Seventeen-year-old Kyr learns that she has been assigned to reproduction, whilst her brother has been given a suicide mission – but may have defected. She sets off to track him down, and in the process discovers that the situation isn’t quite as she’s been led to believe. Tesh’s novel takes a sharp left turn a couple of times, which is brave, but I think she pulls it off."

"Some Desperate Glory starts as a convincing, straightforward yarn about an outpost of human survivors on a space station, Gaea. Earth has been destroyed by an all-knowing benevolent AI, the Wisdom, and the humans left behind are righteously angry. No-one is more committed to their vengeful cause than our hero, Valkyr. But almost immediately, you see the cracks that she is blind to: this regime seems despotic and manipulative, and their cause and methods questionable. We join the story just as Valkyr is about to have her faith tested. This section of the book rattles along apace, but you may be surprised to arrive at what feels like the denouement with a hefty chunk of the book still to go. That’s because this is only the first denouement. The Wisdom hasn’t shown Valkyr everything it can do yet. Alternate universes are about to come into play. There is nothing complex about these universe-resets, but the result is satisfyingly twisty and rich, as characters with different sets of memories encounter each other in different timelines, and we see how different versions of reality shape their distinctive personalities. This makes for a compelling and moving character arc for Valkyr, as she adjusts her understanding of the people she thought she knew, of herself, and of her idea of victory. She is surrounded by characters we care about, and want to see in each new setting, which makes for a compulsive page turner. The mechanisms are not startlingly new, but the execution is excellent: thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining. The Chicago Review of Books said that “it’s hard to overstate how good this novel is at what it’s doing. Some Desperate Glory takes tried-and-true material and elevates it remarkably.” August 20, 2024. Updated: December 2, 2024 Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected] Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you've enjoyed this interview, please support us by donating a small amount ."