I would like to thank Nazia from Orbit for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Orbit

Published - Out Now

Price - £18.99 hardback £8.99 Kindle eBook

All her life, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the destruction of planet Earth. Raised on Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet.

Then Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons, and 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 must escape from everything she's ever known. If she succeeds, she will find a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could ever have imagined

One aspect of a hero is the certainty that they are doing the right thing no matter what. We admire those who stand up for what they believe in. But that only works when we all agree that those beliefs are right. When common goals are very different then our heroes can become villains very easily. In Emily Tesh’s impressive, daring and excellent novel Some Desperate Glory we have a powerful character study in how society can control your beliefs and also the power of empathy leads to hope for a better future.

Kyr is a dedicated warrior in training aboard Humanity’s last outpost Gaea Station. A single refuge from the war that saw Earth destroyed and aliens take control of the galaxy. Kyr and her unit work hard to be the next generation in the battle. Kyr trains hardest; pulls her troupe up to get the best out of them and has eyes on joining Gaea’s military wings. Then an alien is captured with a strange ship; her brother Mags disappears and she is told her future is spending the next twenty years in the Nursery wing creating the next generation. Kyr decides an error has been made and goes off the station. She finds though the rest of the galaxy is a very different place to what she was taught and is sucked into the final battles of Gaea station which will involve powerful alien technology that can change reality itself.

Emily Tesh has created a compelling story that plays with some of science fiction’s earliest plots but uses them to explore the power of fascism and control. The first quarter of the novel is our classic last humans taking a stand. We have a space station made up of retired ships; very much survivalist way of life with Kyr and her troupe all learning fighting skills from an early age. It’s something we have seen in many incarnations and yet we never quite feel on Kyr’s side which is this book’s brilliant idea. This world doesn’t quite feel right especially to 2023 eyes. We (not Kyr) may spot it’s homophobia as various character’s feel scared that their queerness will be discovered and punished; women can fight but many more are expected to stay in Nursery and just have babies and it’s a casually cruel world. Kyr punishes a child by making them drink spilt water for wasting resources and most sinisterly the alien prisoner is shown to be tortured and treated with disgust. Tesh never makes us feel pleasure in any of this and instead we feel Kyr’s constant certainty she is doing the right thing to be aggravating. But it’s then the book starts dismantling that certainty starting off with Kyr discovering her brother is gay; that her beloved ‘Uncle Joele’ who leads Gaea and has supported her has signed off on her going to Nursery and then as the book moves on to a planet showing a very different side to what Kyr has been led to believe.

Now what we have is ultimately a story about competing realities. We see Kyr focus initially on what she has been after from the start the chance to be the lone hero saving Earth and key to that is a mysterious AI known as The Wisdom used by the rest of the galaxy to plot the safest path and possibly even more powerful than anyone expects.

What I loved is how Kyr has to work out what she actually now believes in as her foundational beliefs are challenged and she gets to see her world from an outsider perspective. Tesh bonds with a mysterious young alien named Yisonand slowly she realises Yiso is a person in her own right; her relationships with Mags and also her alledged traitor of a sister Ursa are redrawn and most powerfully Kyr gets to experience what could have happened if humanity has won its final war. Tesh again plays with a foundation of SF a ‘civilised’ human focused empire that again shows it’s darker and crueler sides. Only then does Kyr move away from a magical technology solution but ultimately has to decide what for her is a victory and slowly realise she can’t do it al alone.

Having a lead character who as one character says is being the best space fascist she can be is challenging but Tesh makes us see that Kyr’s small world allowed her only certain information; clamped down on rebellion and so it’s fairly easy to slowly brainwash people to accepting that they are the heroes. But once someone encounters the bigger world they have to start processing the contradictions and think for themselves. This is a tale of taking a better path and not simply striking back as that way leads just to more and more retaliation. Is a hero the sole warrior fighting the system or the person seeking the best outcome for the many. Is learning to accept other people in your life the better way to survive. What makes the novel succeed is Kyr’s development is never felt forced but gradual and she is being constantly pushed out of her comfort zone and also aware of her flaws (many of which she thought were strengths). This has one of the best core character arcs I’ve read in a long time as it makes us explore how fascism controls someone by making that person genuinely believe they are right but slowly we see it can be broken.

Some Desperate Glory is one of the best science fiction novels of the year. It is playing with classic SF themes and exploring their darker sides - how a desire to be Spartan warriors taking a last stand was often a world that had little room for women, other concepts of gender or race and starting to show a more kinder and accepting alternative universe is instead needed for us to live rather than simply survive. Emily Tesh had created a thought-provoking tale that challenges the reader to enter an unlikeable character’s mind and understand them and watch how they slowly change their view of the world. Powerful, intelligent and great science fiction I strongly recommend!