Some Desperate Glory

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By Emily Tesh

Publisher Description

Instant National Bestseller and International Bestseller!

Hugo Award Winner for Best Novel!

Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalist!
Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Finalist!

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.

"Some Desperate Glory surprised me at every turn. At once a space thriller, a tale of deprogramming, and a missive on identity and meaning, the result is a vitally refreshing addition to the SFF genre. This book has earned a permanent place on my favorites shelf."—V. E. Schwab

"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)

National Bestseller | Sunday Times Bestseller | An Indie Next Pick | A LibraryReads Pick | a Goodreads Choice Finalist | With three starred reviews!

A Best Of Pick for The Guardian | GoodReads | Publishers Weekly | Powell's | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible | Gizmodo | Book Riot | LitHub | Financial Times | Discover Sci-Fi | Locus | NPR | Library Journal

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.

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440 Reviews

3.5

tinycl0ud

Created 3 days ago

“I saw that this book was blurbed by THE Tamsyn Muir so of course I will read it. To my delight, the themes and storyline were similar to Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan series (and a little bit of Orson Scott Card’s ‘Ender’s Game’)—free will, eugenics, xenophobia, and totalitarianism. This was a real treat if you’re into epic space operas and the concept of a populated universe. Valkyr is a girl raised on Gaea, a space station containing the last “pure” humans, meaning those who refuse to submit to alien rule and who spend their entire existence planning to avenge their destroyed home planet. This all started when a god-like A.I. weapon called Wisdom decided that the human threat needed to be eliminated for the good of all other life in the universe. Valkyr dreams of joining her illustrious uncle in Command; she is 100% the “best space fascist girl scout” and a product of the environment that shaped her. It doesn’t even occur to her to question her place or what’s wrong with the society she grew up in. The way their society is run means that the survival of their race is paramount, and to meet population numbers, a certain number of girls per cohort must work in the Nursery where their job for the next 20 years is to get pregnant against their will and raise the children of the future. You’d think that this role would be given the highest rank, given that humanity literally has no future without it, but as expected, the girls who land themselves in Nursery are looked down upon and their job devalued. Valkyr was one of those people who thought so, believing herself superior because of her high combat scores, until she is assigned to Nursery and told flatly to produce sons for the war. Unwilling to accept her fate, Valkyr orchestrates an escape, setting off a chain of events that changes the fate of the universe forever.”

Homophobia Misogyny Sexual assault War violence Memorable Minor characters stand out Morally ambiguous Multilayered Satisfying conclusion Dystopian

flo

Created 11 days ago

“I loved this book so much! I knew that it had a ton of high ratings, but I was still a little skeptical since I haven't felt like reading sci-fi for quite a while, and I also have been burned by highly rated books that everyone else is talking about. But I adored everything about it. I don't know what people are talking about with the main character, because I loved her from the beginning. Everyone was like "Oh I hated her but then I began to root for her as she developed and became a better person," and I was just like "Nah she's great, give me more" the whole time. But I do also like my characters with a shitty edge as long as there's something I can connect to in them and as long as they develop past how they started. The plot was fantastic—I love space and dystopia and people seeing through the dystopia for what it really is, and I love found family, which we got a lot more of in the second half of the novel. All the revelations just made me keep turning the page to find out more. It only took me so long to finish the book because I was also playing a lot of BG3 at the time lol. Some of the things that happened were things I did not expect but also totally worked, and I loved that. Every time I figured, "Okay, now X is going to happen," the book completely pivoted to Y, but it didn't feel contrived. The author just didn't follow a bunch of common tropes and I love her for it. (Of note, I didn't understand some of the fake science, but that's fine, I just skimmed over some of those explanations and didn't feel like I lost anything.) And then everything that happened in the last third of the book was perfect. The alternate universe, the Sparrows coming together, the way that Kyr faced off against the main dictator/cult leader, and the ending of the book itself. By the end of the book, we had gone on such a twisty turny journey that I didn't even recognize the beginning of the same novel. Anyway, everyone keeps comparing this to the Locked Tomb series, so I should probably get on that...soon.”

Murder Sexual assault War violence Change and grow Multilayered Gripping/exciting Suspenseful Twisty Dystopian Futuristic

Sci-Fi Guy

moon

Charlie

About Emily Tesh

EMILY TESH, winner of the Astounding Award and a Crawford Award finalist, is the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning Greenhollow Duology, which begins with the novella Silver in the Wood and concludes with Drowned Country. Some Desperate Glory is her first novel.