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A review by justabean_reads
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
4.0
I'd already been told that this was basically crossing over the "Humans are space orcs" meme with the "Are we the baddies?" Mitchell and Webb bit, which is accurate, but doesn't entirely capture what's going on and why people love this book.
Basically, our heroine grew up being brainwashed by a bunch of terrorists, and was fully going on a suicide bombing run when she starts to see the cracks in her ideology, and questioning what she's been taught since birth. She's also a moderately obnoxious seventeen year old, a bully, and almost universally disliked by everyone she meets. After a few hundred pages, I found her obliviousness a little one-note? It was needed to set up the rest of the book, and I understand why we needed a baseline of her justifying herself and her horrifying views to show off how much she changes, but it did make the first third of the book drag a bit.
However, what did work for me was everything else. Without spoiling too much of the plot, there's some neat work happening with alternate realities, and who someone would be given different circumstances. Though it's a bit heavy-handed in places, I liked a lot of the details of how much being a Space Spartan would suck for everyone involved, and the points about complicity, and weighing when and if it's effective to rebel against corrupt authority. I also really liked how a lot of the secondary characters don't turn out to have the stories I expected, and how Tesh kept playing and inverting with YA and MilSF tropes. I was genuinely shocked by a couple of the turns, which doesn't happen much for me with SF/F.
I also thought the worldbuilding around the Wisdom and the loose confederation of humans and aliens associated with it had some neat philosophical concepts and dilemmas which felt very classic SF, and which I enjoyed the story chewing over. Also, nice to have a stand alone novel that felt complete and satisfying.
Basically, our heroine grew up being brainwashed by a bunch of terrorists, and was fully going on a suicide bombing run when she starts to see the cracks in her ideology, and questioning what she's been taught since birth. She's also a moderately obnoxious seventeen year old, a bully, and almost universally disliked by everyone she meets. After a few hundred pages, I found her obliviousness a little one-note? It was needed to set up the rest of the book, and I understand why we needed a baseline of her justifying herself and her horrifying views to show off how much she changes, but it did make the first third of the book drag a bit.
However, what did work for me was everything else. Without spoiling too much of the plot, there's some neat work happening with alternate realities, and who someone would be given different circumstances. Though it's a bit heavy-handed in places, I liked a lot of the details of how much being a Space Spartan would suck for everyone involved, and the points about complicity, and weighing when and if it's effective to rebel against corrupt authority. I also really liked how a lot of the secondary characters don't turn out to have the stories I expected, and how Tesh kept playing and inverting with YA and MilSF tropes. I was genuinely shocked by a couple of the turns, which doesn't happen much for me with SF/F.
I also thought the worldbuilding around the Wisdom and the loose confederation of humans and aliens associated with it had some neat philosophical concepts and dilemmas which felt very classic SF, and which I enjoyed the story chewing over. Also, nice to have a stand alone novel that felt complete and satisfying.