Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Some Desperate Glory

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Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

53 reviews

elee2013's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was fantastic and Kyr goes on the most dramatic character journey of all time

Content Warnings

avacadosocks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Content Warnings

emily_mh's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I read this book on a friend’s recommendation and honestly bless her, because it was phenomenal. It’s the kind of story where I had no idea what was going to happen next, and I mean that in the best possible way. Every time I would be like “ah, it’s this trope”, and then pages later Tesh would flip everything on its head. I was sooooo invested and truly hooked by this fresh, original approach.

The plot was not the only mind-blowing thing about the book. It was also packed with existentialism, posing questions such as: what choices in the past lead us to our current reality? Are there certain outcomes which are inevitable in every reality? Who gets to decide what is for the “greater good” - who gets to even DEFINE the “greater good”? I love when books pose these ethical and philosophical questions and then the whole narrative is an exploration of them. Some may be answered, some may be left open, ultimately beyond the scope of the story to answer. But in every case the reader is challenged to consider things they may never have before.

Tesh also tackles extremist indoctrination as a main theme, as MC Kyr (along with most of the SCs), experiences this having grown up on Gaea Station, a military post containing the humans who survived the destruction of Earth and seek revenge from the alien perpetrators. This was heavy to read about. Gaea’s society is founded on eugenics (specifically relating to race and ability), as well as misogyny, sexism, queerphobia, and bioessentialism, and the sexual violence these engender. And Kyr, at the beginning of the book, is the poster child for Gaea. Her character arc is inexplicably wrapped up in deprogramming her indoctrination as she is exposed to the world outside Gaea. It is truly astonishing how much Kyr changes over the course of the novel, and how much she discovers about herself when free from oppressive social constructs. Kyr is by no means perfect at the end of the book, but she also isn’t the same person she was in the first chapter. It is important to note that Tesh as the author always presents the above topics (eugenics, sexual violence) as abhorrent. Even when Kyr doesn’t understand their horrors, you as the reader know that Gaea is deeply, deeply wrong, that Kyr is deeply, deeply wrong, and Tesh does too.

I wouldn’t say this is “found family” like the synopsis proclaims. Every relationship in the book is too complicated and messy and often filled with both love AND hate, to fit neatly into a usually wholesome and straightforward trope. And that’s to this book’s credit. The characters all feel real because none of them can be perfectly squared away into an archetype, their understandably complicated reactions to one another birthed out of the complex situations they find themselves in.

I am so glad my friend recommended this to me and that I decided to give it a go. The only criticisms I can think of right now are that I wish the commentary on eugenics and disability had been made more explicit, and that the ending felt a touch deus ex machina (but maybe that was ironically intentional). Regardless, this book deserved its 5 stars.

Rep: queer MC, queer SCs, Afro-Latina SC

Content Warnings

hanz's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

Content Warnings

azurahh's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Holy fucking SHIT.

This is the best book I've read so far this year (it's only March to be fair) (supplanting Dauntless as #1 book club read sorry Elisa).

Some Desperate Glory is a space opera centring around Kyr, a loyal soldier who has just come of age on a space station run like a cult. She is literally the worst person alive (affectionate) with bucketloads of internalized misogyny and homophobia and just generally brainwashed cult brain. When she's assigned to have babies until she dies she escapes and learns that there's more to life than her white supremacist death cult and actually they kind of suck! 5/5 no notes.

If you liked Gideon in GTN and Nona in NTN and even some of the mind-fuckery in HTN, this is the book for you. *Bestie says: Ender's Game (minus the homophobic author) meets Locked Tomb (unverified opinion because she says I wouldn't like Ender's Game in the year 2024 lmfao).

Our MC, Kyr, is deeply, deeply unlikeable at the start but I encourage you to push past that until she starts on her ~cult deprogramming journey because it's a really good arc. Overall I would say give it a good crack until you get at least halfway through part two. She's a truly flawed and kind of awful MC but she does in fact come out okay! We love to see it. Other than that the cast includes: a computer nerd twink, a sad little alien, a haunted brother the size of a house (Ortus-coded), and a nasty little dictator with a god complex (Jod-coded).

This is by far the closest a book has come to the feeling I got reading Gideon and I made some memes on the topic.

Kyr 🤝 Gideon

Obsessed with being soldiers for their colonizing/ethnonationalist government
Forced into critical thinking about society (😭)
Live with their closest friend/worst enemy/biggest rival
Dumb as shit about their crushes on girls
Sort of weirdly obsessed with a fragile person with big eyes

Aside from that. I thought this was one of the best social science fiction books I've read recently--it's a lot more challenging (or at least deals with broader societal questions) than e.g., Becky Chambers (who I love), but it has a similar feel to some of their books.

It's oddly funny in places--not overtly meme-atic like TLT, but a lot of that unexpected juxtaposition style of humor similar to Tamsyn Muir comes through.

Unfortunately almost everything good and interesting about this book is a major spoiler so it's very hard to rec it without spoiling the best parts! After a certain point you just start sending your best friend the word "scream" over and over again until you finish the book and die and if that isn't a recommendation I don't know what is.

Recommended for fans of: The Locked Tomb/Tamsyn Muir (obviously lol), Juno of Taris by Fleur Beale, and A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.

Content warnings are listed before the book begins and you'll want to pay attention to them.

Content Warnings

lelcopter's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

bex_knighthunter's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A sci-fi adventure, potentially with good YA/Adult crossover appeal or as an entry to sci-fi, but it is quite dark (check triggers, but the assault side it is generally threats or off-screen). Set on a space station, a small group of humans have formed a militaristic dystopian society after Earth was destroyed by aliens.

The main character is completely indoctrinated, and so is pretty infuriating to follow, but this does give big scope for character development as she gets her eyes opened. The other main character (arguably - though there is only one POV) is also a douche with questionable morals, and then the other side characters are more one dimensional, which means I found it hard to get invested from a character perspective in this book.

I think the plot was quite clever, with a few twists or reveals that I really didn't see coming and I thought added an interesting element to the story. The setting does have a few interesting elements (e.g. the agoge/wisdom, the planet crysalthamus - excuse the spelling, I listened to this on audio), but the ones that intrigued me weren't very deeply explored (the impact of the wisdom on society would be huge and fascinating!), and instead most of the focus was on the space station, which felt like your standard space fascism with elements of handmaid's tale.

There are lots of themes, which I did find interesting: bodily autonomy, fascism, cycles of revenge driving war, are humans inherently dangerous, impact of propaganda and indoctrination, being queer in a heteronormative world - but I don't think these were any of them explored in much depth, and were dealt with in quite a heavy-handed way. On this aspect, I think this fits better with YA where I wouldn't expect as much nuance. I'd say this book is more focussed on the plot and action, over the world or themes, which will work well for some, but didn't especially for me.

A fun fast-paced romp, with a lot of ambitious interesting elements I'd have liked to see explored more.

Content Warnings

charleyyyyy's review against another edition

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4.5

🩷💛💜🩵🩷💛💜🩵

💫🌟✨️This book made me forget that I was reading✨️🌟💫

👽This book is soooo good and sooo enjoyable!! I never wanted to put it down and was always excited to pick it back up.
The plot is fast, twisty and action packed. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. At some points I was even yelling at the book because of all the emotions it made me feel.

🚀The themes were written and explored so well!! Especially those of radicalisation, reproductive rights, colonialism, and queerness. And how the society you are apart of can effect your view on all of the above, and your own place in the world.

🗡And the charicters were incredibly well developed and written!! I love Kyr, she's so flawed and unlikeable and well writen. She is such a great and interesting main charicter. Yiso and Clio are my other favourite charicters, of course. Yiso's friendship with Kyr was so sweet!

🌍The worldbuilding was interesting, I'm new to sci-fi but I didn't struggle at all with it. This world is the perfect setting to explore these themes in.

🪐The writing sometimes got on my nerves, some times there was too much telling instead of showing, such as :"'with the old one gone, that technology is-' he closed his fist, like crushing something out of existence." Or: "'wow, how deep.' Avi said with heavy sarcasm." The telling is unnecessary in these sentences, we can figure it out on our own.
Or sentences like this: "Ursa would have told her to be less judgmental, but Ursa's opinion had stopped mattering when Ursa left." How many times do you need to say Ursa?????

🌌I would definitely recommend this book if you like action packed sci-fi with a focus on important, heavy themes, and flawed main charicters.

🩷💛💜🩵🩷💛💜🩵

Content Warnings

wifi_bifi's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

lady_sharp's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was fun as hell. Mind the trigger warnings, but this is what science fiction should be, using the premise to dig at the flaws of society.

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