A review by malinhalia
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

2.75

I think the base plot of this book is very interesting, although "humans discover they are the worst sentient species in the universe" isn't exactly ground-breaking. I think the world set up is pretty good, it feels fairly immersive throughout the book. However, I think the pacing feels off and there are just so. many. fight. scenes. towards the end they start feeling quite tedious rather than keeping your attention. I also found the characters in general a bit weak - I never really cared a lot about what happened to any of them.
Caution, major spoilers:
I think it's very brave to take on the alternative realities subject however I'm not completely happy with the logic of it all. I think something like this would never be fully explainable, and to an extent "space magic" can be an explanation for things, but if there are infinite realities, why can't Utopia exist? Sure, Earth is destroyed vs Humans conquer everything might be the most common outcomes if you run a scenario many times, but surely there must be one where everyone (or even no one) wins? Also, how can we trust that Yiso is telling the truth and the Wisdom is dead in the final timeline? As we can't tell if it's alive or not, how do we know this is the final reality? It could just be a reality where it's simulating its own death?
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