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A review by trips
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This book is tough to write about, on one hand I do applaud the author for trying to write something that is rather nuanced and complex as this story. But on the other hand, I have to cut the applause short because I think the author took on a little too much and maybe should have stuck to 1 or 2 of the conversations it was trying to have.
This book at its core is a "Huckleberry Finn"-like book. The MC however, is pretty insufferable for the first half of the book. More than just being an ignorant product of her upbringing, Valkyr is a huge bully and is genuinely mean to almost everyone she speaks with. She has dashes of homophobia and racism at the beginning as well. She needed a BIG arc showing her reconciling with herself as her world is blown wide-open but...she doesn't really get it because the playing field changes so often and so quickly in the 2nd half of the book.
I could really tell this book was trying to be a little bit like...Enders Game for children, but it just didn't entirely work.
A lot of the action was quite interesting but ultimately at the end, I felt like the characters needed more onscreen growth rather than split decisions to do the right thing...shrug.
This book at its core is a "Huckleberry Finn"-like book. The MC however, is pretty insufferable for the first half of the book. More than just being an ignorant product of her upbringing, Valkyr is a huge bully and is genuinely mean to almost everyone she speaks with. She has dashes of homophobia and racism at the beginning as well. She needed a BIG arc showing her reconciling with herself as her world is blown wide-open but...she doesn't really get it because the playing field changes so often and so quickly in the 2nd half of the book.
I could really tell this book was trying to be a little bit like...Enders Game for children, but it just didn't entirely work.
A lot of the action was quite interesting but ultimately at the end, I felt like the characters needed more onscreen growth rather than split decisions to do the right thing...shrug.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism, Suicide, and Murder
Moderate: Homophobia and Sexual assault
Minor: Sexual violence