 Some Desperate Glory is the kind of novel that aims to back some desperately glorious nominations come Science Fiction and Fantasy Award season. The topics it examines are timely, they're attractive to the more liberally-minded of science fiction readers, and there's a good chunk of us around, and they resonate with a younger audience. This is my first work by Tesh. Incidentally, it's also her debut novel. She's done a pair of critically acclaimed fantasy novellas I have yet to read, and it's no great surprise that this, too, is something of a critical darling. This is a novel about a group of militant humans at war with a great alien power that destroyed the earth. It opens from the perspective of the most ardent of followers to the militarized human cell of Gaia Station. Valkyr. Hers is a journey and a half. Kyr's de-radicalization is a lengthy, painful process to have every single one of the tenets upon which you have constructed your personality or identity – undone – is a disconcerting process. That this identity is fascistic, repressed and lacking self-awareness made me deeply invested in this process of de-radicalization. Tesh captures the desperate rationalizations, the frantic leaps in logic that Valkyr makes throughout the novel's second part, as she begins to recognize the rotten nature of the society that produced her on an intellectual level, but that she denies time and again at the emotional level. By the conclusion of the novel's third part, this refusal to accept the monstrous nature of Gaia Station has led to cataclysmic consequences. Herein, my first slight disappointment. I wasn't quite ready to sign up for an alternate universe-hopping adventure when I picked the novel up. It cheapens costs somewhat. The fates of characters seem to be not too permanent and indeed are not. Tesh, however, does a daft job of guiding the reader through three worlds, three timelines, each one different from the next, each one offering a different facet of the characters we meet early on. Enemies turn out to be the best of friends, heroes are revealed as selfish villains and love and hate often interweave. Perhaps my greatest issue with some desperate glory is that it turns into a bit of a morality play. It's heavy-handed and while I cannot stress how much I got into it, how easy it was to read how I loved Gaia's development, I find I wanted a little more. It's more young adult sci-fi than it is adult sci-fi, both in the way it creates morality and in the way some of its main characters approach romance. The ability of certain characters to survive that final timeline's events also struck me as a little far-fetched. It's almost as if Tesh wasn't quite willing to pull the trigger. More likely she was pulling her punches. There's something in the final pages that didn't quite click with me. I think it would have benefited by either ending a few pages sooner or by offering the reader a few pages more. I cannot possibly tell you why without spoiling what is, in all other ways, a serviceable finale. But I thought it was a veer away from the mark. That said, the last line is perfection itself and marks the completion of a rewarding character arc. Some desperate glory should be a model example for science fiction and fantasy writers on the potency of a good standalone. I love a 50-book series as much as the next-book person, but Emily Tesh says as much as she needs to in just over 400 pages. Hell, she could have said a little less. And sure, I might have wished that some of that last part said what it said differently. That the morality at the heart of some desperate glory didn't simply extend conversations that are germane to our present time, but that it introduced a greater degree of complexity to what is an excellent setup. As it is, I enjoyed my time in Tesh's world, no question about it, yet I find that no matter how I'd like to endlessly gush about Tesh's debut, my delight with it is conditional. And isn't that the greatest shame? Also, I love the United States edition cover. When I first saw it, then, I read the description of Keir and I can only say, no thank you, please someone give the illustrator proper grief or make sure they're illustrating the actual main character in all her bulky glory. She should look like Gideon the Ninth, at the very least. Gideon the Ninth, from The Locked Tomb series by Tamsin Muir, a book I would gladly recommend before this one actually. That is much better queer sci-fi than this. Sorry. Anyway, Keir should look like Gideon, not as she does, so in the end, I might actually prefer the cover of the edition I own. Shame, though, I really like the US image. It's simply not an accurate portrayal, however, and that's a disservice to the character. If you enjoyed this video, please don't forget to share it with your friends, subscribe, press that, in fact, smash that like button, and, you know, I'll be here when you come back. Go watch more stuff. I will also make more stuff for you to watch when you're done with the other stuff. Anyway, I'm Philip Magnus, you are not, and I'll see you again next time. Bye!