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selenak: (Arthur by Voi)
[personal profile] selenak
A christmas present from [personal profile] cahn, which I finally had the time to read. I really liked it. First novel by this particular author for me, certainly not the last.



Genre wise, it's a space opera with a brand of dystopia, including tropes like groundhog day (sort of), enemies to friends, found family and others. Our pov character is Kyr (short for Valkyr), and as opposed to characters like, say, Katniss in The Hunger Games, who also grow up in a totalitarian regime, Kyr starts out in this novel as 100% indoctrinated. (To stay a moment longer with the HG comparison, as a career, not as someone from the other districts.) What she believes to be the case at the start: after humanity has lost the war against a non-human species and Earth has been destroyed, the brave human resistance has carved out a life on Gaia station, training their young to one day wreak vengeance. It's a thoroughly militarized society (consisting of a space station and a few battleships; there are other humans, who are presented as either living under the yoke of the aliens on other planets or being willing collaborators) and teenage Kyr wants nothing more but to fight in its service. Until her brother gets send on what comes across as a clear suicide mission while she gets told to serve in the "nursery", because reproduction is completely regulated as well, of course, and she's more valuable breeding lots of future soldiers than just being one. At which point Kyr doesn't question her teachings yet, but she is so horrified that she runs away (telling herself it's just to save her brother but later realizing it was mainly to escape her own designated fate), not alone, but with a recently captured alien prisoner and this universe's equivalent of a computer genius, Avi(cenna).

I really appreciated that Kyr doesn't have just one enlightenment moment - if you grow up the way she did, it takes longer than that -, that sheer self preservation and her love for her brother might be enough to start that journey, but it takes a lot more, and one of those things is the ability to see non humans as people. (Not least because I always thought that was key to any genuine change from fascist to non fascist mindset. Fascists can be self sacrificial - in fact, most totalitarian states teach that to be a virtue, to sacrifice yourself for the regime -, and loving basically the sole person who at the start of the novel has genuine affection for her is also not the equivalent of deprogramming. But realising that someone who is not like you, who doesn't belong to whatever group you've grown up with, who is in fact part of the group you've been taught to despise and hate deserves to live the same way you do, and no, not as the one exception but that this is true for others as well - THAT is genuine change, and Kyr reaches it one third in - but at a point where it seems it's too late. Except it isn't, because of the other tropes this book employs.

Another thing that Kyr learns is the way others see her, and that they have reason to do so. Like I said; in the Hunger Games, she'd be a Career at the start of this story. And not just because she wholeheartedly believes, because in addition to pushing herself to supersoldierdom she is also pushing the kids around her, bullying them in drill seargeant manner. But the novel isn't content to show the way growing up in this kind society warps you if you're physically strong enough to fit with the soldier ideal but how it warps you if you're very intelligent, not suited for athletics but still grow up in a death cult. Avi is such an interesting counterpoint to Kyr, not least in the choices he makes in all three stages of the book.

And lastly: at first, when we got into the second stage of the book, I was wondering about two things: whether what had just happened wouldn't rob us of the earlier character journey (it didn't, and the way it didn't also meant we got to examine another character and relationship from a different perspective), and whether it didn't leave the thing with the main villain unresolved (definitely not). There are some trapfalls with this particular trop that the novel avoided, and once I saw that, I was all in for the remainder.

All in all, a suspenseful, well written sci fi novel from an author I was glad to be thus introduced to.

Date: 2025-05-08 01:01 pm (UTC)
lirazel: The five Belle Epoque girls from Age of Youth with the words "squad goals" above them ([tv] belle epoque)
From: [personal profile] lirazel
Yes, it's a banger of a book! I am super looking forward to whatever Tesh writes next, and I enjoyed reading your thoughts too!

Date: 2025-05-08 10:40 pm (UTC)
likeadeuce: (Default)
From: [personal profile] likeadeuce
'The Incandescent' is out soon and it looks great (and totally different in tone + genre which is fun)

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.

"Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself."

Date: 2025-05-09 03:20 pm (UTC)
dalmeny: (Default)
From: [personal profile] dalmeny
Early review here from my friend Tamaranth: https://tamaranth.dreamwidth.org/1329900.html

Date: 2025-05-12 05:45 pm (UTC)
lirazel: YooA from Oh My Girl from behind in an elevator in the Bungee music video ([music] bungee)
From: [personal profile] lirazel
Oh interesting! I'm kind of exhausted by magical school books, but doing it from the pov of a professor is intriguing enough that I will look forward to this one!

Date: 2025-05-08 07:46 pm (UTC)
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
From: [personal profile] schneefink
I really liked the gradual process of Kyr breaking out of the indoctrination, and I also really liked the contrast between her and Avi.

Date: 2025-05-08 08:43 pm (UTC)
greenwoodside: (Default)
From: [personal profile] greenwoodside
Super book! I loved it.

Hope she writes more. To date, I think Tesh has only written a couple of novellas, completely different to Some Desperate Glory.

*checks the internet*

But she's releasing a new book next Tuesday!! Joy.

Date: 2025-05-09 05:03 pm (UTC)
cahn: (Default)
From: [personal profile] cahn
Hi hi HIIIIII you read it! :D It's not the sort of thing you post about very often, so I was a little unsure about it (though we've had enough conversations about similar kinds of things that I thought you would) -- I'm so glad you did like it :D

So I think you did not grow up (as I did) with Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game absolutely dominating adolescent-SF spaces. (As an aside, I don't particularly recommend it to you in 2025 -- it was a very formative book for me at the time, and I still love it, but a lot of it is a product of its time, the 1980's.) -- The first few chapters are very reminiscent of Ender's Game with a female protagonist, to the extent that I was very surprised to find out Gaea's actual status in the universe (in a way that I think was much less surprising to those who didn't have Ender's Game as a formative book).

But realising that someone who is not like you, who doesn't belong to whatever group you've grown up with, who is in fact part of the group you've been taught to despise and hate deserves to live the same way you do, and no, not as the one exception but that this is true for others as well - THAT is genuine change

YES. THIS. ALL OF THIS

Avi is such an interesting counterpoint to Kyr, not least in the choices he makes in all three stages of the book.

AVI

I understand that Tesh has a Classics background, and of course there are things like the agoge and so on -- did it strike you as something written by a Classics person? (Not that it should or should not have, I'm just curious since obviously I'm not a Classics person!)

I wrote a bunch of words about this book because I had a lot of Feelings about it:
my first post, which says a lot of the same things that you're saying in your review
Lin Yuletide fic, because both [personal profile] cenozoicsynapsid and [personal profile] hamsterwoman wanted to know how Lin turned out the way she did
Avi fic immediately post-canon, because of discussions with [personal profile] hamsterwoman about the ending
my second DW post, which has spoilers for "Dulce and Decorum Est"
I also wrote a short Wisdom fic.

I also want to rec [personal profile] hidden_variable's awesome Avi-LOTR fic !

I will say that Tesh's published novellas before this were... okay? Not nearly to the level of SDG, which absolutely bowled me over. But the novellas are very different from SDG, which is something I think is very cool (I always love to see authors doing different things). I'm so excited to see what she does next, though!

(She also used to write fic, though when she went pro she orphaned it all. My favorites are this Arthurian one, and you probably have even read this horror-themed Bacchae fic.)

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