Such a volte-face means that Kyr, her family and lifestyle are reassessed, and there is an almost Truman Show reappraisal of life outside the ‘reality’ that is Kyr’s life. After initial denial, Kyr’s life and beliefs are turned upside down by meeting her ‘traitorous’ sister Ursa, and discovering the reality of life for humans outside Gaea Station. Chrysothemis is very different to Kyr’s life in Gaea Station. The pace picks up once Mags, Kyr, queer geek Avi and alien Yiso manage to escape Gaea and get to the planet Chrysothemis, where those humans who have left Gaea have been placed. It is logical, ordered, disciplined and yet seen as the only means of securing human survival. The first part of the book, dealing with Kyr and her brother Magnus’/ Mags’ life in Gaea Station, reads rather like a Baen Books/Heinlein juvenile novel in evolution – albeit one where children are trained to fight in warrior groups, discipline is fierce and forced pregnancy is accepted as important for the continuation of the human race. The big reveal at the beginning of the book is that Kyr is a descendant of the remnants of Humanity when Earth was destroyed by an entity known as the Wisdom, and so life exists in a militaristic way towards exacting revenge on the Wisdom and the alien Majoda that are looked after by the Wisdom, existing on thousands of worlds outside the realm known as Gaea Station. Of course, Valkyr/Kyr is a product of her own environment and upbringing, and this means that she has been brainwashed from a very young age into upholding a certain point of view. It’s not an easy thing to begin with a main character that is rather deliberately so unpleasant. If she succeeds, she will find a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could ever have imagined.” Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr must escape from everything she’s ever known. Then Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons, and she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands.

Raised on Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet.

Some Desperate Glory is her debut novel.įrom the publisher: “…a thrillingly told space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and the path you must forge when every choice is stripped from you.Īll her life, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the destruction of planet Earth. Emily Tesh is the winner of the World Fantasy Award Best Novella for Silver in the Wood in 2020, an Astounding Award winner and Crawford Award finalist.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh