Published by Orbit in April 2023
Some Desperate Glory comes garlanded with prizes and recommendations. There is a great deal that is good about it, like the bravura opening section, and the heroine’s journey from brash adolescent to womanhood, but it is a book that, I suspect, will not engage everyone because of its structure and one bold plot device.
It is also a difficult book to fully review without spoilers.
The protagonist is Kyr – short for Valkyre, a young woman who lives on Gaea, humankind’s last stand, or so she is told, against the alien Majo, who destroyed Earth and most of human civilisation. Gaea is a militaristic world. All children are brought up in the nursery and family bonds are absent. Kyr is genetically altered to be a warbreed and has trained with all the other girls in her mess to give a life of unquestioning service to Gaea and its aims. Kyr prides herself on her physical fitness and prowess on the combat simulator, and confidently expects to be assigned to one of the warships.
Then two things happen: Her war breed brother abandons Gaea for the planet, Chrysothemis, something akin to a member of the royal family defecting to communist Russia in the 1960s; and Kyr is assigned to the nursery. Kyr’s reaction to being told she faces a life of comfort, plentiful food, and no need to go to war, is one of horror. I was a little disappointed by the implicit suggestion that the other women assigned to the nursery were somehow too soft or slow for anything else, and that motherhood was a poor second to any other assignment.
Determined to follow her brother, who she believes is in danger, and to escape the terrors of breast feeding, Kyr engineers an escape along with her brother’s lover Avi, and a captured Majo alien named Yiso, who is beautifully realised on the page. They make for the planet, Chrysothemis, where the remnants of humanity who have made their peace with the Majo, or sold out depending on your point of view, have settled.
There is a clunky co-incidence that enables Kyr to not only find her brother, but also an older sister who many years before had defected from Gaea, and her sister’s son, conceived after her rape by Gaea’s leader. Kyr, still unquestioningly loyal to Gaea, refuses to acknowledge such a venerable man could do such a thing.
It is at this point the plot takes a knight’s move which is as unexpected as it is entertaining, and centres round the Majo alien, Yiso. My only criticism is, if you’re going to use the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, why not just call it that?
This bold change of narrative tack then sets up the remaining half of the novel. Not only are you intrigued by how the author is going to get out of the situation she’s written herself into, but it drives Kyr’s transformation from immature girl to that of a leader who finally appreciates the qualities of the people she once dismissed as weak, and who realises the people and place she idolised where a sham.
The book’s pacing is not perfect. The first sequence on Gaea sweeps you along, but things slow in Chrysothemis until the shift in narrative. The last sequence is as thrilling as the opening pages and will keep you reading to the end.
Take this on a long journey – you’ll be well entertained.