(no subject)

[skygiants]

Several friends around DW have been very kind about writing up my book recently which has renewed my determination This Weekend to finally write up a few books that came out this year that I am deeply biased about.

I will start with Emily Tesh's Some Desperate Glory, which I have already seen discussed several places around my dwlist -- personally I first read it in draft in the summer of 2022 and thought it was brilliant then, and it's only gotten better in the iterations since.

Some Desperate Glory is written from the strict POV of Kyr, a teenager who has been growing up in a small fascist enclave of surviving humans after a devastating space war, which the humans lost, resulting in the destruction of Earth and the loss of billions of people. Everyone's miserable in space fascist enclave, including Kyr's beloved twin brother Magnus; however, Kyr has not actually noticed this because she is Winning at Teen Space Fascism and as long as she's Winning everything is Fine. It is only when she starts to feel the boot on her own neck that her rock-solid worldview begins to slowly crumble, resulting in a wild expedition with one (1) differently miserable and terrible space teen and one (1) fragile captive alien, that .... leads to Major Problems, because when you unleash a couple of traumatized brainwashed teenagers who are trained to do nothing but destroy into a completely different context than anything they've ever experienced they are not going to make good decisions about it.

The thing that I love most about this book is Kyr & Kyr's voice, because one of the things I find most satisfying in the world is to read about someone who believes something with their whole heart very slowly change their mind about it, kicking and screaming the whole time. I can't remember the last time I read a book with a character who starts out as much of a horrible bulldozer as Kyr -- not just informed-horrible, lip-service horrible, but on the page being a petty bully without ever thinking of herself as anything other than heroic because all her actions are perfectly consistent with the worldview that's been presented to her -- so that when things do start to get through to her and she finally starts making different choices it's profoundly satisfying to me, I love her so much.

But the thing that I think actually makes this book brilliant is the structure; specifics of which I can't really talk about without major spoilers.

I love a timeloop structure that forces characters to confront themselves and their failings, and I love characters who can't be forced to make better decisions until they've already made every wrong decision it's possible to make -- I love that it takes literally destroying the whole universe for Kyr and Avi to understand the ways in which their worldview is warped, I love that Avi still fucks it all up in every universe, I love that in the end it's not Kyr remaking the world but Kyr remaking herself that allows for things to change, from the personal to the big and back down to the personal again.

I had no idea what the shape of this book was going to be the first time I read it for the first ... maybe hundred pages or so, and every time the direction in which it went gave me the surprise-and-delight feeling of something clicking into place in a way that I would personally never have envisioned. I am so in awe of people who can pull this off so huge hats off to Emily Tesh for this, a book that was not like anything else I read in 2022 or 2023 either.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

It definitely stands out to me as one of the things I read this year that I think most about! I find a book that lingers is a book with a lot of worth.

[skygiants]

Yeah, agreed -- there's a real difference to me between books that have enough heft for me to keep thinking about them, whether I love them wholeheartedly or want to fight with them, and books that are a purely transitory pleasure.

[lirazel]

Yes! This book took me by surprise, both in the sense that I could not anticipate what was going to happen next (rare for me) and in how good it was. I just did not anticipate that! The use of unreliable narrator was fantastic, the character arcs were fantastic, the aliens were fantastic, the weird relationship between Kyr and Avi was fantastic. I was just really impressed by this book.

[skygiants]

RIGHT. Sometimes I read a book and I just have no idea what shape it's going to be; in this case I would frequently think I had an idea of the shape, and every time Emily would do something far more interesting instead that took it in a completely different direction and I'd be like "god damn it" (laudatory)!

[oracne]

This sounds like a tour de force!

[skygiants]

in my admittedly-biased opinion it really is!!

[hamsterwoman]

Kyr has not actually noticed this because she is Winning at Teen Space Fascism

LOL! So very true!

I was so impressed with Kyr the unreliable narrator -- as you say, the commitment to actually showing her be horrible at the start, and the amount of time and tremendous effort it took for her to crawl out of that hole, and also how much Val and Kyr LOATHE each other. And yes, also impressed with Avi fucking up in every universe (Avi is my horrible teen favorite in this book.)

[skygiants]

Oh yes, Val and Kyr's absolute contempt for each other is so incredibly good!! (Also I love how one is always thinking that Avi might make a better choice than Kyr and then he consistently the worst possible one instead, god bless.)

[cahn]

I love this book SO SO MUCH. SO MUCH. I absolutely love Kyr's journey so SO much. And Avi just being the screwup he is in every universe. And Kyr and Avi's screwy friendship. And Kyr and Cleo's relationship. And Kyr and Yiso and how Kyr comes to see Yiso as a person and then a friend. And Kyr and Mags. And Ursa. And Lin and Avi's relationship which you see through just the most tiny little asides here and there but it's clearly there. It's ALL SO GOOD. And I want to keep talking about it! :DD

[skygiants]

Yeah, one of the things I love about the book is how MANY of Kyr's different messy & compelling relationships get explored throughout the book -- the intense individual dynamics of Kir & Avi and Kir & Yiso, but also Kyr and her family, Kyr and the Sparrows, Kyr and her communities. I saw a couple people mention 'the love interest' when talking about it and I'm like 'wow you saw the shape of this book very differently than I did'.

[cahn]

YESSSS. I think I said in one of my posts, the thing I love SO MUCH about the Sparrows is how they don't even like her, but they do trust her -- because she's a horrible jerk but she is trustworthy and those are both parts of her character! And of course one of the best things about the book is how the shape of her community changes, from the people that she considers to be exactly like her and with whom she agrees (or rather perceives herself to agree) entirely, to realizing that her community doesn't agree with her entirely, to the shape changing to the people who maybe aren't like her but to whom she forms a connection (like Yiso), to the shape encompassing people that maybe she's even angry with but accepts as part of her community (like Lin), to the shape of her community encompassing everyone. <33333 SO GOOD.

I saw a couple people mention 'the love interest' when talking about it and I'm like 'wow you saw the shape of this book very differently than I did'.

LOLOLOL. I thought that was a funny thing about the book -- it's clearly a YA-esque book, in the sense that Kyr is a Peak Teenager and it's the teenagers who are mostly performing all the action (with of course a couple of minor exceptions), but it's completely reversed the usual YA structure of "het romance is just as important as whether the world is ending, if not more; friendship is maybe a minor but often relatively important part; community... what? maybe some lip service to it?" to "community is The Most Important thing and integral to the question of the world ending; friendship is a major and important part; and queer romance is, yes, we'll put some in there." Which I ABSOLUTELY LOVE and more books should be like that! but I can see how it might confuse people who are attached to the old paradigm.

[happydork]

Holy fuck this was so good! I went in knowing very little (basically: it's from the point of view of a space fascist who gets deradicalised) and I absolutely LOVED every twist and turn in plot, structure and perspective. This was such a masterful book - just so, so deftly done, with such a GOOD understanding of what fascism looks like and how it functions and reproduces itself. I loved it and was dead impressed by it and will be thinking about it for a long time to come.

One of my least favourite books I've ever read cover to cover is The Betrayals by Bridget Collins, which tries to do alt history fascism from the point of view of someone who starts out thoroughly indoctrinated, and fails because it really doesn't understand what it's trying to deconstruct, and all through this book I was like, YES, FUCK YOU THE BETRAYALS, THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT. So I loved it 90% for its own brilliance and 10% out of delighted spite.

[happydork]

(The Betrayals is pretty much the only book by a living author I will shit talk on public social media, because mostly I don't want to hurt the feelings of anyone who loved a particular book or the author themselves, but I simply hate this book beyond all measure. Which I hope communicates how much I loved Some Desperate Glory, in that only 10% of my love for it is motivated by my hatred here.)

[skygiants]

YES I'M SO SO GLAD. (There truly is nothing to make one appreciate a book doing something extremely right like having read another book that does it extremely wrong!) I feel like in the hands of any lesser author the first half of the book would have been the whole book, and the fact that the first half of the book is not enough, that Kyr (& Avi & Magnus) cannot escape the horrible gravity of their ideology and the worst versions of themselves anywhere near that easily -- chef's kiss!

[hermionesviolin]

I just finished reading this book for feminist sff book club and saw your name in the Acknowledgments, so I pulled up your tags to find your writeup of the book :)

Book club is happening this Sunday (Aug 10) at 3pm on Zoom if you happen to be available and interested (I can send you the Zoom link).