Once Kyr has left Gaea, she begins a slow and painful deradicalization – which requires, in the first place, a recognition that such a thing is necessary, itself a deeply troubling experience.

One of the warnings is around radicalization, Kyr and the entire cohort of Gaea having been radicalized by the adults in charge. There is a long list of content warnings that precede the opening of Some Desperate Glory, particularly around the attitudes and language of some of the characters (they gave me heart that there was more going on than initial impressions suggested, although other readers may find them off-putting it’s a more hopeful book than the warnings may suggest).

And that’s when everything starts to unravel. Eventually Kyr is compelled to leave Gaea on a mission of her own devising – taking humanity’s revenge on the aliens into her own hands, after feeling betrayed by Gaea’s hierarchy. The only person she really has time for is her brother, Magnus, since her older sister Ursa turned traitor and left Gaea many years ago. Her entire life revolves around the expectation that she will assigned to a combat unit so that she can strike a blow against the majo – all the alien species who contributed to the destruction of Earth, and its 14 billion inhabitants. She’s a warbreed, genetically enhanced, and constant drills, plus seeing every other person as competition, have made her very, very good at fighting. Valkyr – Kyr to most people – has grown up on Gaea, the last noncollaborating outpost of humanity left after the destruction of Earth. Indeed, early as it is in 2023, I’ll say it’s likely to be one of the debut novels of the year. It did eventually become clear Tesh has crafted an outstanding novel for her debut precisely in subverting all those tropes that troubled me. The creepiness is in reading this in 2023, from a woman, and from a publishing house that I know for its progressive work. The familiarity came from an opening setup like many military SF stories: humanity striving against aliens and impossible odds, doing what’s right for the species, individuals subsumed to the military cause (and the ‘‘population targets’’ at which no one who’s read Joanna Russ’s We Who Are About To can help but shudder).

You see, the first few chapters were both oddly familiar and creepy. I have read a lot of Tordotcom’s publications, though, so I had to hope that there was more to the story than initially met my eye. I haven’t read Emily Tesh’s Greenhollow duology (20), so I had no sense of what her work is like. Getting through the first few chapters of this debut novel required trust.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh