Book Thoughts: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
After I read a book, I generally email my thoughts or notes to a friend. I'm now copying these first emails to this blog since it's easier to revisit.
Original Sent Date: April 25, 2025
Picked up this book because my sister said she liked it, and then she blanked on explaining to me what exactly it was about. So I didn't go into this with the highest of expectations, but apparently it won a Hugo Award?
It was a good time. I can't say it like was mind-blowing on making me think about issues of morality or anything but a lot of the characterization was just refreshing to read.
Also the science doesn't science and some parts of it I couldn't conjure up a very good mental image of what exactly was going on but the author admits the science is just narrativium in the acknowledgments page so we can all respect that she knows her limits. Story-wise if you don't care much about science you won't even notice it, really. It had enough detail to pass for thought out and some image without bogging down the average non-science reader with technicalities.
Other thoughts:
The little sections of text that helps frame stuff and expectations outside of what the narrative knows, pulled from studies or travel brochures and the like from random people supposedly existing in this universe worked but it also forced the flow to slow down when it was getting fast, which I didn't really appreciate. The first part in the very beginning was nice though, and absolutely necessary, since it helped immediately reframe the following sections that were steeped in eugenics and white supremacy (without Kyr realizing it). Giving the audience a bit of inoculation was very smart.
Kyr as a character was super refreshing for me to read and I think the narrative did extremely well at giving the sense of confusion or lack of details that she viewed from her perspective, while still letting in the parts that she was trying to ignore. It's rare that you see a female character that is so blatantly bad at emotions and is all physicality, especially since it didn't ignore her unique experience of objectification in being a woman in a highly misogynistic society.
Contrasted with her brother as the caring one, and even having the book comment on this later, that they wouldn't have objected if they had been given opposite assignments, is really good. Drives home the point of human choice being the most important, regardless of what role they're "supposed" to play in said society.
The whole stuff with like the essential structured rape system and subjugation of women was really chilling and smartly done. The other few books I've read in weird systems like this (like Divergent, lol) typically ignore the vector of reproductive and domestic labor that is required and also devalued and chained. The moment that Lisabel got her Nursery assignment was when I realized this book was actually going somewhere very interesting.
There's something about time loop stories that are satisfying in that they give you the opportunity to see someone fail in the most spectacular way before showing you how they could do better. That's not at all what real life is like, but damn if it isn't compelling as a narrative device and thought exercise.
Avi was also extremely interesting, especially as her foil and their choices vs opinions on revenge and sacrifice. I was really not expecting him to have as much bite to him or to be as complex as he was, even though we don't get to see his actual thought processes. I was also not expecting him to have drank the kool-aid at all or be as interested in committing genocide but he truly proved me wrong there. How he continued to choose to hurt other people (who "deserve" it) at the expense of people he cares about (Mags, and then Kyr) was really good. Especially since he "learned" from it the first time after Mags died but not quite, and then ended up sacrificing Kyr. Both times being unintentional. Violence on a large scale will always have collateral you aren't planning for, and probably don't want.
Meanwhile, watching Kyr grow out from her mode of being a near emotionless husk to embracing her anger was really good. Her feelings of anger at herself after she gets to live a better life. Her consistent "I only care about my people" slowly growing from "just my brother" to "maybe 3 people" to "actually I care about my mess" to "okay maybe all women and children who are oppressed in this system" to "okay, actually, everyone who wants something different" is really gratifying to watch, especially since she's challenged every time and realizes how shallow she was thinking.
The whole Doomsday scenario. The rugged masculinity that she was trying to achieve and slotted to fail. Doing it only by not playing by the made up rules that value men (specifically, the Wisdom took interest in her because she took interest in Yiso via empathy, as opposed to Avi who hacked his way in rather than build a relationship with it)... and then it being worth almost nothing in the end anyway. The real important thing is not living in the past in a state of constant victimhood with vengeance as your driving force. Everything important is done with other people. The fact that she nearly died like 3 times because she tried to lone ranger, and that was an actual fault of hers. The stuff that she does alone well is basically the jump hook stuff, which is specifically not fighting against other people but by going with the flow of the whatever pseudo-science dimensional pulls. That she finds fun and is something that's in tune with her body and space.
I felt so bad for Yiso throughout this but I'm really happy with how their relationship ended up. I hope they get good snuggles. Maybe with Lisabel added idk tbh. I would think that Lisabel wasn't interested in Kyr romantically but then there was that other universe that was real for a hot second where she said that she felt like it was fate that she was attracted to Kyr so that implies that in the original and final universe that she probably had a bit of a crush on Kyr. But could Kyr really be with her when she, Yiso, and Avi are the only ones that carry the crushing trauma of knowing what the other realities were like? Very hm. I'm not sure we really needed the Lisabel fate line. In fact, I think it's more interesting if Lisabel didn't actually like Kyr like that at all in the original / final realities.
The consistent underlining of how women are underestimated and how Lisabel was way more than Kyr was giving her credit for, especially in her moral knowledge, was really good. The whole setup with the scores and trying to be perfect and getting acknowledged etc. was also really good because you can really see how some people are just devalued by default. It's also notable that despite being blonde due to the whole Aryan bullshit, Lisabel (with the dark hair) was the one described as beautiful while everyone is just afraid of Kyr.
Honestly I would be curious what this Gaea does with intersex babies. Do they just. abort them? Kill them? Bully them as they grow up like they do with queer people?
The final theme of the book that a peace that has to be policed with violence is not truly peace is an interesting thing to think about. The book also doesn't quite know how to answer this conundrum, as Wisdom doesn't either. We just have to keep trying and seeing.
I kinda didn't like Mag's crush on Avi. It was funny every time Avi was stuck because despite all his bullshit he couldn't say no to Mags but I just pitied Mags so much for being stuck with people who lack his level of compassion. I would probably be more into it if the story was from Avi's POV and if it was in comic form, but like... Kyr is right. Mags is too good for him. Though I know IRL relationships don't necessarily work on a tally checks and balances to make sure people are a good fit, in non-comics I prefer to see relationships between characters be ones of mutual perspective-changing improvement. The book does say that Avi changed Mag's perspective on like Gaea etc. but the problem is that all of that happened before any of the main story so we don't get to see that change and Avi is the only one struggling and having his perspective changed because Mags killed himself in front of Avi.
The whole thing with Joel grooming Kyr and how powerful that was to the point that she couldn't fight back much when he began to do what she had seen coming but feared... The whole taking off his sock and being like haha my scar... Your sister used to help me by massaging it... The whole thing was so. Blerg. The comment about her blush from him when the narrative didn't spend any time on describing it really goes to show that she must have been turning red from an alarm response and how like... nonconsensual and mind-bending it is. The years of being told to please this man and now that he's asking for so much is. Well. It reminds me of the nightmares I used to have of my dad asking me for sex. Anyway, including this was very appreciated, especially since there's always this tendency to blame victims who could theoretically fight off the person sexually assaulting them that doesn't realize the whole context of sexual violence. Especially since most people are assaulted by people they know, who have probably tested their boundaries slowly to see if they would be too confused to fight back. If they've already been told by other people that you have to be "nice" to people who are "nice" to you at the expense of speaking up about your own boundaries.
Avi and Cleo being the type to say stuff like "fuck off and die" as their form of affection + frustration mixture they feel for Kyr was very good. Kyr also taking Zen's admission the second time round about how she doesn't like her at all as like a good sign of getting trusted with Zen's true opinions instead of being upset about the rejection was also very interesting.
Appreciated the respect Kyr learned to have for Lin and Sif as capable adult women. The whole conversation about complicity on the adults' behalf was also good, since it made the morality question more complex. Like Avi wanted to be able to pick and choose who would die and who wouldn't, to kill the people he saw most at fault of upholding this abusive situation. But Kyr thinks (or says? I don't remember) that she wouldn't even have been good enough very shortly in the past because she had bought completely into the system. It's more about the capacity for change, I suppose.
The need to have something to prove, to gain affection, is also something that undergirds both Kyr and Avi's mindsets. As did Cleo. Avi chooses otherwise only when he's been personally screwed over, while I guess Mags believes more in having someone out there who loves him (Ursa) and more of an empathetic response so he consistently chooses to think of other people besides him. It's hard though because I do relate to Kyr's need to succeed and I think in these types of stories when they're doing the beginning part of trying to get the praise from someone in a higher position (no matter whether that person is good or not), I always feel the initial pull of wanting to see them succeed. To prove themselves that they aren't worthless, after all, no matter how stupid the idea of worth is set by a violent system. I guess to some degree if I had been able to succeed at the stuff that I was "supposed" to succeed in easily (math, sci, etc) and I didn't have any sort of queer leanings I probably also wouldn't have been as motivated to think about the system of capitalism and ableism and colonialism etc. It's interesting to think about. I guess it's just more of the power can afford to stay oblivious but the oppressed always know about power intimately.
Empathy being the answer is limited as we know but I don't really expect like 99% of books to ever talk about that.