Deradicalisation through Space Magic

[mtvessel]

Oct 2023
Some Desperate Glory – Emily Tesh – Orbit, 2023
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In my previous review of this author's work, I expressed the hope that she would try something at novel-length so that her characters could breathe a little. I'm pleased to say that she has delivered. This is a thoughtful novel about a soldier learning that the universe is not what she thought, and what it lacks in subtlety is made up for in good characterisation, world-building, and plot.

Kyr is a Gaean, a girl soldier in a human army dedicated to attacking the majo, an alien culture that destroyed the earth and 14 billion people. She is assigned to breeding duty, despite her stellar combat scores, and conspires with Avi, a geeky friend of her brother Magnus, to find out why. In doing so, she unearths a conspiracy and is forced to leave Gaea in the company of Yiso, a captured representative of the despised majo. Out in the wider galaxy she learns more of her hated enemy and their guiding entity, a super-advanced AI with spacetime manipulation powers called the Wisdom.

That's about all I can say without major plot spoilers, but there is plenty of drama and some surprising plot twists, facilitated by the Wisdom which is in effect a source of rule-breaking space magic. If you like some science in your SF then this may be a deal-breaker, but Tesh's focus on her characters meant that I for one didn't mind it too much.

What's impressive is how well Tesh manipulates the reader's opinions of the protagonist. We very quickly grow to dislike Kyr with her narrow, bigoted opinions of people she regards as non-human and her fervent and unreasoning adherence to her cultural beliefs and behaviours. This is not done with subtlety - Yiso is sympathetic from their very first line of dialogue, making Kyr's brutal treatment and othering of them highly distasteful - but sets up her redemption arc nicely. It helps that Tesh shows early on that Kyr is a product of her society (nicely undermining the genetics-is-destiny philosophy on which it is based) and therefore not entirely to blame for her beliefs. There is a strong helping of queer romance and found-family bonding to leaven the space opera dramatics.

It's a shame that the Gaean commander, whom savvy readers will quickly clock is not the hero whom Kyr believes him to be, shares a name with the likeable protagonist of the final Vorkosigan novel, but it's possible that this was a deliberate reference. It's also fair to say that there is something of a young adult feel in the rawness of its emotions and the lack of subtlety and sophistication in its characters. But for a first full-length novel it's impressive, and I look forward to seeing what Tesh comes up with next.