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Book Note: Some Desperate Glory
A book about the future, the present, and the past

“Some Desperate Glory” by Emily Tesh came out in 2023 and won a Hugo award in 2024 for best novel. It’s a science-fiction novel, but also one about fascism and the deradicalization of a young woman called Kyr. With every recent headline my brain circles back to that book. “Blog it”, my brain says.

The book is brilliant in many ways, so find the basic plot and some reviews in the link section below. What I want to highlight here is the narrative technique of an unreliable narrator combined with Kyr as the main focalizer of the story, and its effect on us, the readers.

Kyr grows up in a fascist society, hard, passionate, relentless in her pursuit, determined to win in any way. Accustomed to sci-fi narratives we readers believe her. Here the good, there the baddies. Star Wars: clear-cut lines and enemies. Slowly, cracks appear. Slowly, we doubt. Slowly, Kyr doubts. Something is wrong with Gaea Station where she grew up. Something is wrong about her being top of her class, then delegated to the baby factory. Something is wrong with her brother Magnus – or is it us? The glitz of her world crumbles, as we discover along with Kyr the lies that kept her believing, as we discover how such a society operates once the veil of radicalization is lifted. How everyone suffers by clinging to beliefs which only serve a few powerful men.

It’s brilliant.

There are a ton of texts about fascism and the cruelties of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and all the others. We’ve been through this before. However, it’s stories that have the most power. In these times, we need stories of hope, stories that help people understand what is going on and where we could end up. This is one.

Links

Tesh, Emily: “Some Desperate Glory”, Tor: 2023, 9781250834980.

Tor publishes ebooks without DRM, it’s worth buying it.

Image source: Nightcafé/Dreamshaper XL


Last modified on 2025-02-01

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