Review:
Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh
| Publisher: |
Tordotcom |
| Copyright: |
2023 |
| ISBN: |
1-250-83499-6 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
438 |
Some Desperate Glory is a far-future space... opera? That's
probably the right genre classification given the setting, but this book
is much more intense and character-focused than most space opera. It is
Emily Tesh's first novel, although she has two previous novellas that were
published as books.
The alien majo and their nearly all-powerful Wisdom have won the war by
destroying Earth with an antimatter bomb. The remnants of humanity were
absorbed into the sprawling majo civilization. Gaea Station is the lone
exception: a marginally viable station deep in space, formed from a
lifeless rocky planetoid and the coupled hulks of the last four human
dreadnoughts. Gaea Station survives on military discipline, ruthless use
of every available resource, and constant training, raising new
generations of soldiers for the war that it refuses to let end.
While Earth's children live, the enemy shall fear us.
Kyr is a warbreed, one of a genetically engineered line of soldiers that,
following an accident, Gaea Station has lost the ability to make except
the old-fashioned way. Among the Sparrows, her mess group, she is the
best at the simulated combat exercises they use for training. She may be
the best of her age cohort except her twin Magnus. As this novel opens,
she and the rest of the Sparrows are about to get their adult assignments.
Kyr is absolutely focused on living up to her potential and the attention
of her uncle Jole, the leader of the station.
Kyr's future will look nothing like what she expects.
This book was
so good, and I despair of explaining why it was so
good without unforgivable spoilers. I can tell you a few things about it,
but be warned that I'll be reduced to helpless gestures and telling you to
just go read it. It's been a very long time since I was this surprised by
a novel, possibly since I read
Code Name:
Verity for the first time.
Some Desperate Glory follows Kyr in close third-person throughout
the book, which makes the start of this book daring. If you're getting a
fascist vibe from the setup, you're not wrong, and this is intentional on
Tesh's part. But Kyr is a true believer at the start of the book, so the
first quarter has a protagonist who is sometimes nasty and cruel and who
makes some frustratingly bad decisions. Stay with it, though; Tesh knows
exactly what she's doing.
This is a coming of age story, in a way. Kyr has a lot to learn and a lot
to process, and
Some Desperate Glory is about that process. But by
the middle of part three, halfway through the book, I had absolutely no
idea where Tesh was going with the story. She then pulled the rug out
from under me, in the best way, at least twice more. Part five of this
book is an absolute triumph, the payoff for everything that's happened
over the course of the novel, and there is no way I could have predicted
it in advance. It was deeply satisfying in that way where I felt like I
learned some things along with the characters, and where the characters
find a better ending than I could possibly have worked out myself.
Tesh does use some world-building trickery, which is at its most
complicated in part four. That was the one place where I can point to a
few chapters where I thought the world-building got a bit too convenient
in order to enable the plot. But it also allows for some truly incredible
character work. I can't describe that in detail because it would be a
major spoiler, but it's one of my favorite tropes in fiction and Tesh
pulls it off beautifully. The character growth and interaction in this
book is just so good: deep and complicated and nuanced and thoughtful in a
way that revises reader impressions of earlier chapters.
The other great thing about this book is that for a 400+ page novel, it
moves right along. Both plot and character development is beautifully
paced with only a few lulls. Tesh also doesn't belabor conversations.
This is a book that provides just the right amount of context for the
reader to fully understand what's going on, and then trusts the reader to
be following along and moves straight to the next twist. That makes it
propulsively readable. I had so much trouble putting this book down at
any time during the second half.
I can't give any specifics, again because of spoilers, but this is not
just a character story.
Some Desperate Glory has strong opinions
on how to ethically approach the world, and those ethics are at the center
of the plot. Unlike a lot of books with a moral stance, though, this
novel shows the difficulty of the work of deriving that moral stance. I
have rarely read a book that more perfectly captures the interior
experience of changing one's mind with all of its emotional difficulty and
internal resistance. Tesh provides all the payoff I was looking for as a
reader, but she never makes it easy or gratuitous (with the arguable
exception of one moment at the very end of the book that I think some
people will dislike but that I personally needed).
This is truly great stuff, probably the best science fiction novel that
I've read in several years. Since I read it (I'm late on reviews again),
I've pushed it on several other people, and I've not had a miss yet. The
subject matter is pretty heavy, and this book also uses several tropes
that I personally adore and am therefore incapable of being objective
about, but with those caveats, this gets my highest possible
recommendation.
Some Desperate Glory is a complete story in one novel with a
definite end, although I love these characters so much that I'd happily
read their further adventures, even if those are thematically unnecessary.
Content warnings: Uh, a lot. Genocide, suicide, sexual assault, racism,
sexism, homophobia, misgendering, and torture, and I'm probably forgetting
a few things. Tesh doesn't linger on these long, but most of them are
on-screen. You may have to brace yourself for this one.
Rating: 10 out of 10
Daniel Knowles Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to
Do About It is an entertaining, lucid, and well-written manifesto
(to borrow a term from the author) aiming to get us all thinking a bit
more about what cars do to society, and how to move on to a better
outcome for all.
The book alternates between historical context and background, lived
experience (as the author is a foreign correspondent who had the
opportunity to travel), and researched content. It is refreshingly free
of formalities (no endless footnotes or endnotes with references, though
I would have liked occassional references but hey we all went to school
long enough to do a bit of research given a pointer or two). I learned
or relearned a few things as I was for example somewhat unaware of the
air pollution (micro-particle) impact stemming from tires and brake
abrasions for which electronic vehicles do zilch, and for which the
auto-obesity of ever larger and heavier cars is making things
much worse. And some terms (even when re-used by Knowles) are clever
such bionic duckweed. But now you need to read the book to
catch up on it.
Overall, the book argues its case rather well. The author brings
sufficient evidence to make the formal guilty charge quite convincing.
It is also recent having come out just months ago, making current
figures even more relevant.
I forget the exact circumstance but I think I came across the author
in the context of our joint obsession with both Chicago and cycling (as
there may have been a link from a related social media post) and/or the
fact that I followed some of his colleagues at The Economist on
social media. Either way, the number of Chicago and MidWest references
made for some additional fun when reading the book over a the last few
days. And for me another highlight was the ode to Tokyo which I
wholeheartedly agree with: on my second trip to Japan I spent a spare
day cycling across the city as the AirBnB host kindly gave me access to
his bicycles. Great weather, polite drivers, moderate traffic, and just
wicked good infrastructure made me wonder why I did not see more
cyclists.
I have little to criticize beyond the lack of any references. The
repeated insistence on reminding us that Knowles comes from Birmingham
gets a little old by the fifth or sixth repetition. It is all a wee bit
anglo- or UK-centric. It obviously has a bit on France, Paris,
and all the recent success of Anne Hidalgo (who, when I was in graduate
school in France, was still a TV person rather than the very successful
mayor she is now) but then does not mention the immense (and well known)
success of the French train system which lead to a recent dictum to no
longer allow intra-Frace air travel if train rides of under 2 1/2 hours
are available which is rather remarkable. (Though in fairness that may
have been enacted once the book was finished.)
Lastly, the book appears to have a
few sections available via Google Books. My copy will good back from
one near-west suburban library to the neighbouring one.
Overall a strong recommendation for a very good and timely book.
Debian Celebrates 30 years!
We celebrated our 
CRAN processed the package fully automatically as it has no issues, and
nothing popped up in reverse-dependency checking.
The set of changes for the last two RcppArmadillo releases
follows.
There is a bit of context that needs to be shared before I get to this and would be a long one. For reasons known and unknown, I have a lot of sudden electricity outages. Not just me, all those who are on my line. A discussion with a lineman revealed that around 200+ families and businesses are on the same line and when for whatever reason the electricity goes for all. Even some of the traffic lights don t work. This affects software more than hardware or in some cases, both. And more specifically HDD s are vulnerable. I had bought an APC unit several years for precisely this, but over period of time it just couldn t function and trips also when the electricity goes out. It s been 6-7 years so can t even ask customer service to fix the issue and from whatever discussions I have had with APC personnel, the only meaningful difference is to buy a new unit but even then not sure this is an issue that can be resolved, even with that.
That comes to the issue that happens once in a while where the system fsck is unable to repair /home and you need to use an external pen drive for the same. This is my how my hdd stacks up 
The main argument as have shared before is that Indian Govt. thinks we need our home grown CPU and while I have no issues with that, as shared before except for RISC-V there is no other space where India could look into doing that. Especially after the Chip Act, Biden has made that any new fabs or any new thing in chip fabrication will only be shared with 
. Backups certainly make a lot of sense, especially 
For the first time, the city of Belo Horizonte held a
Turns out maybe not so much (yet ?). As the 
Now, this is of course entirely possibly that not all possible venues
for speedups were exploited in how the action setup was setup. If so,
please file an issue at the 