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  • Some Desperate Glory

  • Written by: Emily Tesh
  • Narrated by: Sena Bryer
  • Length: 15 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.1 out of 5 stars (7 ratings)

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Some Desperate Glory cover art

Some Desperate Glory

Written by: Emily Tesh
Narrated by: Sena Bryer
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Publisher's Summary

Long-listed, Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year 2023

Long-listed, Goodreads Choice Awards, 2023

Long-listed, Library Journal Best Books of the Year, 2023

"Sena Bryer delivers a cinematic performance of Tesh's exhilarating space opera. Bryer's full-bodied characterizations—gruff Mags, Kyr's quietly rage-filled squadmates, and a sweetly naïve but powerful alien named Yiso—are so skilled that listeners may wonder if this is a full-cast production. Complete with time slips, a reality-warping artificial intelligence, and epic world-building, this is a gripping, can't-miss listen."—AudioFile

A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you, Some Desperate Glory is Astounding Award Winner and Crawford Award Finalist Emily Tesh’s highly anticipated debut novel.

"Masterful, audacious storytelling. Relentless, unsentimental, a completely wild ride."—Tamsyn Muir

With three starred reviews!

While we live, the enemy shall fear us.

Since she was born, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the majoda their victory over humanity.

They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity's revenge into her own hands.

Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr escapes from everything she’s known into a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could have imagined.

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor.com.

©2023 Emily Tesh (P)2023 Macmillan Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: LGBTQ2S+

What the critics say

"Raw and action-packed. . . . This riveting adventure deserves a space on shelves alongside genre titans like Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler."—Publishers Weekly, starred review 

"A profoundly humane and brilliantly constructed space opera that will have you cheering, swearing, laughing, and ugly-crying. It's perfect."—Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Once and Future Witches

"Some Desperate Glory is honest, unflinchingly so. This book will hurt you and you will say thank you. It has everything you’d want in a queer space opera—wit and imagination and adventure, all within a brilliantly constructed world with an ‘unlikable’ and wholly irresistible lead. Reading this feels like bearing witness to something revolutionary... It will change you for the better."—Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

What listeners say about Some Desperate Glory

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Did not like it

Wish I could get my time and money back. Too much bouncing around for no good reason.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

It could be good short story

I found this audiobook was endless bla-bla-bla about nothing—the actual story events happening only every hour or so. I think after trimming the fat and making it three hours tops it could have some interesting dynamics.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Spectacular

Absolutely amazing ride and very well done characters, the narrative voice feels so strong and compelling and the story has surprising depth for how much it covers

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Loved this book

Kyr as a main character was so compelling: hated by her peers, untrustworthy as a narrator, willfully ignorant of her surroundings, and yet you can't help root for her as an unstoppable force against god-like powers that have destroyed most of humanity.

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