Emily Tesh ’s Some Desperate Glory takes the sentence - honored tradition of space greyback and call on teenaged horribleness on its heading . In Tesh’sown words , this novel is “ about being the very worst soul imaginable , and then trying to be better . It ’s a book aboutthe end of the humankind , and what chance after . It ’s a record about survival of the fittest , and promise , and change . And it ’s a record book about how sometimes yourqueer found familyis yourfellow cult survivorswho detest you , a horrible gremlin boy who wo n’t halt doing crimes , the cutest alien you ’ve ever met , and your literal comrade . ”
Here ’s a brief synopsis of Some Desperate Glory :
Since she was stomach , Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth . Raised in the gut of Gaea Station alongside the last flake of humanity , she make herself to face the Wisdom , the powerful , realness - shaping weapon that gave the majoda their triumph over humanity .
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They are what ’s left . They are what must survive . Kyr is one of the proficient warriors of her propagation , the steel of a dead satellite . When Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to Nursery to stomach sons until she dies trying , she know she must take humanity ’s retaliation into her own handwriting .
Alongside her pal ’s glorious but incendiary friend and a solitary , 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 .
Here ’s the full cover , followed by an excerpt from Some Desperate Glory .
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Avicenna
Kyr stress Systems first . system and Suntracker were the two top levels of the station , with power feeding down into Systems from Suntracker ’s solar sails to affix the trickle that came up from the shadow engines at the station core . The main workspace of the wing was a maze of consoles arrayed on several levels in one of the minor planet ’s natural bouldered cavern . Kyr did not cognise it well . She had no talent for Systems work . When Sparrow had a rotation in the wing she usually observe herself shunt off to assay out test agoge simulation for scenario designer . She hesitated just inside the entrance . She could not exactly go wandering through the wing asking if anyone have sex Mags ’s queer friend .
While she was hovering a woman with iron - grey hair and a corporal ’s patch on her sleeve looked up from behind her array of consoles . “ Need something , plebe ? ”
Kyr found herself tongue - tied . “ Corporal , ” she state , to buy time .
The woman raised her eyebrows , and after a tenacious pause land up , “ . . . Lin . Corporal Lin , Valkyr . Your mess has rotate through here once a week since you were ten . After Victoria ? She ’ll be up in Suntracker . ”
“ No , ” said Kyr .
“ Spit it out , ” said Lin . “ What ’s the matter ? ”
“ Nothing , ” said Kyr quickly .
Lin gave her a prospicient flavour . Kyr pressed her brim tightly together . Once again she had a horrifying suspiciousness she was being pitied .
“ Avi , ” she snapped . “ I ’m look for Avi . ”
Lin ’s brow exit up . “ Avicenna , really ? ” she say .
Kyr did n’t say what , because that would have been speaking out of order to someone who was technically her superscript .
Corporal Lin said , “ seek the colonnade . ”
Once each of the four dreadnoughts that had been divest to work up Gaea Station had had an arcade of its own . Now , there was proof of how plentiful man had been : even active - divine service combat ship had spared blank space for amusement . The console table and media libraries from all four had been combined into one amusement space for Gaea . It was a long small elbow room with booths and chairs fix out around biz stations and flickering displays . The lights were kept dim . Old music play on a grommet . Kyr recoil as she walked in . It was n’t garish , but it was incessant , and she dislike the thriftlessness of it : force that Suntracker risked their life for , thrown off on meaningless noise .
There was almost no one in the recollective dim room apart from a junior mess on rec . Kyr glanced at them as she walked by . It was just Blackbird . They were playing a game where you had to dance to the music — tinny from the auto verbalizer , clash with the background humming — and haul at lights as they ostentate in the zephyr . Kyr saw one of them spot her and falter , miss her start for a flash yellow glisten that appear and disappeared in time with the thumping beat .
But her gaze slither past and restrain go .
She escape the young adult male at first . He was slumped alone in a booth at the far end of the room , his shoulders almost horizontal , his infantry shore up against the edge of the seat opposite . From that angle it was hard to get a mother wit of him except that he was undersize .
Kyr had n’t wait him to be alone . The way Mags had peach about Avi had made him vocalize like someone who could be impressive . She ’d supposed there would be a pack of similar type , the worst of Systems and Oikos : not friend , but weaklings clustering together for safety equipment .
Avi was ostentatiously by himself . He was watching some medium or other load up on the blind . It was n’t even a game . If you had to be in the colonnade , the least you could do was laze around with something worthwhile . The Turdus merula were working on their grouping bond and improving their coordination while they jumped around grabbing at scintillation .
Kyr stress to relax , told herself it would be stupid to start by antagonise him , and march over to the booth .
“ Avi ? ” she said .
The young man said nothing .
“ justify me , ” lose it Kyr .
“ Shh , ” he say . The flicker of the screen illuminated his case in unpleasant flashes . He had squint eyes under an untidy hole of violent hair . “ I ’m watching this . ” He waved a dismissive helping hand in her centering without looking round .
Kyr ’s patience run out .
She reached over the back of the cubicle , grab him by the scruff of the neck , and dragged him upright . He let out a squawk of surprisal . He really was scrawny . lift him was much effortless .
“ Turn that off , ” she said .
He did n’t . Kyr reached over to the controls and did it for him . The screen pass dark .
Avi stood up . He only come up to Kyr ’s mentum . He ill-use further back into the newly dimmed John Wilkes Booth and folded his arms . Kyr did n’t overleap how he ’d kept the back of the kiosk between them like a buckler . He looked her over , and his nerve did a fair stamp of boredom , but she could recite he was afraid .
“ What do you want ? ” he aver .
Kyr made herself breathe out . This was not how she ’d mean to do this . “ You ’re Avi , ” she say . “ You ’re friends with my brother . ”
“ I wonder who ? ” Avi say . “ I do n’t have many friends built like storage tank . Let me guess , you must be Vallie . ”
“ Valkyr , ” Kyr corrected .
Avi smile unpleasantly . “ Then it ’s Avicenna , ” he said . “ Lovely to cope with you . What do you want ? ”
“ I want to lie with where Mags is , ” Kyr said .
“ So ? ”
“ So , ” said Kyr , “ you ’re work to obtain out for me . ”
Avi was Systems , so he had admittance to selective information . Avi was purportedly the smartest somebody Mags had ever met . And Avi was already a cheat . That had to intend something .
“ Or what ? ” he order .
Kyr specify her eyes .
Avi sneered . “ Yes , I know , there ’s a Brobdingnagian range of or what you could do to me , Valkyr . I ’m just wondering which part on the nose of the no - dubiety - merciless bruising you ’re declare oneself would be spoilt than getting exiled or executed for cut into into files I ’m not presuppose to touch . ”
Kyr shifted her weight , and had the gratification of watching him flinch aside even though the back of the cubicle was still between them .
“ I have been beaten up before , you know , ” he order , but the plastered windlessness of his consistence did n’t match his bored voice .
“ Do you manage if you ’re expatriate ? ” say Kyr . “ People like you leave anyway . ”
“ Let ’s disregard people like you for now because , actually , it was the executed part that concerned me , ” Avi say . “ Crazy , I know , but I require to keep living . ”
With fair confusion Kyr said , “ Why does he like you ? ”
“ Must be my pull ahead personality , ” enounce Avi . But he unfolded his arms and sighed . Kyr did n’t understand what had transfer his head , but she did n’t wish , because he stepped out of the booth — still giving her a wide berth — and say , “ Damn . All right , all right , ” in a vote out way . “ Come on . ”
Avi contract Kyr down to Drill . “ What are we doing here ? ” said Kyr . “ I desire — ”
“ I know what you want , ” said Avi . “ Go on . ” He swiped the key fruit for an agoge room . “ In you go . Take this . ” He pass by her an earpiece .
“ What ? ” order Kyr .
“ Do you want my help or not ? ” Avi say .
Kyr stumbled into the agoge . The plasteel floor gleamed green with shadowspace sublight as the room buzz , warm up . Kyr put the earphone in . “ What do you call back you ’re doing ? ”
“ Well , I ’m going to use the agoge as a jumping - off point to get myself into some place I ’m not guess to be , ” said Avi . “ Which happens to be one of my hobbies anyway , fortuitously for you . And you ’re going to pretend to be testing some computer simulation . ”
“ Why ca n’t you just do it in Systems ? ”
“ One , oil production . Two , the betting odds of getting anything past Yingli Lin from there are slender to negative . ”
“ Her ? She ’s just a corporal . ”
“ And of course you ’re one of those people who retrieve social status correlates directly with ability . ”
“ You actualise mass look at the agoge log , ” Kyr articulate . “ They can watch what I ’m doing in here . ”
“ No , I ’m not an expert and I had no idea . Thank you so much for severalise me . Fine . ”
“ Fine what ? ”
“ I was going to spoof something but you ’re clear going to be unbearable if you have n’t got something to do , ” Avi said . “ Here . ”
The greenish spark disappeared as the agoge room brightened to a vindicated shadowless white . Ghostly shapes begin to describe themselves on the airwave .
“ That should keep you busy , ” Avi said . “ Have fun . ”
The simulation resolved into a narrow street . Kyr had seen street before — had drilled in faux urban surroundings since she was twelve — but this was no majo city . The wall were rude , suave blocks of snowy stone lift to her unexpended and right . An arch marked the closing of the street . Somewhere far overhead was a very blue sky .
Kyr did not have time to take in more , because the shadows slowly taking material body beneath the archway resolved into three — no , five — no , eight separate hostile , like nothing she ’d ever seen . They were n’t a majo species . The poor was six and a half feet tall , with a broad heavy build underneath its armour . Kyr did n’t discern the style of armor either : dark constitutive stuff with plates of genuine metal sewn to it . The hostile looked at Kyr and gave a down in the mouth unpleasant rattle of audio , like a jape .
The leader was almost eight feet high , with knifelike ivory in its oral cavity that would be dangerous artillery in their own rightfield , and it was grip a upstanding distance of steel . The agoge could give you a unspoiled shock of pain to instruct you the lesson of war , and Kyr could tell that affair was going to be agony .
She had no weapons . She ’d direct for eld in snap majo weapons from false enemies and turning them on their Jehovah , but the weight of that mace made the prospect laughable . She doubt she could even lift it .
“ What are these ? ” she demanded .
Avi answered , “ Orcs . ”
That mean nothing . Kyr eye the thing again . They were hanging back under the arch . In the Level Twelve runs Kyr was used to , you did n’t get this moment to opine .
At least none of them seemed to have anything ranged .
As she recall it , the short one lifted a duration of constituent material and began to swing out it around its head . Kyr ’s body propel quicker than her brainiac . Eight hostile and she was unarmed : when the missile zipped from the slingshot through the blank space where her caput had been , she was already run .
Kyr carry between walls of smooth white stone and under gleaming clean arches , and the hostiles fly the coop behind her . It did n’t matter how tight she move , they stayed the same distance back : far enough that their fleshy weapons would n’t touch her , close enough that if she stopped move that slingshot was kick the bucket to be a problem . Occasional missile crack the stone wall around her as she ran , but the thing ’s aim did n’t seem to be much estimable with a move target . “ What the hell is this for ? ” she yelled at the aviation .
“ Do you take care ? I ’m exercise , ” said Avi . “ On something you require me for , if you remember . ”
“ I need a weapon ! ”
“ So find one . You ’re not very good at this , are you ? ”
Kyr tear her oral fissure exclude on the words she want to say and glance around as she ran . Urban - combat scenario were unremarkably full of civilian , but there was nothing in the blank urban center but Kyr , and Avi ’s preposterous monsters .
And wall . Primitive white stone wall , with trench mortar crumbling from the cracks . Kyr could make it from Suntracker at the top of Gaea Station to Drill at the bottom in under five minutes . She skidded around a recession to give herself a few extra endorsement out of the sightline of the monsters and chuck out herself up .
The stone was frigid under her hands as she scrambled for handholds . She was grimly aware of that slingshot — she was a much easier target heaving herself up the vertical than she had been as a run figure at the far end of a street . She try the orcs come round the quoin below and start talking . They speak in grunts , but the confused tone was open .
They spotted her when she was nearly at the top . A slung gemstone blast into the paries next to Kyr ’s hand as she pulled herself up to a parapet and roll over the border . She squat against the other side , breathing hard .
Overhead the sky was still deep everlasting low-spirited . Kyr tip her brain back and looked for a minute as her lung strained for air .
She was on a flat rooftop with a kind of garden on it . There were tubs of earth with veg growing in them , and a stack of wooden crates next to a door that led into whatever this construction was supposed to be . Residential , mayhap . Kyr stayed crouched against the parapet , better cover than nothing . Could those thing climb up after her ? She could still get word them grunting down in the street , so maybe not .
“ Why would you make this ? ” she demanded when she had enough breath to speak . “ This is a wastefulness of station resources . ”
“ just . The agoge drains power constantly regardless of what you habituate it for . ”
“ You ’re a place resource . ”
“ Rec clip is your own time , those are the formula . Are n’t you the rules type ? You seem like a rule case . ” Avi sounded diverted . “ You ’re on the roof , huh ? I correct it to easy so they ’re too unintelligent to rise , but the bad news program for you is that finally they ’re going to find out the stair . Got a weapon system yet ? ”
“ I get it , you ’re good at this . You could make something meaningful , ” said Kyr . “ You could be building affair our soldiers really need . ”
“ You do n’t guess our soldiers need to know what it feels like to be hunted by a gang of merciless war monsters twice your size ? ”
“ Majo are small , ” Kyr remind him .
The voice in her ear did n’t answer . Kyr walked between the vegetable planters toward those wooden crates , keeping an optic on that door . The grunt conversation from the street had gone still . Probably a unfit sign .
Propped up in the shadow of the crateful was a stave , capped and weighted at either close with glimmer silver . Well , it would give her some range , and against that eight - footer she would require all the reach she could get . Kyr plunk it up .
There was a thump . The door throb on its hinges . Kyr give way to wait in front of it . The doorway was human - sized . It was n’t big enough for more than one of Avi ’s monster to get through at a clip .
Another thud . Then the room access smash into pieces around a massive armored shoulder .
Kyr attacked .
It was the eight - pedestrian with the Chemical Mace . Kyr had n’t get a close expression at the primitive consistency armour when the pretence started , but since she was using a fairly basic arm herself she doubted she could achieve much by going straight at it . She went for the face instead , smashing the weighted base of the faculty into the tusked jaw so the thing ’s headland snapped obliquely , and then went in with a low sweep and knock the fiend ’s feet out from underneath . She come up up turn and kicked it hard in the chest , feeling the blow rattle through her knee . The orc went stumbling backward through the doorway windmilling its arms and knocked down the three behind it when it fell .
“ Stupid , huh , ” Kyr said .
The orc got to its foundation , snarling and shake off its school principal heavily . The rest of them were piling up confusedly behind it , except for one on the ground which had take the spike of its ally ’s ax in the second joint as it tripped . Kyr bounced on her feet , waited for her second , and then as the giant advanced she bang up it in the face again — go for its olfactory organ this metre , snatch its heading backward .
The orc howled and fell .
Avi said , “ Huh . ”
“ I am beneficial at this , ” said Kyr . The self-aggrandizing one was n’t let up . Two behind it strain to squeeze past it through the doorcase at the same clip . “ Are these human ? They move like humans . ” It was more like flatness practice than agoge study . The agoge was where you fought majo . Mat practice against Coyote , maybe — though even the warbreed boys of Mags ’s hatful were n’t this much bigger than Kyr .
Avi ’s orcs really were stupid . The only tactic they seemed to be able to think of was rushing her . It would work if they were out in the open . If even one of these giants had her pinned , Kyr would not be able-bodied to get loose again . But as long as she could keep in line how they get at her , the job of their size discontinue mattering .
“ Well , I had to establish them on something , ” Avi sound out , vocalize irritated . “ Are you actually having fun ? ”
“ This is still stupid , ” said Kyr .
“ That ’s supposed to be a wizard ’s stave , ” Avi said . “ You ’re hitting them in the face with it when you could literally just position them all on ardor . ”
“ What would be the point of that ? ” enjoin Kyr , knocking another orc down and stamping firmly on its fingers . Its grip on its prankish - looking serrated knife relaxed a fraction . Kyr snatch it up and cut the matter ’s throat . Black blood sprayed everywhere .
“ Not everything has to have a point ! ” say Avi . “ Are you certain you ’re Magnus ’s sister ? ”
“ Yes , ” said Kyr . “ I am . ”
As she said it she killed the last of the stupid orcs . The rooftop shimmer and resolve around her . Kyr was left tolerate in the middle of the grey plasteel floor in an empty elbow room . She felt a sudden needlelike tug of loss — for that crude stone urban center , where the step and doorways were all the ripe size for a person , and the sky blazed blue .
“ Was that a real place ? ” she enounce .
“ No , ” aver Avi ’s vox in her ear after a moment . “ I perplex it out of a rule book . ”
Kyr for no peculiar reason mat up angry . So that was what this very saucy someone did with all his hour in the colonnade : dragged up old medium to read account book about thing that never exist . “ Is that what you did with my brother ? Wasted his prison term treating the agoge like a biz ? ”
“ The agoge is a game , ” enunciate Avi .
“ The agoge is training for war . ”
“ If you say so . ”
“ Did you ascertain him yet ? ” demanded Kyr .
“ No , ” said Avi . “ It would help oneself if you close up . ”
Kyr clenched her hired man into clenched fist . She could n’t remember ever want to hit someone quite as much as she wanted to strike Avi now . It was n’t the cold simplicity of how she ’d experience she would break Admiral Russell ’s wrist . She wanted to plug him right in the expression , to feel the crush of cartilage against her knuckles when his nozzle broke . mag was run , and he was supposed to be Mags ’s friend , and all he did was sneer .
The grey room was too inhuman . Kyr missed the sky .
“ Give me another scenario , ” she take . “ Something you built for my brother . ”
“ Maybe I build these for me , ” Avi said .
“ You think I ca n’t handle it ? I ’m as good as he is . I ’ll fight your monster . Show me . ”
“ Fine . ”
The space fade away . Kyr looked around , and then up , at the reappearing sky .
She was stand in a semicircular court . There was a building behind her made of more white-hot stone , turn over high up into the sky . At its upper levels the Isidor Feinstein Stone gave way to methamphetamine that shone in the sunlight . A outpouring was specify against the wall , water bubbling up and splashing over a basin . mounting plant life were trained along its edges , and the water dripped down dark green leaves , leaving a wet sheen .
More plants were repose out in the rest of the courtyard , in beds that followed the slew shapes of the hemicycle . All of them seemed to be in blossom . Kyr find nothing she recognized from Agricole — nothing useful , nothing edible . Just color , almost more color than she had known exist in the mankind : white and cream and blood-red and pink and blue and sensationalistic and degraded purpleness . modest winged invertebrates moved between bloom , making crushed buzzing sounds .
The courtyard was on the lip of a cliff . A cut up handrail marked its boundary , and beyond that the world dropped away . Kyr go to the bound and look over .
There were birds nesting down there . Kyr knew what birds were from Nursery , from Ursa ’s stories , from the names of the girl ’ plebe peck . The birds had their nests tucked in crevices where dull green spread out , cling stubbornly to the stone . Far below , at the base of the cliff , there was a white stone city . Tiny human figures moved through the streets . Kyr thought that if she looked long enough she might be able to see the rooftop where she had been kill monsters moments ago .
“ What is this ? ” she said .
“ Something I made for Magnus , ” read Avi . “ You call for . ”
Kyr face up into the sky . She had to harbor her eyes against the light with her hand . There was nothing descending on her out of the beam area . “ Where are the hostile ? ”
“ I guess we did n’t get around to those yet . ”
Kyr said nothing .
“ Let me know when it all gets too senseless for you , ” Avi enunciate , but Kyr found she could disregard him .
After a while longer seem out from the cliffside at the city below , she went to the fountain . When she put her hands into the water it felt real . The scents of the flowers meld in the air to make a chaotic kind of perfume . It was a little like being in Agricole , but Agricole did not have a sky .
Kyr took her hand out of the fountain and sat down . fall of piss consort past her carpus . There was a mystifying unripened foliage at the edge of the basin with water dripping steadily from its tip . Kyr put her paw underneath it .
Slowly the light changed . The Lord’s Day was drop down the sky . Some of the bloom close . Kyr hear sounds she could n’t make horse sense of come from the cliffside , until she realized it was the wench calling to each other . She stayed where she was , watch the water bubble and splash in the stone basinful and drip through immature leafage to sink forth into the ground .
finally a voice in her ear said , “ Found him . ”
Excerpt from Some despairing Glory by Emily Tesh reprinted by permit of Tordotcom .
Some Desperate Gloryis uncommitted for pre - order now . It will unloosen April 11 .
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