Verdict: A Hugo-winning space opera about a lesbian soldier raised inside a death cult and the slow, brutal work of unlearning it — one of the best character arcs in modern science fiction, and not a romance in any sense a sapphic romance reader would recognise.
Best for: Readers who want a military institution rendered with real cruelty, a protagonist who begins genuinely repellent and earns her way out, and who are here for the argument rather than the couple.
Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — no romance.io entry; a queer awakening rather than a romance, with the love interest largely offpage)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.9/5 — a 4.05 Goodreads average across 21,846 ratings, with a first half a lot of readers cannot get through)
Tropes: Military indoctrination, deprogramming arc, unlikeable protagonist, space station dystopia, genocide and its aftermath, found family, queer awakening, reality-warping weapon, standalone, Hugo winner.
Some Desperate Glory is Emily Tesh’s debut novel, published by Tordotcom — a 438-page sapphic space opera set on Gaea Station, where the last scraps of humanity raise their children to avenge the destruction of Earth, and Valkyr — Kyr — has been the best warrior of her generation since she was old enough to hold a weapon. When Command sends her brother to certain death and assigns her to the nursery to bear sons until it kills her, Kyr decides to take humanity’s revenge into her own hands.
It holds a 4.05 average across 21,846 Goodreads ratings, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and it is the most decorated book on our sapphic Fourth Wing read-alike list. It is also a book with a 5% one-and-two-star block whose objections are entirely legitimate and worth reading before you start. Both halves of that split matter here more than usual.
What Is Some Desperate Glory About?
This is military science fiction written as a study of radicalisation, and the institution is the antagonist from page one. Gaea Station is not a war college with harsh instructors; it is a compound that has organised every part of a child’s life around a genocide that already happened, assigns adults their function by aptitude test, and treats women as reproductive stock once their combat value expires. Tesh writes the interior logic of that world from inside a true believer’s head, which is the book’s method and its risk.
Kyr is introduced through certainty rather than lack. She is the best, she knows it, she has never questioned a single thing she was told, and the beliefs she has absorbed are ugly in specific and named ways — readers list homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and eugenics, and they are not exaggerating. Everything the novel does afterwards depends on how completely it commits to that opening. The arc is not redemption in the soft sense; it is a person discovering that the entire frame she thinks with was installed.
What Makes This Sapphic Space Opera Work
- The character arc: The most-praised element, and readers reach for superlatives — one describes searing character work in the register of the Locked Tomb series with the energy of a Vorkosigan novel.
- The institution: Gaea Station is the most convincing depiction of a war college as a machine for producing damaged people that this list contains.
- Moral clarity: Reviewers repeatedly use that phrase. Tesh writes a bigot from the inside without ever endorsing her, which is much harder than it sounds.
- The structure: The book changes shape more than once, and readers describe a point somewhere past the midpoint where they started screaming and did not stop.
- It is one book: A standalone that resolves, in a genre where almost nothing is.
Book Synopsis
Earth is gone. The Majoda destroyed it with the Wisdom — an all-powerful weapon that reshapes reality itself — and what remains of humanity lives on Gaea Station, a military compound built on a single organising principle: while we live, the enemy shall fear us. Children are raised to fight. Aptitude decides what you become. Everything about a life on Gaea is a contribution to a revenge that has been coming since before anyone currently alive was born.
Valkyr is the best of her generation. She has trained for this since she could stand, she has never doubted the mission, and she is waiting to be assigned to the work she was made for. Then Command posts her brother Magnus to an operation nobody returns from, and assigns Kyr herself to the nursery — to bear sons for the war until the bearing kills her. It is the first order in her life she cannot make sense of.
So she goes after her brother, and the person who helps her is Avi, his brilliant and profoundly seditious friend, who has spent years quietly working out how the Wisdom actually functions. What Kyr finds outside the station is not the enemy she was promised. It is a universe in which most of what she believes is a lie constructed for a purpose, in which the people she was taught to hate are people, and in which the weapon that killed her planet can be used to ask a much more dangerous question than revenge. The novel is about what a person does when the whole apparatus she thinks with turns out to belong to somebody else.
My Review
Let me start with the thing that will decide whether you read this: Kyr is, for a substantial stretch of the opening, genuinely horrible. Not prickly, not abrasive — a bigot, in the specific ways her upbringing has manufactured. One reviewer who DNF’d and came back lists it plainly: cruel, homophobic, transphobic, racist, a eugenicist, and an unbearable point of view to sit inside. She is not wrong about any of that. What she is describing is the book working exactly as designed, and whether that is a feature or a fatal flaw is the only real question here.
What Tesh does with it is remarkable. This is a novel about radicalisation written from inside the radicalised person, and it never once winks at the reader or gives Kyr a secret private decency to reassure us. Her deprogramming is slow, humiliating and repeatedly incomplete, and it earns every inch. Readers who stay describe an arc as searing as anything in the Locked Tomb, and the Hugo win is not a surprise once you have finished it.
The second strength is Gaea Station itself. If what gripped you about a war college is the institution — the ranking, the aptitude assignment, the casual disposal of the people it produces — this is the most rigorous version of that idea in modern science fiction. Basgiath kills cadets on a parapet; Gaea assigns them to breeding duty and calls it service. The book is unusually clear-eyed that an institution does not need to be sadistic to be monstrous, only certain.
Where it struggles, for our readers specifically, is that it is not a romance and it is barely a love story. This needs saying directly because the book turns up on every sapphic recommendation list. A reviewer puts it exactly: “there’s a ton of gay, great, but I do want to make it clear: there’s no f/f romance in this. Our protag gets a gay awakening, for sure, but the would-be love interest is extremely offpage and the least developed person in the book.” That is accurate. Kyr is a lesbian and her sexuality matters enormously to her arc. There is no relationship on the page to follow.
The other genuine criticism is the first half as an experience rather than as a construction. Several thoughtful readers report five-star emotions, three-star emotions and zero-star emotions inside one book, which is an honest summary. If you cannot spend two hundred pages inside a hostile narrator, no amount of payoff will retrieve it for you.
My honest note: One of the best science fiction novels of the decade and one of the least romantic books on this site. Read it for Kyr’s unmaking; do not read it because someone told you it was sapphic and left it there.
| Element | In Some Desperate Glory |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | None in the romance sense — Kyr’s bond with her brother and with Avi drives the plot; her queer awakening has no on-page partner |
| Core tropes | Military indoctrination, deprogramming arc, unlikeable protagonist, genocide aftermath, found family, queer awakening |
| Setting | Gaea Station — a militarised remnant of humanity, and the wider universe of the Majoda and the Wisdom |
| Heat level | 1/5 — no on-page romance at all |
| Series | Standalone — it resolves completely, with no sequel required or announced |
| Content notes | Radicalisation, genocide, homophobia and transphobia voiced by the narrator, misogyny, forced reproduction, rape and sexual assault, suicide |
How Spicy Is Some Desperate Glory?
romance.io has no entry, and in this case the absence is the whole answer: this is a Tordotcom space opera, it is not shelved as romance anywhere, and it does not contain one. A 1 out of 5 is the honest number, and even that overstates it — the accurate description is that Kyr experiences a queer awakening across the novel while the woman it points toward stays almost entirely offpage.
What does need flagging is content, and there is a lot of it. Reader-supplied warnings cover radicalisation, homophobia and transphobia voiced by the narrator, misogyny, forced reproduction, rape and sexual assault. Tesh is not gratuitous, but she is not gentle either, and the first half asks you to live inside a worldview that is actively hostile to the people most likely to pick this book up. Nothing on this site is comparable; the nearest low-heat entries are Gideon the Ninth at 1/5 and Cinders of Yesterday, both of which at least have a relationship to follow.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want the most rigorous depiction of a military institution in this genre, you can sit inside a hostile narrator for two hundred pages, you read for argument and structure, and a standalone with a real ending appeals.
You may want to skip it if: you want a sapphic romance, you need a protagonist you can like early, bigotry voiced in first person is unbearable to read even when the book condemns it, or the content list above includes something you avoid.
In short: a magnificent novel that is on sapphic reading lists for the identity of its protagonist rather than for anything a romance reader wants.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)
This book has the largest institutional footprint of anything we have reviewed: 21,846 Goodreads ratings, 3,897 written reviews, the Hugo Award for Best Novel and a Locus nomination. The audiobook — Sena Bryer narrating 16 hours 14 minutes — is stocked on Libro.fm rather than being an Audible exclusive, and it is one of the more commonly recommended ways into the book, because a narrator can carry an unlikeable first-person voice that some readers cannot manage on the page.
Prefer audio? Listen to Some Desperate Glory on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
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Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The character arc first and by a distance. Reviewers describe searing character work, and one reaches for a comparison stack — the hyperactive energy of a Vorkosigan book, the character arcs of the Locked Tomb, and a moral clarity she names explicitly. Second, the structural surprise: the novel changes shape more than once, and readers describe a point past the midpoint where they started screaming and did not stop. Third, the institution — Gaea Station is treated as the genuine antagonist, and readers who have thought about radicalisation say Tesh gets the mechanics right. Fourth, and unusual for a book this bleak, several readers report it as the first book they finished for pleasure in months. The minority view worth flagging is from readers who found nothing groundbreaking here and simply enjoyed a good story well told — a four-star position that pushes against the hype in both directions.
What readers argue about and complain about: The first half, above everything, and the mechanism is that the reader is confined to the head of a person whose beliefs are repellent. One reviewer who did not finish it, read spoilers, and came back to finish anyway describes the first fifty per cent as dreadful and lists Kyr’s bigotries in detail, rating the back half around three stars by comparison. That is the sharpest version of a complaint several readers make more gently. Second, and the one that matters most for our readers: there is no f/f romance. A reviewer states it outright — a gay awakening, yes, but the would-be love interest is extremely offpage and the least developed person in the book. Third: a mixed-emotions problem. One thoughtful three-star review reports five-star, three-star and zero-star feelings across a single reading, which is the most honest description of the experience anybody has written. The genuine split is between readers who treat the opening as the price of the argument and readers for whom it is simply unbearable.
The standalone question worth asking first: This is a complete standalone. It resolves, no sequel is required, and none has been announced — unusual and welcome in a genre where everything is book one of something. If you want somewhere to go next in Tesh’s catalogue, her Greenhollow duology is a much gentler pastoral fantasy and shares almost nothing with this book except the quality of the sentences. Check Some Desperate Glory on Amazon →
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Some Desperate Glory a sapphic romance?
No. Kyr is a lesbian and her queer awakening is central to her arc, but there is no f/f romance on the page — one reviewer states plainly that the would-be love interest is extremely offpage and the least developed person in the book.
Why is the first half of Some Desperate Glory hard to read?
Because you are confined to the head of a radicalised narrator. Kyr voices homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and eugenicist beliefs she was raised into, and the novel makes no attempt to soften them before it dismantles them.
Did Some Desperate Glory win any awards?
Yes — it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and was nominated for a Locus Award. It is the most decorated book on our sapphic Fourth Wing read-alike list.
Is Some Desperate Glory a standalone?
Yes. It resolves completely, no sequel is required and none has been announced, which is unusual for the genre.
Is there a Some Desperate Glory audiobook?
Yes. Sena Bryer narrates 16 hours 14 minutes, and it is available on Libro.fm rather than being an Audible exclusive — a common recommendation for readers who struggle with the first-person voice on the page.
Is Some Desperate Glory like Fourth Wing?
For the institution, yes — Gaea Station is the most rigorous depiction of a war college as a machine for producing damaged people in modern science fiction. There are no dragons, no trials in the Basgiath sense and no romance, so it matches one pillar extremely well and the others not at all.
If You Loved Some Desperate Glory, Read These Next
The Unbroken is the closest match on this site — conscription, indoctrination and a protagonist who fails hard — while Gideon the Ninth shares the lethal-institution structure with an actual relationship to follow, and Crier’s War gives you the oppression politics with a romance attached. The full ranked list is in our guide to sapphic books like Fourth Wing, with more across our book reviews.
The Bottom Line
Some Desperate Glory sets out to write radicalisation from the inside and to make its reader live there, and it succeeds at three things almost nothing else does: Kyr’s unmaking is one of the great character arcs in recent science fiction, Gaea Station is a genuinely rigorous portrait of an institution, and the novel keeps changing shape without ever losing its argument. What it does not offer is a romance, a likeable opening, or an easy two hundred pages — and a meaningful group of readers never gets past the first of those. Read it as literature, not as sapphic romance. Check Some Desperate Glory on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Some Desperate Glory ranks as a major, award-winning sapphic space opera — extraordinary on character and institution, constrained by a hostile first half and the complete absence of an on-page romance, and best approached for Kyr’s deprogramming rather than for anything a romance reader is looking for.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 4.05 average across 21,846 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Hugo Award for Best Novel and a Locus nomination
- ✓ Character arc praised in near-superlative terms
- ✓ 5% at two stars or below, all on the first half
Romance ★★★☆☆ 2.5/5
- ✓ Kyr’s queer awakening is central to her arc
- ✓ Sexuality is load-bearing rather than decorative
- ✓ Found-family bonds carry real emotional weight
- ✓ No f/f romance on the page; love interest offpage
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ Kyr’s deprogramming compared to the Locked Tomb
- ✓ Written from inside a bigot without endorsing her
- ✓ Avi and Magnus both fully realised
- ✓ Kyr is repellent for a substantial opening stretch
Writing ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ Hugo Award for Best Novel
- ✓ “Moral clarity” is the recurring phrase
- ✓ Novel changes shape more than once and holds
- ✓ First-person voice is punishing by design
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.4/5
- ✓ Readers report screaming past the midpoint
- ✓ Radicalisation mechanics rendered convincingly
- ✓ Named as the first book finished in months
- ✓ Content list is long and genuinely heavy
Heat Level ★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
- ✓ No romance.io entry — not shelved as romance
- ✓ No on-page romantic or sexual content
- ✓ Queer awakening without a partner in scene
- ✓ Sapphic lists recommend it on identity alone
Ending ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ Complete standalone that resolves
- ✓ No sequel required or announced
- ✓ Structural turns pay off by the close
- ✓ The payoff is back-loaded past a hard opening
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 16 hour 14 minute audiobook by Sena Bryer
- ✓ Stocked on Libro.fm, not an Audible exclusive
- ✓ Opening reads entirely differently once known
- ✓ Few readers want to relive the first half
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