Now let me get this straight, ‘SDG’ is a good book. Kyr’s character arc is strong. I enjoy the author’s voice. The setting is a clever inversion of tropes to tell a compelling story. I don’t want to take away the joy this book gives to it’s fans.
I did not like this. I think my dislike is more because I’m not the target audience than anything else.
WHAT IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE? WHAT GENRES? WHAT MAJOR TROPES?
- The book is advertised as being for adults, but I think it’s YA appropriate. Anyone 14+ can read it. It’s a bit mature for 16 year olds, but young people are smart.
- Feminist Space Opera
- Time Loop/Alternate Reality fiction
- Progressive Fiction
- Military Science Fiction
- Star Trek, told from the perspective of the Khan’s cult of eugenic supersoldiers
LETS GET STARTED
‘Some Desperate Glory’s’ message is heartfelt and it’s story well-written. It was written earnestly to please an audience, and I’m given to understand it’s target audience enjoyed the book. It is clear the author cared. I respect the author’s passion. If I were a teacher grading this, I’d give it a solid (B) grade.
I felt complex emotions while reading this. I take a lot to be impressed these days, and I’ve seen these tropes done better before. It’s not a bad book, I enjoyed the middle-half, but I’m jaded. Having such a ‘the worlds best fascist girl scout’ for a protagonist for the first half of the book didn’t work for me; I don’t object to unlikeable protagonists, but she was so one note about ‘yay fascism’ that I got bored.
I don’t want to badmouth this book. I like the concept. It’s a neat setting where humans are the villains fighting a Star Trek Federation/Mass Effect Citadel civilization in a galactic guerilla war. The Federation/Citadel has a godlike AI which is capable of controlling space and time; defeating the AI requires nonlinear thinking by the rebels in such a way which is a great read. That’s a neat concept, and it’s executed pretty well. I wish it leaned more into a ‘free will vs determinism’ angle, but it didn’t.
PACING AND STRUCTURE
And this is when things get weird. This book foreshadows being a ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ sort of book, and swerves into being a timeloop/’Groundhog’s Day’/butterfly effect sort of thing. The book foreshadows feminist issues being of extreme plot importance, in the form of forced impregnation, and then does nothing to explore forced impregnation as a topic. Truth told, I’m happy this book didn’t discuss forced impregnation. I only got interested halfway through when the author took the novel in another direction.
I have mixed feelings over this structure.
On one hand, I enjoyed the ‘Groundhog’s Day’ twist. It was a neat way to explore a character deconstructing their worldview, realizing that her worldview was built on lies all along. That was my favorite part of the book. While the time loop weirdness was going on, I was thinking to myself, “Oh, I see why people like this.” I enjoyed the time travel so much I think the time travel should have started earlier, perhaps as early as the Inciting Incident (aka give or take halfway through the first act of the book).
On the other hand, having the ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ vibe being so heavily featured and then not actually explored feels like a bait-and-switch. I wanted a discussion of motherhood, forced impregnation, assault and the patriarchy, but we didn’t get it. Speaking as an author, it feels like the book failed to commit to it’s premise.
The theme of ‘motherhood’ could have carried through the time travel section; we easily could have gotten a chapter or two where Kyr’s in an alternate universe where she’s in Nursery working as a parent and teacher. And she’s happy working in Nursery, instead of hardcore disgusted like she is in the main timeline. In retrospect, I’m shocked the book didn’t have that chapter; it would have been a fantastic opportunity for character growth for Kyr, helping her unpack her internalized misogyny and thus deconstruct her religion. (I know she’s a lesbian, but queers can find parenthood wholesome too.)
Overall, I think this book needed more work in the developmental stages. All the component parts for a good book are here. A good draft or two could have tightened up the plot and clarified the theme. I understand why the Hugo voters voted for it; if you squint and forgive a little, you can see the story the author was trying to tell.
As for pacing, I did not like the first half of the book. It felt slooow. I was struggling to even pick up the book due to boredom. The second half of the book picked up the pace, but I feel like the book needed more time loops because they were thematically at the core of the book. Maybe the book could start mid-time travel, then double back to the beginning? Told the story non-linearly?
I listened to the audiobook, and it was 16 hours long. This easily could have been 10 to 14 hours.
EVERYTHING ELSE
Earth was destroyed, leaving mankind without a homeworld. In the ruins, mankind came together and founded Gaea station. In the hallowed halls of Gaea, a profound oath was sworn: vengeance for the billions of dead. No price is too high to avenge dead Earth. Neat idea!
Kyr was born and raised into the religion of Gaea station. She believes profoundly that humans are real people and nonhuman sentient aliens are not real people. She trained from a young age to become a peerless fighter… but when the time comes, she’s assigned to become a professional mother. Gaea station is an artificial ecosystem, and human life is only sustained through deliberate planning and hard work… including having children. In the highly patriarchal society of Gaea, this ‘women’s work’ is considered dishonorable. Proud Kyr is humbled. Good characterization!
I feel like the culture of Gaea is mostly well done. The death of several billion people hangs over this story like a lead weight. Kyr’s radical beliefs make sense in light of those deaths. Kyr literally doesn’t view herself as a person with her own agency; she views herself in the context of the dead who need vengeance. She ultimately becomes detached from her religion (aka the burden of Earth) when she interacts with an alien and realizes they’re people too. Good characterization!
I liked the concept behind Gaea’s society, but on reflection I think it is a bit ridiculous. In real life, even in highly patriarchal societies, women have power. For example, women often form whisper-networks to discuss issues and solve problems quietly behind men’s backs, or to quietly isolate problematic men. If such a whisper-network existed in Gaea, why was Kyr excluded? Likewise, if human life is so valuable, why do they treat soldiers and mothers as disposable? Further, why can’t all these highly trained warrior women use the threat of violence to crush the patriarchal system and make it more egalitarian?
There are worldbuilding plotholes here you can drive a tank through. Most, if not all of these plotholes can be explained away with a bit of critical thinking. What appears as plot holes are really just a believably malfunctioning society after it has been put under great stress.
To quote a goodreads review:
the worldbuilding around how bad the reproductive health is in space magic world (even a petty fascist cult in space magic world) is deeply stupid. ‘they have so much sexism in space they have destroyed every form of babymaking gene tech and kill off a third of their mothers on a limited population ship that wants to grow their population’
On the surface, that’s a fair complaint. Again, that can be explained away. The dictatorship killed anyone capable of independent thought, including the doctors, because thinkers could foment rebellion against the regime. Because the gynecologists are dead, bad stuff happens. This would have been a good worldbuilding detail if the author mentioned it, but the author didn’t mention it, so I’m jumping to conclusions here.
Another plot hole is that the time-travel plot depends upon a god-ai being easily hijacked by two enemy soldiers on a roadtrip. I am incredulous how useless the Majoda are, not having a working military after winning a major war against humanity, when they know humanity is still out there. So much of this plot depends on people behaving stupidly, including a hyperintelligent god-ai which should be able to send messages back in time to prevent itself from being hijacked in the first place. (Speaking of which, how can the server architecture of Wisdom be so poorly designed that a single bad actor is able to extinguish life on hundreds of thousands of planets? Do the Majoda not have white-hat hackers to stress-test this system?)
After a point I get exasperated that I have to forgive so many plot holes. I don’t generally like addressing plot holes in my critiques because they’re usually lazy criticism. In this case, there were enough plot holes to harm my immersion. This isn’t trying to be Hard SF, but I think it’s reasonable to expect an author to think through the second-order consequences of the scifi ideas they’re playing around with.
In short, ‘SDG’ failed the ‘verisimilitude’ test. (Verisimilitude means ‘the appearance of being real.) Some stories don’t even try to pass the verisimilitude test; ‘The Princess Bride’ is a beloved book and movie which fails the verisimilitude test hard, and that failure was the author/director’s goal all along. However, I think that ‘SDG’ was trying to pass the verisimilitude test.
The setting and plot feels like the thinly veiled mouthpiece for the author because of that lack of verisimilitude. Time travel books are hard to write. This feels like the author was trying to both preach a message from a soapbox, while saying ‘don’t think too hard about it’ about the plotholes.
And finally the ‘fascism’ issue. The protag is growing up in a eugenicist doomsday cult sworn to avenge the deaths of several billion people, fighting a guerilla war in which there’s no hope for success. You know how there used to be Japanese soldiers on random Asian islands left behind after WW2, who were still fighting the war decades after Japan surrendered? Gaea station had the vibe of those Japanese soldiers.
And then the plot of the story resolves with Kyr just… giving up. She realized there was no hope for Gaea to ever win, she’s alienated by her terrible superior officers, and switches sides. Most Western books are about a Chosen One going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and achieving some justified catharsis. This book foreshadowed that catharsis (revenge for billions of people!) but had a twist ending of realizing the war’s over, stop fighting, surrender and emotionally heal. That was a surprisingly fresh take. It will be a problematic ending for people on the far right and the far left, but it was good for me. A+ for the ending thematic, even if the whole book is about a B for me.
One last thing. For Military SF, I expect good fightscenes. The fights in this were quick to the point of being dull.
Overall, the book is good. I feel like I’m trying to argue myself out of having enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have given it ‘Best Novel,’ but I feel like it was worth reading.
AUDIOBOOK NOTES
The audiobook was pretty good.
LESSONS LEARNED
As an author, I want to improve my own writing/editing skills. To that end, I like to learn lessons from every story I read. Here’s what I learned from this story:
- The verisimilitude test.
- ‘Verisimilitude’ means the appearance of being real. Some authors try to evoke verisimilitude in their books, telling stories which convincingly echo real life.
- A book which has too many plotholes or goofy bits of worldbuilding might suffer under the weight of expectations, and cause unintended problems in the rest of the novel.
- Not all stories have to pass the verisimilitude test (‘The Princess Bride’ does not, as an example), but it’s something to consider when revising your novel.
Here’s a link to all the lessons I’ve previously learned.
SUMMARY
I enjoyed the book in a ‘brain off, happy vibes’ sort of way. But after I put this book under the microscope, I kept discovering wonky things about it. The more I think about this book, the more it falls apart upon examination.
In the context of me being an objective critic, this book is good. Not amazing, but worth reading if you’re willing to forgive a few things.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 