Some Desperate Glory

On a bleak military station, the survivors of a destroyed Earth drill their children for vengeance, and Kyr is their finest product: disciplined, righteous and utterly certain of her cause. Emily Tesh's Hugo-winning debut begins inside that certainty and then, with real nerve, dismantles it, forcing its formidable heroine to reckon with the propaganda, cruelty and self-deception that shaped her.

What could have been a straightforward space opera becomes something sharper - a study of radicalization and the hard work of unlearning it, told with the momentum of pulp adventure and the moral seriousness of the best contemporary SF. Tesh is unafraid to make Kyr genuinely difficult before she earns her growth, and the plot takes swerves best left unspoiled. The result is thrilling, provocative and unexpectedly humane, a novel about whether a person built to hate can choose otherwise.