“While we live, the enemy shall fear us.”

They’re the last true humans, hidden in a hollow asteroid, living on scant food, training for vengeance after Earth was obliterated by the alien Majo.

Genetically-enhanced Kyr expects the other teen girls to train for combat with her focused ferocity, so they’ll be placed on a battleship instead of being trapped in the nursery as breeding stock.

Only her brother Mags is a stronger warrior, yet he is sent on a suicide mission to a planet of Majo-cooperating humans, and the Commander assigns Kyr to her worst nightmare.

Desperate to save Mags and herself, Kyr enlists the help of his tech-savvy friend and crush Avi to escape their fates by using the recently-captured Majo ship and its alien pilot Yiso.

Away they flee, to the same planet that their big sister defected to, the planet that the supreme Majo leader will soon visit…coincidence?

The history relentlessly drilled into Kyr gets a reboot, a shadow engine of subreality makes their toughest training sims seem like babies’ play, and the young people have only a short time to help Yiso keep things from getting worse.

And then time twists… and twists…

Who’s the hero here?
How can anyone gay survive in a society where reproduction is paramount?
What other ways could Kyr’s life have turned out?

In the future, as now, different views of the same events bring conflict as well as opportunities for peace.

What “fact” of history learned in childhood have you unlearned?
**kmm

Book info: Some Desperate Glory / Emily Tesh. Tordotcom, 2023. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.