Some Desperate Glory

This book has given me a lot of mixed emotions. I almost DNFed it at the beginning because the protagonist, Valkyr or Kyr as she's not-so-affectionately known by her teammates, was so so so intolerable and annoying. It was only because I put it down and read another book that annoyed me even more that I eventually went back and finished this. Indeed, Kyr remained unlikeable and annoying for at least the first half of the book. Almost every other character was more interesting and easier to listen to on page than Kyr was.

I mean, I get that there was a reason for Kyr's unlikeability, and it makes her overall character arc/development more satisfying. But I also kinda wish that the annoying parts weren't quite so long as half the book, or that we got more of a hook, something to keep us hanging on to the hope that Kyr's going to get better at the end. When she was annoying, she was really annoying. A whole lot more annoying than Avicenna was, and he's supposed to be the most annoying person on the whole ship.

The book kinda sorta improved after that halfway mark, I guess? Until then I thought the book was moving along in a very predictable sort of fashion, and a lot of my guesses sort of came true. Until they didn't. And then they really didn't.

The second half of the book was a really wild ride. The concepts that they're using isn't incredibly new but there's still something inexplicably fresh about some of the corners of world-building here. Even now that I've finished it, I still can't 100% tell you what exactly happened because I'm just as lost. Sometimes I'm not even sure if Tesh knew fully the details of what was going on either. Nevertheless, it was all right in the way it played out. Not incredibly mind-blowing in the end, but also not unsatisfying.

Spoilery thoughts about the ending: I thought Jole's death was such an anti-climax. After all that, they didn't even have a proper showdown? But I appreciated the foreshadowing and how Jole's death mirrored that of the soldier Kyr thought about when she first went down to the core with Avi in the earlier parts of the book. I thought it was Magnus deserved more character development, but with so much time jumps in the book, it's really only Kyr that gets all the development since everyone else pretty much starts anew whenever the Wisdom reset her to another moment in history. I thought the ending dragged on a bit too.