Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Magic School for Kids

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

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CBR Square- School I read The Incandescent by Emily Tesh because she promoted it on Threads as a book with a magic school where the adults are allowed to be competent. And that doesn’t mean they don’t make mistakes, but when the students get themselves into trouble with their magic, they go to an adult who can help them and she does. So this is entirely told from the adult perspective, and one demon. I really liked it a lot. Dr. Walden is the Director of Magic […]

Are we the baddies?

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

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CBR Bingo: Citizen (the main character is pretty much the “ideal” citizen in her society) I read Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent a few months ago, and I enjoyed it and wanted to try the author’s other works, so I recently picked up Some Desperate Glory, her debut novel. Sometime in the future, Earth has been destroyed by alien technology. Some of the remaining humans inhabit Gaea Station, constructed of old warships, and form a militaristic society where children are born and raised almost solely with the goal […]

For every sentimental my teacher changed my life story you heard, there were dozens of my teacher made me moderately bored a few times a week and then I got through the year and moved on with my life and never thought about them again

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

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BINGO: school, obviously hot take I think magic system was a bit waffle-y and the overall tone perhaps a shade too imitative of the books referenced in the blurb, but I loved the last part and give me more stories with middle-aged protagonists–they can make ill-advised decisions too! h/t to Britt for the rec! So I mean: Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy. I’ll admit I don’t know the second series, but sapphic (!) dark academia (!!) fantasy (!!!) and like, […]

Magic school from a fresh perspective

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

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Emily Tesh is one of those authors that I’ve been meaning to try for quite some time and just have somehow never gotten around to. I recently got approved for an ARC (obligatory this hasn’t impacted the contents of this review, etc.) for her recently released novel, The Incandescent, so I figured this was a good place to start with her work. Set at a boarding school that teaches magic (not a magic boarding school, it’s just one more subject for students, along with more […]

“There was something wrong with Gaea Station. There had always been something wrong with Gaea Station.”

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

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I actually really liked this, and I’m really surprised about it. This book deserves a longer, more thorough review, but I’m just not capable of doing that at the moment. I can see how this book wouldn’t work for some people, but if it doesn’t, it seems a matter of taste to me. I feel like Emily Tesh knew exactly what she wanted to do with the story, and pulled it off. The concepts, characters, plot twists, and everything else this book was wanting to […]

Honor is a personal choice, and one which humans will admire—up to a point.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

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This book is grim, well written, but grim and I didn’t enjoy reading it. I know plenty of other people will like it, because some people enjoy grim. I nearly abandoned it several times. Emily Tesh’s main character, Valkyr, starts off Some Desperate Glory as a joyless, intolerant fanatic who thinks she is better than almost everyone else. To be fair, she has been raised to be so, in what we come to realize is an extremist death cult. Earth has been destroyed and a […]



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