Thursday, July 8, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Victories Greater than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

 





Victories Greater than Death is Charlie Jane Anders' latest book and the first in a new YA space opera trilogy.  Anders, known for the SciFi/Fantasy blogosphere (as the co-creator of io9) and for her tremendous short fiction career, has in the last few years had a pair of really acclaimed books, with her All the Birds in the Sky winning the Nebula Award for Best Novel (and picking up a Hugo Nomination) and her The City in the Middle of the Night also picking up a Hugo nomination.  I really loved All the Birds but found The City in the Middle of the Night a big miss, as Anders shot for some really interesting ideas in the vibes of LeGuin, but just didn't really manage to pull it off.  Still, it was ambitious, and interesting, and so I was curious to see her fully take on YA with her latest novel.  

And well....Victories Greater than Death is....fine?  It's a YA Space Opera, with the age range probably closer to middle grade than older YA, featuring a queer cast as a human girl who's the modified clone of a famous captain of an alien navy, along with her introverted awkward human friend, and a quarter of other smart outsider humans who have to help the alien navy take on a genocidal enemy fleet.  The YA aspects, the kids having to figure out themselves and their own desires and relations, work well but aren't anything I haven't seen before, the space opera aspects are again fine despite some occasional weird shifts in tone but are unexceptional, and the whole package just feels like a combination of other works that I've seen done way better.  The book ends on a cliffhanger, and it's again totally fine, but it does not inspire me to really keep going.  

----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Since he was a little girl, Tina has known that she's no ordinary girl, but the genetically altered clone of an alien hero hunted throughout the galaxy, given to her mom as a baby.  Together with her introverted friend, Rachael, she's spent the end of her teenage years trying to activate the beacon that will signal the fleet to come rescue her, to start the life she knows she's destined for beyond the stars.  

But when she activates the beacon, she finds herself picked up by an alien fleet that is desperate for hope, having been nearly defeated by another alien force - the one that killed her prior self, and one intent on genocide of all races in the galaxy who don't fit a specific ideal shape.  And that enemy is right behind them, and if Tina can't help, they may all be doomed.  

But when the procedure to restore Tina's prior self's memories doesn't work, Tina finds that her destiny as a hero isn't so certain after all.  And so it will require Tina, Rachael, and four other outsider but brilliant human kids, caught up in it all, to adapt immediately to an impossible situation and to prove their worth, if they all want to survive.  But how will Tina and her friends be able to save the galaxy when they can barely handle the internal fears and doubts that plague them all?  
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Victories Greater than Death is told from the perspective of Tina, a girl who has been an outsider her whole life at school and whose best friend - super introvert Rachael - left school due to bullying.  She's made it her life goal, with the help of Rachael and others from the internet, to be a force for good in the ways a teenager can - performing flash mobs and protests to challenge oppressive figures for instance.  And she's always known about her origins, as her mom didn't hide where she came from unlike the classical hero in these stories, and has been desperate to get out there into the universe to fulfill her destiny as a hero - even if she'll miss Rachael if she does wind up going.  

And so we have a space opera setup with a girl who believes she can be a hero, is confronted with the reality that it is absolutely not that simple, and where evil is bearing down upon her and her new allies and friends right from the start, with very little time to breathe.  It's a galaxy where an ancient race, now long gone, was apparently messing with the other races in their infancy....in a very evil and genocidal way that has given some races clear head starts over others (or has done worse).  And of course a new evil force believes it is their goal to continue that work, and is chasing after an artifact of the ancient race that seemingly has the potential to change everything.  This is not a setup that's particularly unique nowadays, but it's done well.  

Similarly, you have the group of human kids that form Tina's friends/family and romantic options - after Tina and Rachael come up with the idea of recruiting outsider brilliant kids to help their alien forces, and wind up with four others from around the world on board.  They're a group of kids each with their own issues - for example, a boy from an abusive family who wanted to be a pilot and a super hacker girl with authority problems because of how everyone in her world treated her for being trans, etc.  They're not all super memorable (the other two are far less interesting, and really only trans girl and romantic interest Elza has a full character arc) but they're a fun group of kids, and a large part of this book isn't just space opera fun, but the group learning who they each are, how they relate to each other, and that it's okay to try to be who they want to be and to act on those desires, which is challenged by this strange galaxy they find themselves in.  Tina and Rachael's arcs are the strongest overall, with Tina having to overcome a feeling that she can't live up to her predecessor...a predecessor who may not have wanted her (as well as growing romantic feelings she has for one of the other teens), and Rachael having to deal with her wish not to be looked up to, to be alone, and not to be a leader despite being forced into that role.  

But again, the kids' arcs are the type you will have seen elsewhere if you read a lot of YA, and often done better and more interesting ways.  The book is the opposite of subtle, the bad guys are blatantly black and white evil, and has one interesting concept among them - a weapon that not only kills people but also makes all people they know within range recall them only with disgust, ruining their memory - which plays to a theme of what it means to be remembered, but that theme isn't really explored that deeply and just sort of is there.  The book's tone at one point turns towards silly as they find a planet called "Best Planet Ever" which really doesn't work with the rest of the story, and it all ends in a solid ending with a cliffhanger that is fine....but is the same type of cliffhanger that you'll have seen in countless other stories about galaxies with asshole predecessor races.  Yeah you've got your themes of racism here as well but it's all ham handed and just not really any different from other books of this sort.  

So yeah, Victories Greater than Death is fine, and I plowed through it fairly quickly, and it's worth a look for YA readers.  But it's doing nothing special that other books haven't done before, and older YA readers will probably be more interested in other more mature books that are doing far more interesting things - there are plenty in the queer space opera genre to choose from these days.  

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