Victories Greater Than Death

[psocoptera]

Victories Greater Than Death, Charlie Jane Anders. An interesting project - writing a non-imperialist/colonialist space opera (or maybe I mean an anti-imperialist/colonialist space opera) that still hits a lot of the standard space opera beats. Can we imagine a non-hierarchical Starfleet. What if the Progenitors were giant bigots. Can our plucky teen cast of exceptional teens save the day and also sort out their love lives. Book one of a trilogy, and very much felt like the first season of a sci-fi teen drama. I enjoyed it overall - there were definitely parts where I was like "oh, this is fun!" and also some parts where I was like "hm, this is clearly supposed to be fun, but am I actually having the fun". But also a genuinely creepy murder superpower for the antagonist, and I liked the climax, and would recommend it on the whole. It's on the Nebula ballot this year and I would not be at all surprised to see it on the Hugo ballot too.