Review: Victories Greater Than Death

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the run-up to this, her YA debut, Charlie Jane Anders has spent a lot of time not only offering amazing artwork and pins based on this book for preorder campaigns, but also outlining in long Twitter threads how much she seeks to upend the conventions of space opera by keeping things fun and light, while also emphasizing that the genre's roots need a little bit of pruning of old, offensive impulses. And also going on truly inspired theoretical tangents about why and how the universe of the Star Wars galaxy works.

Anders has already proven her bona fides several times over as one of the most unique and memorable writers in SFF for all the right reasons, and Victories Greater than Death, as the start of a promising space-opera trilogy, is no exception. Radically inclusive in its casting both human and extraterrestrial, dipping into ever-advancing queer culture with its embrace of gender as a spectrum (particularly among the many alien peoples of this story, who often have three or more genders and make good use of neopronouns), emphasizing found friendships and friendships among those whose social anxiety hinders their ability to connect to others, and commenting pretty sharply on the meshing of celebrity and military culture too (at least two of the spacefaring crew in this book are former movie stars who grew disillusioned with having to work in propaganda)...really, my only wish is that this book could've been a bigger one to really do an even deeper dive into its many alien cultures, to say nothing of the early peeks at what human culture has gotten up to in this indeterminate future. (Alt-right figures are still getting lots of cultural traction, while protagonist Tina and her friends stage peaceful and glorious protests full of disco and glitter. Also, a lot of currently popular video games, like Overwatch, are still household names.)

Also, though, I have to say that while it's a little debatable whether or not Tina counts as a bioengineered chosen one, I'll still count her as such - an example of one of my favorite spins on the trope, thanks in very large part to The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Anders, though, really sticks the landing in this one, especially with the gentle but weapons-grade cliffhanger in store right as the book reaches its roughly 300-page-mark ending...

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