Victories Greater Than Death

Hardcover, 288 pages

English language

Published April 12, 2021 by Tor Teen.

ISBN:
978-1-250-31731-5
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OCLC Number:
1242021081
ASIN:
1250317312

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4 stars (4 reviews)

“Just please, remember what I told you. Run. Don’t stop running for anything.”

Tina never worries about being 'ordinary'--she doesn't have to, since she's known practically forever that she's not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She's also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it's going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina's legacy, after all, is intergalactic--she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina's destiny isn't quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed--and everyone in the galaxy is expecting her to actually be the brilliant tactician and legendary savior Captain Thaoh Argentian, …

3 editions

Victories Greater Than Death

4 stars

Victories Greater Than Death is the first YA book in an sf trilogy. It follows Earth teenager Tina Mains, who knows growing up that she is the clone of a dead alien space hero. She gets sucked into space adventures, trying to fill the shoes of the hero everybody expects her to be (but isn't), while still trying to save everybody. I don't read a lot of YA fare, but it ticked my expectation buckets of overflowing feelings, romance/relationships, family and life trauma, struggling with expectations (in various dimensions), etc etc. It was also just a fun romp overall.

Some specific callouts: * I liked that Tina's mom knew that Tina was the clone of some hero and would leave some day, and was both sad and supportive about this; a fun change from the normal "coming out" secret identity riff * the villain has the power to touch somebody …

Review of 'Victories Greater Than Death' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

It’s a fun, swashbuckling space adventure with lots of queer under/over/just tones. It makes sense. Well, like most sci-fi it makes absolutely no sense at all, but at least the author has clearly worked to make it feel internally consistent in precisely the way that YA fiction in particular seldom does.

It also deals with violence, war, power in a way that feels less dumb than the standard genre tropes.

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rated it

3 stars