'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. Luckily, Tina is surrounded by a crew she can trust, and her best friend Rachel, and she is still determined to save all the worlds. But first she’ll have to save herself.'
Victories Greater Than Death is a science fiction story that embraces the weirder and more outlandish areas of the genre, a book that isn't afraid to throw readers into huge interplanetary conflict between dozens of species with little to no context, and allows the fast moving pace to sweep you up into things.
The story is centred on Tina, a teenage girl who has grown up knowing a huge secret, that aliens are real, and she's one of them. Tina has been raised with the knowledge that she's the clone of an important captain from some huge interstellar alliance, and that one day something inside her is going to activate and call the aliens down to take her away. Despite this, Tina seems to have grown into a pretty well rounded and adjusted young woman. She doesn't have many friends, but one few she does have she cares for deeply, and she's always driven to try and do good and call out injustice where she sees it.
Instead of having fears of being an impostor, or worrying that her life is just some kind of cover for another person she's looking forward to eventually being taken off into space, and the first few chapters deal with her trying to get the beacon inside her to activate. Once it does, however, she finds herself being swept up in an adventure she never anticipated.
Much like Tina, the readers are dropped into things with very little knowledge, and are having to play a little bit of catch up to begin with. We learn that there is a peacekeeping group, the Royal Fleet, and that Tina is a part of this, thanks to the woman she was cloned from being a captain in it. Unfortunately, there are bad guys out there too. The Compassion are a group of former Royal Fleet members and various villains who've come together to impose their twisted order on the galaxy.
When the Royal Fleet picks up Tina, and her best friend Rachel, she expects Captain Argentian's memories to be unlocked, but things don't go according to plan and Tina gains access to some information but no memories, making her a walking space Wiki. Now she's stuck in the middle of a war where she's struggling to catch up. To try and help out the Royal Fleet recruits a handful of the best and brightest teens from Earth before they have to leave the planet and set out on their mission to stop the Compassion, leaving Tina and her new friends joining the fight as cadets.
Victories Greater Than Death has a lot of cool stuff going on, and there's a lot to discover over the course of this book. Charlie Jane Anders really populated this galaxy, and there are dozens of strange aliens to encounter. Some, like those of the species Tina belongs to, are very human-like, whilst others are odd and interesting humanoids, and others are so different and so alien that they're almost impossible to describe.
Whilst I had a lot of fun discovering much of this there is a lot thrown at the readers, and we get alien names, alien species, alien food, the names of planets, and alien greetings that differ every time and have very specific meanings and responses. This led to me feeling a bit lost at times, and there was more than one occasion where I'd wished I'd made notes of who characters were as I got them confused every now and then. I'd definitely be making a spreadsheet the next time I read through this.
Despite this small issue, the book was really entertaining, and had a lot of very cool things going for it. The aliens that Anders comes up with, and their respective worlds, are all really fascinating, and I always wanted to learn more about everything the characters came across. Not only that, but the human characters were a really interesting an varied group too. There were people of colour, queer people, trans people, people from rich backgrounds and poor ones, people who'd been victims of bullying and abuse. The six human characters (if you count Tina) were a great cross section of diversity and experience, and whilst I'm sure there'll be people complaining about the amount of diversity it was something that I thought made the book a much more enjoyable read.
The book's been described as a Young Adult book, and whilst I can certainly see where that's true I thought the type of YA audience it was being aimed at seemed to vary from time to time. There were moments where the book felt like it was aimed at a younger audience, possibly even getting close to being a Middle Grade book, whilst there were other times it dealt with some quite adult themes. As such, I think it's one of those YA books that's going to appeal to a lot of different people, and will find a wide audience.
Victories Greater Than Death is a big space opera, a book that takes big, wild concepts and allows them to play out, not necessarily worrying that the audience is going to keep up. It moves with a brisk pace and goes to some interesting and intense places. A book that will definitely appeal to sci-fi fans, but wider audiences too. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next book has in store.
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