Some Desperate Glory

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh.

Maybe aliens are people too?

Less than halfway through this book I was genuinely confused by how there could possible be another half of a book left. Kyr had successfully escaped her the militaristic cult she was raised in, started seeing aliens as people and started to understand why her older sister did the same. Sure she still planned on killing an alien dignitary but to be fair he did end up being personally responsible for the destruction of Earth. Then everything goes downhill; her genius 'friend' decides to use the god-machine Wisdom to destroy a large percentage of life in the universe and her brother responds by calmly killing himself.

After some screaming at the Wisdom it deigns to send her back in time to change things, right to the moment of Earth's destruction. Thus begins a long and winding journey through time and alternate lives she could have lead, culminating in a fairly satisfying ending reinforcing that facism is bad and you shouldn't try to do everything alone. Quite a ride, it keeps you guessing the whole way despite characters who fit pretty firmly into the expected archetypes with good moment to moment writing and judicious use of the Wisdom's reality warping powers. I finished it despite being a fairly long read so clearly I enjoyed it, but I don't think anything from this will stick with me for a long time.