First off, whoever told you Broken Earth didn't have sexual violence was off their fucking gord. I love that book, but it's incredibly violent. The entire series is about how violence, including sexual violence, including sexual violence directed at disabled children (!) is embedded in empire. One of the heroines is forced to have reproductive sex with someone she doesn't like (he's gay and doesn't want to either) the first time we meet her. (That said I wouldn't describe it as grimdark, because I find it incredibly optimistic. However, as far as I can tell, "grimdark" = "something dealing with darker themes that I personally did not like.")

*coughs*

To the actual point: I'm not reading the thing by Aja, because my blood pressure doesn't need that, and I generally like say Rebecca Solnit's comments about hope in activist work (she considers optimism something else), but I find a insistence on hope not only cloying buy unfair and manipulative. What if I don't fucking want to feel hopeful? And if I'm not hopeful, did the shitty things that keep happening happen because I didn't have the right outlook? It's some kind of high level emotional blackmail bullshit, as far as I'm concerned.

Also, "punk" fucking means something. I'm pretty sure this isn't it.