By Fire Above by Robyn Bennis: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

By Fire Above by Robyn Bennis

Last week, I reviewed the first Signal Airship book, The Guns Above, which I absolutely loved. The second book, By Fire Above, begins right where the first book ends, from the very same scene even. The last battle has left Mistral badly damaged and in need of urgent repairs. But the war has been brutal and spare parts aren’t easily available. There’s no fast return for Mistral and her crew to the war, much to Captain Josette Dupre’s chagrin.

Mistral is sent to the capital of the kingdom for the winter, both for repairs and to rouse the interest of the people for the continuous and distant war. For the first half of the book, the story slows down considerably from the constant action of the first book. The most exciting event is a bad storm, which damages Mistral again and badly injures Bernat. Josette and Bernat end up spending the winter at the King’s court, the latter trying to guide the first through the minefield that is the court politics. His task would be easier, though, if his older brother Roland wasn’t trying to court Josette at the same time. She’s not uninterested, but as she is practically unable to express finer emotions, the courtship is pretty one-sided.

In the end, Josette gets what she wants: an order to go and liberate her home town Durum from the Vin occupation. However, as she manages to aggravate the aristocrats in the process, the price is going out with a barely repaired ship and no proper flying gas. Bernat gets what he wants too, sort of: Roland is left behind, and he has a chance to free Josette’s mother Elise, with whom he has fallen in love, much to Josette’s annoyance.

The second half of the book is constant action, but there are no air battles like in the first book. Instead, Josette and Bernat sneak into Durum to rouse the townspeople to rebel against the occupying force. It’s not easy, as they are no proper soldiers and barely any weapons. Josette, resourceful as ever, devices a plan that works perfectly up until everything goes wrong, starting with Mistral being a no-show as an air support. She and Bernat almost get killed several times during the brutal battle, which, like in the first book, spares no one and is described fairly vividly.

On Mistral, we follow Ensign Kemper from the first book. She’s having trouble with the new first officer left in charge of Mistral in Josette’s absence, because he’s both incompetent and incapable of working with a woman. He takes Mistral on an airship hunt against Josette’s orders, inciting a mutiny on board, which puts Kemper in a difficult position that has no easy solutions. She turned out to be an interesting character and I hope we’ll see more of her in coming books.

All in all, the second book was very different from the first. Whereas the first was all about air battles and technical manoeuvres, the second was more about the characters, their emotions and backstories. Josette especially was put through the wringer with her mother. However, she remained a fairly unemotional character, so it was left to Bernat to express all the emotions we don’t get from Josette. Of the two, the still-foppish aristocrat is by far the more emotional. It’s therefore a bit of a puzzle why he sees himself as a black-hearted monster—and why Josette agrees with him.

The friendship between the two doesn’t really evolve during the book. They’ve reached a point where they understand each other perfectly, faults and all. They continue to work well together, though the book saw Bernat manage some action on his own too, without Josette constantly saving him. They express their understanding of each other’s characters at the end of the book with their customary snark that gave the reader to understand that they know they’ve become each other’s most important persons. I really hope there’s going to be more books, because it would be shame not to follow the pair to new adventures.

The second book was slightly less exciting than the first, hence only four stars—though it could be because it didn’t blow my mind like the first. But while the first half was a bit slow, the second half more than made up for it. The writing style was excellent, sparse and to the point, and kept the story going even when nothing much seemed to happen. I’m truly looking forward to reading more Signal Airship books.