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.

The Guns Above by Robyn Bennis: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

The Guns Above by Robyn Bennis

Every now and then, a random book recommendation I come across on Twitter turns out to be a gem. Last week, I was made aware of The Guns Above, Signal Airship 1, by Robyn Bennis. I liked the sparse description, read the sample chapters, and when they ended, absolutely had to know more. So I purchased the book and continued reading. And pretty much read it as fast as I could.

The Guns Above is steampunk fantasy set in imaginary Garnia, a country in a constant state of war with its neighbours. The reasons are never made clear; it’s just something that has always been done. It’s a pre or pseudo-industrialised world where steam powers factories and airships, but everything else mostly resembles 19th century Europe, down to its hierarchies.

Military is the only place where women get to show their worth, and that only because the country is running out of men to enlist. It’s still not easy for them, and they’ve been given proper commanding positions only a few years previously. Except on airships.

The book begins with the aftermath of a battle. Josette Dupre wakes up among dead bodies with no proper recollection of how the battle has gone, but she’s soon told she was the hero of it, who single-handedly turned the tides for Garnia. As a reward—though reluctantly and only because of the pressure from the newspapers—she’s given an airship of her own to command, an experimental new model, Mistral. She knows it’s just to get rid of her, but she takes it anyway. She’s accompanied on the maiden voyage by Lord Bernat, the nephew of the most important general, who’s been sent there to spy on her and to make her look bad, to discredit her in the press.

Despite the premise, the book is a fairly straightforward military fantasy. The maiden voyage turns into a series of battles, as Mistral and its crew encounter the enemy where they shouldn’t be. The battles are vividly and brutally described, and lengthy, but never boring, even if I couldn’t always keep up with the terminology. And everything ends in one final battle where Mistral gets to show what it’s really made of.

Underneath all the warfare, there is a story of two people, Josette and Bernat. It’s not terribly heavy on emotions. We never learn much about their pasts or motivations, like why she’s in the army or why she hates her mother, or what Bernat’s been doing with his life before being tricked into the army, apart from gambling. But the snippets we get are enough to give us a notion of who they are.

Their relationship carries the book. It’s not a love story, and it’s not even a proper friendship. But the encounters between the two, often subtle, and the bantering, made me really like the two and hope they would become friends after all. Bernat tries his best to fulfil his mission, but having been thrown into all those battles, he grows as a person and begins to admire Josette instead. For her part, Josette doesn’t really change as a character. Her journey is more external, growing into her role as the first woman captain of an airship. She’s tough and unyielding to begin with and those characteristics are only strengthened during the book. But in the end, they sort of come to realise that they work well together. And I found it so compelling, I immediately purchased the next book too.