I took We Rule the Night home and devoured it. It lived up to its potential and then some. This is a gripping adventure with WWII-Soviet-inspired atmosphere, fascinating magic, two brilliantly flawed protagonists and a tortuously problematic friendship. Don't let the fairly generic YA cover fool you: this is different than anything else you've read.
Bartlett based her story on the little-known history of the Night Witches, an all-women unit of Soviet pilots who flew night bombing raids on German lines. They sound awesome enough to spawn a ton of novels, and I hope we get more. (Elizabeth Wein has written a non-fiction book about them which I want to read immediately: A Thousand Sisters.)
Bartlett decided to add magic into the mix, and I love the believable world she created: a totalitarian state that rejects religion and certain kinds of magic; secret police who use telepathy and can shape shift; steampunkish technology based on magic rather than electricity. Her Soviet analogue, The Union of the North, is gritty and oppressive, painted in shades of smoke and khaki. The magic-powered vehicles with their legs and carapaces, made out of living metal that absorbs and emits emotions, are fascinating and slightly creepy. It's an immersive environment with tension to spare.
Our two main characters have plenty of things to be afraid of, yet each rebels in her own way against her circumstances, and each chooses loyalty over fear—once they figure out where their loyalty lies. Revna is more immediately engaging, with her kindness and her desire to protect her family, while Linné is a prickly, arrogant stick-in-the-mud who is angry at everything and desperate to make her father notice her. Revna tries her hardest to be a Good Union Girl because she knows her very existence is treasonous; Linné is a patriot who wants to die for her country but her country won't let her. Wonderfully complex motivations; entirely convincing reasons for them to hate each other; and of course they are paired together to fly.
The flying was fun, and the magic/technology hybrid was cool, but it was the conflict between the patronizing, skeptical military men and the women doing everything in their power to prove themselves that kept me riveted to the page. I burned with anger for the way the women were treated, for the powerlessness that comes from being underestimated and ignored. I cheered the way the girls supported each other, their dogged persistence, the fist-pumping moments when they blew everyone away with their skills. Getting to the end and finding out that this was all based on real women who really did face up to that kind of persecution and kept flying anyway—that was a huge bonus!
I'm pretty sure there's going to be a sequel—not exactly a cliffhanger ending or anything, but I really hope there's going to be a sequel, because I really want to know what happens next to these girls!
The description for this book compares it to Code Name Verity—which is a stunning, brilliant and incomparable book—and We Rule the Night did remind me of it. It also has a similar feel to Wolf by Wolf. (Maybe not quite the same emotional punch as those two books, but you don't always want to be punched in the gut by a book, so that's okay!)
Definitely an excellent contender for a Cybil! Feels like some sort of hearty soup you would eat on a cold winter's night—oh, of course: borscht!
