By Fire Above mostly trades airships for espionage, and we’re here for it
If you were worried that Robyn Bennis’ followup to The Guns Above wouldn’t be as good, don’t. By Fire Above is a bit of a genre shift and better for it.
Last year, one of the most impressive debuts I read came from Robyn Bennis and The Guns Above. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tor sent me the sequel, By Fire Above, and I’m here to say that it does feel like a distinct improvement — retaining all the positives of the original while showing off Bennis’ dexterity with some good old-fashioned espionage.
This could have easily blown up in her face, much like the still-damaged Mistral for pretty much the entire book. After all, a good portion of the fun came from the airship-to-airship combat in The Guns Above. Don’t worry, though. Mistral isn’t totally out of the action, especially since there’s a war on. In fact, the ship’s situation leads to some excellent development for Sabrine Kember, who’s quickly becoming a favorite character in a cast pretty much filled with strong characters.
Even Josette gets some strong character development here, and that’s important. However, she does fade into the background a bit more than she did in the previous novel. That’s a shame, since what development she does have here is really quite fascinating; hopefully she gets to shine through more again in a prospective third book. (She probably will, thanks to the introduction of one Roland.) She’s still the main character, but Bernat becomes much more of a deuteragonist to her protagonist. Fortunately, he remains as hilarious as ever.
In fact, Bennis seems to have further improved on her humor in this novel, which is impressive considering how much I liked her first book. In particular, the banter seems even stronger than previous novels, and it feels natural, thanks to her careful work with Bernie.
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As I said last year, you’ll like the Signal Airship books if you need some military fiction that doesn’t skimp out on the fast pace or the humor. It remains as true as ever this year.