We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett

From the back cover:

Seventeen-year-old Revna is a factory worker, manufacturing war machines for the Union of the North. When she’s caught using illegal magic, she fears being branded a traitor and imprisoned. Meanwhile, on the front lines, Linné defied her father, a Union general, and disguised herself as a boy to join the army. They’re both offered a reprieve from punishment if they use their magic in a special women’s military flight unit and undertake terrifying, deadly missions under cover of darkness. Revna and Linné can hardly stand to be in the same cockpit, but if they can’t fly together, and if they can’t find a way to fly well, the enemy’s superior firepower will destroy them–if they don’t destroy each other first.

There is so much to like in this book, which is fundamentally about two young women with very little power caught up in a big complicated situation. There’s the culture clash, between two women who come from different geographic areas and very different classes in the same country; the friendships between the many women; and that it’s inspired by the Night Witches, Soviet women pilots who had to fight everyone to be allowed to fly during WWII (so if you ever wanted a fantasy version of Code Name Verity this is it–while being very different and not a tear jerker, which has it’s place but it’s not what you want all the time).

I’m actually pretty sick of fiction set during WWI and WWII, but all those that I’ve read have been from the Allied side of things and this is most definitely a Soviet Union cognate, so that was an interesting change (plus the whole fantasy aspect). There was a bit of the bad guys are just Evil, though complicated by the moral complexity on the good guys’ side–they were not by any means Good with a capital G.

I also didn’t particularly like either of the main characters, but it didn’t matter because I completely emphasized with both of them and wanted to see what they would choose to do in the no-win situation they’re trapped in. That’s pretty unusual for me. I usually don’t make it all the way through a book if I don’t like at least one character. The more I think about this book, the more I like it.