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A review by iam
We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett
2.0
2.5 stars
We Rule the Night is a war-time story about an all-women night bomber unit and their complex and often hateful relationships, set in fantasy Soviet Union.
Content warnings include: war, violence, death, airplane crashes, sexism, sexual harassment and groping, corrupt government/information officers, ableism towards character with prosthetic legs, blackmail, propaganda; mentions of accident leading to amputation, incarcerated parent, absent parent.
The main emotion that dominated the entire reading experience for me was bleakness. From start to end the characters are utterly miserable and it never gets better at any point. The characters live in a propaganda driven country in the constant fear that if they say or do the slightest wrong thing they will be incarcerated because there are information officers around every corner.
Additionally, everyone is so full of hate. The protagonists both intensely dislike each other, one of them is intensely disliked by the rest of their unit and the other is constantly patronized due to her disability, and additionally their unit is collectively hated by everyone else.
The story with the all-women night bomber airplane unit is inspired by the Night Witches, an actual group of Soviet women who used badly constructed training planes to bomb the Germans during WWII. In the afterword, the author explains this and the extensive research she did on the Night Witches, Soviet Union and WWII. She says this was her inspiration, but... it mostly just felt like this was normal historical story on which a few fantasy elements and new names were slapped without any further effort.
And that did not work for me in this case.
Most importantly, the fantasy elements just felt so inconsequential. The different ways of magic were interesting but had no real connection to the rest of the plot, the living metal stuff was cool but not utilized during or relevant to the story in any way, and the shape shifting, telepathy using information officers did play a role, except their magical capacities were completely left outside of their plot. All of these fantasy elements could have easily been left out without changing much of the plot or structure, and in a way it feels to me like it would have been better without them.
Part of this was that the focus of the plot was definitely on the interpersonal relationships rather than on anything else. There are a few side plots around the airplanes, the war, and the unit, but all of that was secondary, led nowhere or was forgotten in the end.
That said, the relationships were incredibly complex and interesting.... but, as mentioned above, also incredibly hateful, which didn't make for the most pleasant reading experience. Development only really happened towards the end, and even then it felt like some really cool dynamics were left unexplored.
What I did enjoy most were Magdalena, who had slight love interest vibes though ultimately there was no romantic subplot whatsoever, and Tannov, one protagonist's former close friend who then becomes an information officer and thus antagonistic - except he is still pretty much her only friend because everyone else hates her. Sadly, the potential of that relationship was also left largely unexplored aside from portraying a bit of his inner conflict, but no resolution was reached in the end.
We Rule the Night was ultimately not a bad read, but not as engaging as it sounded to me at first. I wish the very cool various fantasy elements had played a larger role, and that the setting would have been farther removed from it's inspiration. Additionally, I hoped for a more uplifting ending, because ultimately it feels like in the face of the war, the story and actions of the girls had exactly zero impact on anything, not even their own lives, really.
We Rule the Night is a war-time story about an all-women night bomber unit and their complex and often hateful relationships, set in fantasy Soviet Union.
Content warnings include: war, violence, death, airplane crashes, sexism, sexual harassment and groping, corrupt government/information officers, ableism towards character with prosthetic legs, blackmail, propaganda; mentions of accident leading to amputation, incarcerated parent, absent parent.
The main emotion that dominated the entire reading experience for me was bleakness. From start to end the characters are utterly miserable and it never gets better at any point. The characters live in a propaganda driven country in the constant fear that if they say or do the slightest wrong thing they will be incarcerated because there are information officers around every corner.
Additionally, everyone is so full of hate. The protagonists both intensely dislike each other, one of them is intensely disliked by the rest of their unit and the other is constantly patronized due to her disability, and additionally their unit is collectively hated by everyone else.
The story with the all-women night bomber airplane unit is inspired by the Night Witches, an actual group of Soviet women who used badly constructed training planes to bomb the Germans during WWII. In the afterword, the author explains this and the extensive research she did on the Night Witches, Soviet Union and WWII. She says this was her inspiration, but... it mostly just felt like this was normal historical story on which a few fantasy elements and new names were slapped without any further effort.
And that did not work for me in this case.
Most importantly, the fantasy elements just felt so inconsequential. The different ways of magic were interesting but had no real connection to the rest of the plot, the living metal stuff was cool but not utilized during or relevant to the story in any way, and the shape shifting, telepathy using information officers did play a role, except their magical capacities were completely left outside of their plot. All of these fantasy elements could have easily been left out without changing much of the plot or structure, and in a way it feels to me like it would have been better without them.
Part of this was that the focus of the plot was definitely on the interpersonal relationships rather than on anything else. There are a few side plots around the airplanes, the war, and the unit, but all of that was secondary, led nowhere or was forgotten in the end.
That said, the relationships were incredibly complex and interesting.... but, as mentioned above, also incredibly hateful, which didn't make for the most pleasant reading experience. Development only really happened towards the end, and even then it felt like some really cool dynamics were left unexplored.
What I did enjoy most were Magdalena, who had slight love interest vibes though ultimately there was no romantic subplot whatsoever, and Tannov, one protagonist's former close friend who then becomes an information officer and thus antagonistic - except he is still pretty much her only friend because everyone else hates her. Sadly, the potential of that relationship was also left largely unexplored aside from portraying a bit of his inner conflict, but no resolution was reached in the end.
We Rule the Night was ultimately not a bad read, but not as engaging as it sounded to me at first. I wish the very cool various fantasy elements had played a larger role, and that the setting would have been farther removed from it's inspiration. Additionally, I hoped for a more uplifting ending, because ultimately it feels like in the face of the war, the story and actions of the girls had exactly zero impact on anything, not even their own lives, really.