Review: "Firebird" by Elizabeth Wein

Firebird by Elizabeth Wein
Published 2018 via Barrington Stoke
★★★

I was born in a nation at war. I grew up in the shadow of war. And, like everyone else my own age, I had been waiting all my life for "the future war". (12)

As Germany closes in on Leningrad, Nastia takes to the skies: out of Leningrad and away from the front lines—for now. A qualified pilot with far more flight hours than many of the men in the sky, it's nonetheless slow going for the government to approve woman pilots taking an active role in the war.

Like White Eagles, Firebird is written for less confident readers—shorter and with simpler language than her more mainstream books, but with the same teenage-ready themes and love of flying. I love that this one highlights Nastia being afraid; she's as solid a pilot as she can be, but that doesn't make her invincible, and even as she finds ways to power through, she finds her early experiences with war understandably terrifying.

I said this with White Eagles too, but this is one that really, really makes me hope that Wein will eventually write something longer about the female pilots of the USSR. I've read a (very) little about them, and the differences between their experience and the UK experience (for example) are fascinating. Women flying in combat; a city under siege; even the fact that the USSR supported Germany up until shortly before Germany invaded them. (Nastia's story is not really one of Leningrad, but there's a story in there too—we get a bit of it from the letters she receives, but...oof. I've been reading a bit about the siege since finishing this book, and it's just staggering.)

The ambiguous ending is great, but I'd have loved a longer book with more space to explore the chief's story, or Blondie's, et cetera. I do think Firebird is doing exactly what it set out to do, but I suppose I'm back to eagerly awaiting Wein's next full-length book.