Booklog 39/2020: J. M. Frey: Skylark's Song – Skylark Saga #1

[jacey]

A Netgalley review copy.

Seventeen year old Robin has been working on Saskwyan's battle gliders since she was a child, first as a mid-flight (a mechanic) and then, by chance, as a pilot. She's the only one to survive a skydance with the enemy Klonn pilot flying ace, known only as the Coyote. From then on he's obsessed with her,  stalking her in the skies until the fateful day when he  shoots her down and takes her prisoner. He needs her expertise to fix a rocket pack – the enemy's secret weapon (if it can be made to work). Robin, known only as Skylark, is drawn in by the man, but also wary of his attentions. How much can she believe. Can she trust her feelings? How can she escape?

This steampunky YA story is a thing of two halves. Firstly there's Saskwayan culture of two castes/classes. Robin is low status, and struggles to gain acceptance as a pilot when she's promoted out of her comfort zone. (And is only captured because a fellow pilot sabotages her machine.) Then there's her relationship with her friend, Al, who would like to be much more. Midway, there's a complete change as all the first part of the book becomes irrelevant after Robin is captured by the Coyote and becomes 'Skylark.' We're never really sure whose side Coyote is on. Is he trying to seduce Robin because he genuinely has affection, or is he using her? (He calls her 'my dear' all the time, which is uber-creepy.) She spends a lot of page time trying to work out whether she can love an enemy who has killed so many of her fellow aeronauts.

It’s the first novel in a duology, and I'll have to read the second book to discover whether the first half of this book is relevant to the story as a whole. There were odd things in the worldbuilding which I found frustrating. For instance, the Saskwyans fly gliders into battle against powered aircraft, but we'd been in the air with protagonist several times before we discovered that the gliders were launched from a Zeppelin.