Midnight Wings: A Science Fiction Retelling of Cinderella.

I love a good space opera. I'm also a sucker for a fun fairy tale retelling. Midnight Wings combines the two, and it is delightful.

El dreams of being a fighter pilot. But with her stepmother and stepsisters trashing her reputation to lower her ranking on the social grid, taking everything she earns at her mechanic job as “payment” for keeping a roof over her head, and filling the rest of her waking hours with chore after chore, she figures the closest she'll ever get to being a pilot is the flight simulator.

But when a contest is announced, with the winner to be a fighter pilot, El thinks maybe this is her chance to escape her life of drudgery. Of course, nothing goes like she envisions, and her hope of breaking free begins to dwindle. Thankfully, she's going to get a little help from some unexpected sources.

This was really an enjoyable read! El and Ri remind me of Theo and Galian in S. Usher Evans' Madion War trilogy a little bit. In both, we have an underprivileged young woman who wants to fly/is a pilot, and life circumstances bring her into contact with a young man of the royal persuasion. Different settings, and the story unfolds differently from their meeting, but similar in that regard. It's also a bit more practical in execution than the fairy tale on which it's based, which I enjoyed. I'm not a hearts and flowers kind of girl. I much prefer El as a jet mechanic and aspiring pilot, doing her best to kick butt and take names, than the original Cinderella fleeing at midnight and leaving a delicate glass slipper behind. El is my kind of girl. Not afraid to get dirt under her nails, and not downplaying her skills for a man.

Midnight Wings isn't what I'd call a full-length story, so there wasn't quite as much world-building as I'd like to see. However, given that it's the first in a series, I'm hopeful that subsequent entries will flesh out Rove City a bit more.

Overall, I found it a solid, well-paced read, and if the ending wasn't really a surprise, the main character is absolutely a different spin on the original. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Sieling's work and meeting more of the characters in the Rove City universe.

Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy from BookSirens and the author. All opinions here are mine, and I don't say nice things about books I don't actually like.