Title: Fawkes
Author: Nadine Brandes
Genre(s): Historical Fantasy
Length: 448 pages
Published: July 10th, 2018
Rating: ★★★★
I have been eagerly awaiting Fawkes’ release since about January, I think. Nadine has spoken many, many times at OYAN workshops and is generally a delightful human being, maybe that had something to do with it… BUT, I have a soft spot for historical fantasy. Somehow, despite really not caring for straight up historical fiction, throw in a little magic and I’m your girl. This book got me good.
Thomas Fawkes is turning to stone, and the only cure to the Stone Plague is to join his father’s plot to assassinate the king of England.
Silent wars leave the most carnage. The wars that are never declared but are carried out in dark alleys with masks and hidden knives. Wars where color power alters the natural rhythm of 17th-century London. And when the king calls for peace, no one listens until he finally calls for death.
But what if death finds him first?
Keepers think the Igniters caused the plague. Igniters think the Keepers did it. But all Thomas knows is that the Stone Plague infecting his eye is spreading. And if he doesn’t do something soon, he’ll be a lifeless statue. So when his Keeper father, Guy Fawkes, invites him to join the Gunpowder Plot—claiming it will put an end to the plague—Thomas is in.
The plan: use 36 barrels of gunpowder to blow up the Igniter King.
The problem: Doing so will destroy the family of the girl Thomas loves. But backing out of the plot will send his father and the other plotters to the gallows. To save one, Thomas will lose the other.
No matter Thomas’s choice, one thing is clear: once the decision is made and the color masks have been put on, there’s no turning back.
Summary from Amazon
- Thomas Fawkes is a precious bundle of conflict and I enjoyed watching him suffer very much. Poor boy tries so hard and really does have so much working against him. He just wanted his own mask and to maybe not die of the stone plague… Why this?
- I also am a sucker for child/parent conflict in fiction and this! book! Guy and Thomas! So many issues to be worked out, such stubborn men, what a journey. What an ending.
- It’s almost a heist story! Who doesn’t love a good heist story? Sometimes it’s easy to lose track of characters in a group like that, but I found myself getting attached to each and every one of the plotters.
- Emma. Emma is beauty, Emma is grace, Emma will punch you in the face. I get nervous about YA love interests, but Emma is very much her own person and what a wonderful person that is. And precious gentleman that he is, Thomas treats her as such.
- Like I said, I do really love this magic system! It’s so simple – mask wearers control things the same color as their mask, usually. There’s the side that doesn’t mess with white, where all colors come from, and there’s the side that does – but there are so many possibilities in there. People are throwing around whole carts just because they’re brown! Not to mention the implications for artists, which I do wish was touched on just a little more.
- The world building really stood out to me, not just the made up bits, but the attention to detail on the locations. It felt like the perfect balance of fact and fiction, which I imagine is a hard line to walk with anything historically based. I also very much appreciated the author’s note about what was true and what was fictionalized. I’m one of those people that likes to know.
- And finally, what I most appreciated about this story was that neither side of the conflict felt like a straw man argument. Though I had a pretty good feeling of how this was going to end, there were plenty of times where I found myself thinking ‘yeah… I can see why they’d believe that’. Falling back on Thomas’s conflict, this is why he works. He actually has choices to consider and real, important people to him on either side. It’s not good vs. evil, it’s bigger and more complex than that. The way he bounces between the two makes sense, which makes following his journey all the more engaging.
Fawkes by Nadine Brandes is a colorful (haha) reimagining of the gunpowder plot that doesn’t quite end with the bang you might expect and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
abruptly mystic 