Thanks again to NetGalley and Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins Publishing for an advanced e-book of “Fawkes” in exchange for an honest review!
I don’t know too much about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 (taking place on November 5th), but what I knew before getting into this novel comes from two sources:
One, “V for Vendetta,” which I honestly hardly remember and probably doesn’t even count.
And two, that episode of “Sherlock” where Watson is almost burned alive on Guy Fawkes Day. Freakin’ traumatic.
But I think it’s better to know nothing about the Guy or the Gunpowder Plot before going into this.
This novel takes the little information and ton of legend surrounding the Fifth Of November and turns it on its head. “Fawkes” by Nadine Brandes follows Guy’s son, Thomas (who may or may not have been a real person) and his struggle to gain his estranged father’s approval by joining the Gunpowder Plot, while juggling his own internal conflicts, and his search for his color magic and curing his Stone Plague (more on that later).
Overall Rating: ☆☆☆☆
Writing: ☆☆☆ ☆
Characters: ☆☆☆
Plot: ☆☆☆ and ½
I adored this, I love historical fiction from the Tudor and Elizabethan eras, and this takes place just past that time, starting about a year after the death of Elizabeth I. The writing here was phenom!! I have so many passages and quotes highlighted. It’s so atmospheric and reminded me a lot of a big hit novel in 2017, “Caraval”. It was hard to not be totally swept up in this world.
I had some issues with the protagonist. I did really appreciate a male YA Fantasy protagonist since I feel like the genre has a very uneven proportion of female to male protagonists. However, Thomas was a little too whiny at times. His character growth was amazing at the end, just sort of off-pace and rushed. I would have liked if his development and growth to be more of a slow burn that didn’t end hastily. The other characters were great, and my favorite parts always had Guy himself in them. Emma, our love interest, was dynamite (get it? Gunpowder Plot? Dynamite? No?…I’ll see myself out then).
I won’t give away her arc though because it was one of my favorite things about this novel and I wish I didn’t know about it before I went in.
The plot was…so-so. It starts off with a bang and ends with one too. But about 60% into it, I started to feel myself slogging through, patiently ticking off the days until the book reached late October, impatient to see the plot finally come to a realization.
Again, I wish I knew even less than what little I knew about the Gunpowder Plot and its conspirators before going into this.
The world-building and magic system in this novel was clumsy too. How it works is there is color magic, and your color is the one presented on your mask (a nod to Guy Fawkes masks ala “V for Vendetta” I suppose). The colors are Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Brown, Grey, Black, and White. And while one would think each color represented an element or piece of nature, it’s unclear. Greens control flora and Yellow control fire, and so on, but it becomes fuzzy. White Magic is the source of the rest of the colors and of the novel’s political conflict and seems as though Black Magic is most useful at night when everything is in darkness (this is Guy’s power). This made me believe one can control anything in the color of your magic, which would make things tricky.
And also, since White Magic is frowned upon for control of multiple color magics, wouldn’t Black Magic be the same if it can control anything in the dark? If my description of this system confused you, that's because I’m still scratching my head over it.
Also, there’s a Stone Plague, which is named in a pretty self-explanatory way, that is thought to be cured by Grey Magic since it can control stone. But if it was possible it really ought to have been common knowledge by the start of the novel, yet the disease is still wreaking havoc on London. There was just a little too much going on here with the magic that wasn’t clearly defined or explained.
I really enjoyed this book, honestly, I did. It was fun and unique and the writing was stunning. Despite the clumsy world-building and a rather immature protagonist, I would recommend this to historical fiction fans no questions asked, thanks to its unique premise and gorgeous writing.“Fawkes” by Nadine Brandes doesn’t come out until July 10th 2018 and can be pre-ordered on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and BookDepository.
