What do you get when you mix historical fiction, magic, and treason?

Fawkes, obviously. It was a trick question. But in a good way. As if the allure of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot wasn’t enough, Brandes creates an alternative history where color magic is a thing, which adds an interesting new layer to a well-known historical event.

Fawkes is all the best things of the Gunpowder Plot—treason, secrecy, Guy Fawkes, regicide, sword fights, and plague—with the added element of magic.

Just as a fun side unrelated sidenote (me, random? I can hear you gasping. Surely not)—Nadine Brandes has actually recently become started a YouTube channel, and she’s funny and insightful and fun to watch. If you’re a writer, she gives lots of great advice. If you’re not a writer, she’s got a great personality … and did you not see the funny thing? So check out her channel.

Thank you to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for an eARC of this, in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

 

❧ HAVE YOU SEEN THAT COVER?

For those of you that have not: it’s gorgeous. Before I even knew what the book was about, I spotted that cover and just threw money at my computer screen. Which is an extremely ineffective way of doing pretty much anything except making a mess that you have to clean up. But anyway.

Not that I judge books by their covers, of course. But if I did, well, I totally would’ve picked this book up … Oh, and look at that, I did! Funny how that works.

❧ This book almost makes history … fun?

Are those words that you can use in that order like that? It feels so icky. Fawkes is set during the Gunpowder Plot, which is something that you hear a lot in passing, but it’s nothing I really gave much thought to, so it was really interesting to see it come to life.

Obviously, Brandes did her research, and she easily transports the reader back to the early 1600s.

I mean, as I said, I didn’t really know much about it going in,  so I guess I’m taking her word that the research is correct. So maybe that doesn’t mean a lot. The point is, I did learn some neat facts through the story and it felt very authentic and pulled me right in.

❧ After about 65% of the way in, stuff goes down, and I didn’t want to stop reading.

Up until then … eh. The start was slow, and it took time for me to really get into it. I didn’t like the main character, so that made it a bit harder. Aspects of the magic system were confusing, too, and that slowed it down.

But around 65%? Stuff started going down. The stakes were raised. There was turmoil and mystery and lots of things going on, and I was SO ONBOARD.

The payoff in the end was definitely worth it, but it took a long time to get there.

❧ Emma is a mystery rolled in an enigma wrapped in a conundrum and then chopped into puzzle pieces … and I sort of love it?

Also, she’s a badass. I mean, there’s this pesky fact of her being a woman, which was not a good idea in that time period, so that kind of sucks. But she’s a powerful color user and can hold her own in a fight against men. What’s not to love about that? There’s also a lot more to her than meets the eye, literally, but since I don’t want to give away any spoilers, we’ll leave it at that.

❧ White light is essentially the talking sword character in this.

I mean, except it’s not a sword. It’s … light. Okay, so the comparison’s a bit off, but you know what I mean. He’s sassy and snarky and sarcastic, and I LOVED IT. I think we’d get along well, and its addition as a character brought a lot to the story, in my opinion.

❧ I said this was a spoiler-free review, right? UGH. Fine.

I can neither confirm nor deny whether Thomas ever gets the mask he so desperately craves from the beginning of the book. All I can say is that if it were to happen, the manner in which it comes about would obviously be fantastic and more than I would have ever hoped for. Ahem. All of this is just conjecture, obviously. Move along.

❧ I’m honestly not sure how Thomas made it to 16 without, like, tripping and dying. He is SO ignorant about the world around him.

Somehow, he’s managed to go to an Igniter school and study the colors, but he’s never heard of White Light before. He seems to know pretty much nothing at all about the Igniter/Keeper conflict, even though it’s a major influence in the book’s world? The Igniters are in charge, and they believe in it being totally fine to talk to White Light, but apparently, it never came up in conversation at the school. And Thomas doesn’t even know the difference between the Keeper versus Igniter ideology.

❧ Thomas is just … not a great person. I wanted to shake him.

Lest we forget, he reminds us constantly about his cowardice and how he lacks the ability to do things for the right reasons. All of which I can forgive because, hey, we’re all human. I don’t know that I’d rush into dangerous situations to save people, either, because people suck. So maybe he even wins bonus points on this one.

What really bugs me is the things he chooses to harp on. What Thomas chooses to hate people for just don’t make sense to me.

He blames all of his shortcomings on someone else. Any time something goes wrong, he points his finger at a random character and says it was them, even when it was clearly Thomas’ fault.

I will say, though, that his personality shifted around the 75% mark, and from there on, I was on board with him as a character. It was a pretty dramatic shift.

❧ The magic system is sort of just … there?

I still don’t really understand it. It feels not well thought out. The idea of it is novel, and I love the concept, but the execution fell a bit flat for me.

Color magic only works if someone is wearing their mask. Why? Only a father can make their son’s mask and pass on the magic, and only a mother can make her daughter’s mask. Again, why? The rules are oddly specific, but there’s no reasoning behind them. Is magic gender specific? What happens if your mother has color magic and your father doesn’t and you’re male? I guess you’re just SOL, since it takes color power to make a mask?

❧ Fawkes is a religious allegory … which I knew the author was a Christian author, but I guess I didn’t expect the allegory to be so blatant and make so little sense in the book world?

The Igniters are Protestants; Keepers are Catholic. Igniters believe anyone can talk to White Light directly, and Keepers believe people shouldn’t speak to White Light directly but go through the other colors, instead. If White Light attempts to talk to them, they are instructed to ignore it and not give in.

… see where this allegory gets a bit hairy, considering White Light is supposed to be God?

When you take the allegory out, what you’re left with is a confusing conflict that doesn’t entirely add up based on the world established by the book.

The difference between Keepers and Igniters felt contrived and boiled down to whether it was acceptable to talk to White Light. Igniters say yes, because it’s the source of all the color power. Keepers say no, because it’s too powerful for humans to control, but they still worship it and ask blessings and favors from it. Yet, even when Igniters talk to White Light, they don’t control it, they ask things of it. Which is the same thing as asking for blessings and favors, yeah? So I don’t know. The conflict bugged me, because while all this was going on people were literally turning to stone. Priorities, guys.

Have you read Fawkes yet? If you could have a color power, what color would you choose?!