Remember, remember, the fifth of November! In 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament with a bunch of gunpowder located underneath the House of Lords. When he was caught guarding the gunpowder, he ended up becoming associated with treason (and later fighting against the government) forever. Fawkes is a story based on the Gunpowder Plot, with magic and a bit of romance thrown in.
The story starts with a great line: “I wasn’t ready to turn to stone.” As a writer, I’ve started to pay attention to the first lines of books, and I love this one.
In the early 17th century, the England of Fawkes is troubled by a plague where people will turn to stone. Thomas Fawkes has that plague. His absentee father chooses not to give him his mask (your mask is the source of your color magic). This effectively kicks him out of school, so he heads off to London to track down his father — and discovers that his father is in a plot to destroy parliament and install a new government.
In the world of Fawkes, the people are divided into two groups: Keepers, who will only listen to one type of color magic, and Igniters, who practice all kinds of color magic. Both groups blame the other for the plague going on in the city. It seems a lot like today, where there’s a lot of division (particularly in the United States); it seems like there are two main sides that want to blame the other.
Over the course of this story, Thomas Fawkes needs to figure out where he stands on the whole color magic situation. It might even mean that he disagrees with his father. He also reluctantly falls in love with Emma, who has a secret of her own (which I really like).
I agree with some of the other reviews on this book that it starts out slow. I’m not sure what makes it seem that way. Perhaps it’s because we’re still getting to know the characters at that point, and Thomas is still indecisive about the direction that he wants his life to head in. Either way, the story really takes off towards the end. It makes up for the slowness at the beginning.
There is a lot of actual history in this book, which the history buff in me loves. Fawkes is a great story in itself though. If you love both history and magic, I highly recommend it. It might start slow in the beginning, but the book ends with a bang. Not exactly literally. The gunpowder plot was foiled, after all. But it does end spectacularly.