Fawkes

How many of us acted and spoke out and fought for beliefs we held because our environment told us to? As much as I wanted to blame my England, I knew the blame sat with me. I hadn’t trained myself to discern. To examine. To seek the source.
That was about to change.

 

Summary
Thomas Fawkes is battling a deadly disease. He is slowly turning to stone. But now is the day of his Color Test and he is sure that if he manages to bond with the right color, he will be strong enough to cure himself of the plague.

Writing
The language matches the setting of the story very well. It’s very lyrical and poetic. However, something about the writing style made it very hard for me to read this book. I was simply unable to immerse myself fully in the story.

The most annoying this was how… cheap the writing was. The author rarely used creative solutions to make two people meet or to push the story forward. That was really disappointing. And aggravating. For example – Thomas wears an eyepatch to hide his plague. And instead of having this eyepatch on a string so it would be secure, he is gluing it to his face with some kind of paste that can dry out at any moment and fall off. Brilliant.
Also, this book makes it seem like London is a small village, with little more than 200 people living there, with how easy it for for Thomas to just stumble upon the person he was looking for.

Characters
Reading from the perspective of Thomas Fawkes was very challenging. The first half of this book is filled with him whining and complaining and doing one immature and irresponsible thing after another. He has very strong beliefs and opinions , but doesn’t seem to know why he believes in those things. It’s very hard to understand his motives. And while I can see some character growth throughout the book, it’s not enough to make him likeable in any way, shape or form.

There was a great opportunity to develop a relationship between Thomas and his father, but it wasn’t well utilised at all. Instead of starting a really important conversation about the father/son dynamic, the development of relations between Guy and Thomas was completely skipped, making Guy to be emotionally distant and abusive person, instead of a struggling father trying to do what he thinks is right.

Plot
You need to work your way through over 250 pages of nothing even remotely interesting, only to find out that the rest of this book isn’t that much better. The fact that I knew how this story is going to end before I even reached the 100th page, didn’t make it any more enjoyable. But even though I guessed the ending correctly, this novel  still took a few unexpected turns, and that was a really nice surprise.

Sadly, I can’t judge the historical aspect of this book. I was never a history nerd and I am not especially familiar with the Gunpowder Plot.

Overall
It’s just yet another book with failed potential. It tried to do so many things, that it eventually failed at all of them. Well, not all of them. I will admit, the conversation about the importance of checking your facts and opinions and about always seeking the source was pretty well executed. But everything else – from talking about family to racism – was definitely underdeveloped.

 I received a complimentary copy of this book from Thomas Nelson through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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