★★
I picked this book up thinking it was a historical fiction book, but I found out immediately that it was also a fantasy book, which I discovered out did not mix very well in this book.
This book is loosely based off Guy Fawkes who attempted to kill King James, only in our book there's the stone plague and magical masks that people wear to give them power. We find out that our main character, Thomas, did not receive his mask from his father, which is the only way to receive a mask, so Thomas goes out to find his father. Thomas's father agrees to give him a mask if he helps with his plot to kill the king, Thomas says 'sure, why not?' which irritated me so much. Why on earth would you commit to doing something you had no need or want to do only to receive the mask? Oh, I forgot to mention there's a love interest and a really bland bully named Henry who add nothing to the story.
Honestly, I have to say that this book let me down, it wasn't anything like I thought it was going to be. I felt like the fight scenes in this book were not depicted very well. The romance between Thomas and Emma was dry and felt like it was only in there to make his have a love interest and to add more pages to the book.
Stone plague is what many people in this world have died from, Thomas having only lost his eye to the plague wears an eye patch, which is sometimes forgotten in the book. Later in the book Thomas loses his eyesight due to the Stone plague, and somehow gets it back by chanting color names? That part was extremely confusing and left me unsure of what have happened.
Thomas finds Emma and his suddenly remembers all the times he tried to impress her, I would've liked it more if they had just met, instead of them each have a history of trying to impress each other. Emma wears her mask and suddenly we find out that she's an African who uses magic to change her skin tone? Once again, I was confused, with the scenes that had importance to the book being rushed.
Henry is known from Thomas's old school and calls him cyclops, which got very annoying after a while and Henry never really had any reason to continue to call him time after time.
We later find out that the Stone plague is controlled by a man who is trying to kill King James so can he can raise Princess Elizabeth himself? John Dee created the Stone plague and can control who he gives it to, he miraculously 'cures' Thomas, who finds out about the plague after Dee is brought onto the plan to assassinate the king. Dee later makes Thomas sick with the Stone plague, Thomas decides she needs to tell Emma that her guardian might die and the only way to do that is to reveal the entire plot of assassinating the king. Why Thomas had to tell her the whole plot I will never understand.
Overall I ended up giving this book two stars, with the writing annoying me, such as starting sentences with because and having sentences with only one word in a sentence. The fighting or action scenes were not depict and left me feeling confused.
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