The Guild Master’s Daughter
New York City, 1816. Faith has Talent—the ability to use a special type of ink which can bring sketches to life. However, her stepfather, Colonel Trumbull, refuses to acknowledge her abilities. He sees it as a perversion for a woman to have such skill. Until he becomes a Guild Master, he decides an arranged marriage is the best way to keep her distracted from developing her latent abilities. But Faith has had a taste of what the Ink can do. When she uncovers her stepfather has deliberately lied to her, she decides to train in secret. With Colonel Trumbull away on business, Faith seeks help from an attractive young painter named Charles Ingram. Now Faith hopes she learns enough to earn her own pen before her stepfather finds out.
Faith is a young girl who’s learning to stand up for herself. I appreciated how her characterization feels true to the time period. The possibilities of imagination run beautifully wild within this story. As Faith begins to observe her world with an artistic eye, the author does a tremendous job of layering the setting with sensory and emotional stimuli. There is a glorious burst of world-building, artistic expression, and magical discovery. Faith begins to create the world she’s always dreamed of in secret. However, this freedom is balanced on a knife’s edge of being discovered by her stepfather. In her desperation to hold onto this world, called Phantasia, she will make choices that put others in the crossfire and threaten budding relationships. Undercurrents of more subtle themes boil beneath the surface, including stifling social mores, morally-gray choices, forbidden fruits, and secret societies. An exemplarily researched Regency-era fantasy tale about the passionate pursuit of realizing one’s dreams that swept me away with its prose.
