A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

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Author(s)

T. Kingfisher

Publisher

Argyll Productions

Genre(s)

Age Range

11+

Release Date

July 21, 2020

ISBN

9781614505242

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2021 LODESTAR AWARD for BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK

Fourteen-year-old Mona isn’t like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can’t control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance.

But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…

2021 LODESTAR AWARD for BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK

Editor reviews

2 reviews

Siege. Sorcery. Sourdough.

January 06, 2022 (Updated: January 06, 2022)

Overall rating

5.0

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An absolute delight. <3

This is Middle-Grade/YA fantasy at its most accessible and well-paced. Kingfisher manages just the right balance of likeably flawed characters, tongue-in-cheek humor, and dire stakes. She even worked in the consistent themes of not relying on the people "in charge" to save you, doing the best you can with what you've got, and thinking outside the... er... breadbox? >.> (I'm not sorry.)

Mona, our underdog first-person POV narrator, is a 14-year-old semi-orphaned bread wizard. She lives with her aunt, helping out in the bakery she loves. Mona is largely content with her unremarkable magical existence. But then the magically inclined folk of her city begin dying... it becomes clear her unremarkable status won't be enough to save her. As a heroine, she's more than reluctant. Her baking skills may be top notch, but what use are pastries when she's up against the nefarious designs of people much older and more powerful than her???

Kingfisher's prose is filled with a pleasant ironic whimsy, oft dusted with poignant candor. One could call it easy comfort reading. But this book isn't a refreshing, fun read because it could be classified as Middle Grade... it's an unusually well-crafted book that just so happens to have a youngish (although not at all juvenile) main character. And that is a huge credit to its charm.

It's been a long time since this reviewer enjoyed a fantasy this much--YA, MG, or otherwise.

Favorite Quotes:

-“If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven’t, then you probably don’t. Well…a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I’ve been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you’ll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.”

-“You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don't ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it.”