A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking

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But I shouldn’t have had to do any of it. There should have been so many grown-ups who should have fixed things before it got down to me and Spindle. It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job.” A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking reminds me of three really different things; Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Harry Potter, and Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K.J. Parker. And those three things really shouldn’t go together. But they do here.

So needless to say, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking was full of the wonder and whimsy I was expecting. I also loved, loved, LOVED the focus around magic and baking. I mean, deep down, who wouldn’t want the power to create and animate their own gingerbread man army? And of course, Mona is the perfect heroine to lead the way. In many respects, this was a tale of growing up and self-discovery—granted, not uncommon themes when it comes to books for this age group. I love that we grapple with the injustice of powerless groups having to be the ones who have to fix the mistakes of the empowered. Young Mona has a way with bread. She can keep it from burning, or make it taste fresher (or staler, if need be.) She can even make gingerbread men dance the can-can. 'Cause she's a wizard, you see. A 14-year-old wizard who's about to have her life turned upside-down.One day, while 14-year-old wizard Mona is working in her aunt Tabatha's bakery, she finds a dead girl on the kitchen floor. But that is just the start of her troubles because there is a killer in the city and this assassin seems to be targeting magicas - minor ones like Mona. So the holy water creating zombie frogs really is the least of her problems. He stopped there, because if he kept talking, he had to ask a fourteen-year-old girl to come to the front lines of a battle, and he hated it and he knew he had to do it, and I knew I had to come because somebody had to tell the golems what to do. This is a lot to not actually say.” But I did love that at fourteen, Mona is still basically a kid, with young (and snarky) voice and zero contamination with romance that seems to plague so many books aimed at the youngsters. We have our kids grow up too fast in stories, and although Mona does a fair bit of this given the responsibilities thrust upon her, I love that in the end she’s still a kid at heart. I admit that I thought T. Kingfisher (U. Vernon)'s other works were anywhere between pretty good and pretty okay. Before I began this one, I only really knew the title and liked the idea of it, but I didn't know what to really expect.

The story is about a murder mystery, there are dark echoes of totalitarianism and ethnic cleansing (all wizards either have to leave town or are murdered), and finally there's an army threatening the city while its usual defenders are away. And our heroine has only bread magic and sourdough. Can you defend a city with that? Just as interesting as her allies what with their reanimated horse corpses and stuff (those minor magic folk certainly had highly unusual talents). Muhahahahahahaha. Someone is killing magic folk, and suddenly it's up to Mona to figure out who's doing it, AND why . . .before she turns out to be the next victim. She just needs to keep in mind that in magic, creativity is as important as knowledge. of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher 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.

The magic in A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is delightful. Just take a look at the cover with that aggressive little gingerbread man waving a knife. And he is the least thing our fourteen year old magician dreams up when asked to defend her whole town from flesh eating savages. Her magic lies in baking so her defenses range from angry gingerbread men, through giant, bread golems to a carnivorous sourdough starter called Bob. But one day, her world is turned upside down when she comes in to find a dead body on the floor. Worse, she becomes the main suspect in the murder case. Of course, it doesn’t help that the city’s authorities aren’t exactly friendly towards wizards, even those who aren’t considered very powerful. This has emboldened a certain assassin, who is stalking the streets preying on magic users. Soon every wizard is fleeing the city, including poor Mona who has been caught up in the chaos. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is whimsical and dark and imaginative and fantastic. It gets my enthusiastic recommendation for readers both young and old.

Meanwhile, Spindle was still looking at me like I was an idiot. Mind you, he did this so often that I was starting to wonder if he just had an eyelid tic or something—surely I couldn't be that dense, could I?” Book Genre: Childrens, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Magic, Middle Grade, Mystery, Science Fiction Fantasy, Young Adult, Young Adult Fantasy It all starts when Mona discovers a dead body in their bakery. Mona is a wizard that works with bread. Yep, bread. That's it - just bread. And although this is considered minor magic, she still gets accused of the murder solely because she is a wizard. It doesn't take long before she learns there is a growing threat that magicas like her are facing in the city-state and while most magical individuals leave (or are killed), Mona soon finds herself in the unenviable position of having to stand-up and fight against the enemy. Well... I have this... thing". Saying I have a homicidal sourdough starter sounded much too bizarre.”I did not love some of the editing errors (Uncle Albert is called Earl briefly). I wanted more about Bob and more meat to the personal empowerment story. T. Kingfisher is the vaguely absurd pen-name of Ursula Vernon. In another life, she writes children's books and weird comics, and has won the Hugo, Sequoyah, and Ursa Major awards, as well as a half-dozen Junior Library Guild selections.