A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking

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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. 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?

Mona’s wry and often disgusted commentary on what’s happening around her and just how far the situation has been left to go awry reads like both Sixteen Ways and the Discworld. Mona sees that things are going wrong, and comments about it to herself. A lot. There may be a certain amount of gallows in her humor, but then the situation does require it. 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.” If this sounds like the plot of every other YA fantasy novel, it isn’t. Firstly, the way Mona uses her supposedly small gift to protect herself and her allies is both unique and unnerving; the author’s experience writing horror stories really shows through, as does her attention to detail. Anyone who owns a sourdough starter knows how uncanny it can be to hear this faceless living mass bubbling in a jar. Now imagine if it could ooze around on its own, and eat other things the way it eats flour and water, like your enemy’s face, for example. This creature exists in the novel as Mona’s familiar. She calls it Bob.Where Harry Potter comes in, of course, is that Mona is just 14 and she’s expected to save the city. Which is ridiculous and insane and she’s very aware of the fact that there are lots of adults who weren’t adulting very well at all. It’s up to her and it just plain shouldn’t be. But it still is. Because even if she CAN manage to get better adults it’s not going to happen in time to save the city. So it’s all up to her, no matter how much she downright KNOWS that she is in over her head. Nefarious Last Words (NLW™): not all YA stories are created equal. Most Some are crappy as fish, while a few others are bloody shrimping NOT. And that, my Little Barnacles, is a scientifically proven fact.

Fortunately, the proof is in the baking, and the baking, indeed, was really good. YA, light magical effects (at first), and a real love of baking and making her gingerbread men. So far, so good, but with the evil wizard hunting down ALL the mages, no matter how quirky, it becomes a matter of survival. In this case, fourteen-year-old Mona’s magic only works on bread or pastries. There are other wizards in the city of Riverbraid but they are similar to Mona with specific abilities or not that powerful at all. I USED MY LIBRARY TO PROCURE THIS BOOK...THEN I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT ONE. A YA NOVEL ABOUT A TEEN. AND IT ***just*** WON A 2021 LOCUS AWARD!! I make it no secret, I’m a big fan of T. Kingfisher, another name for Ursula Vernon. It’s true that I’ve been more familiar with her adult horror thus far, but it appears I’m gradually developing a taste for her Young Adult/Middle Grade fantasy as well. There’s something about her style that reminds me very much of the work of Francis Hardinge, another children’s author I regard highly for her imaginative world-building, lovable protagonists, and yes, stories with maybe just a hint of darkness. You’re making their lives better, just a little tiny bit. It is nearly impossible to be sad when eating a blueberry muffin. I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific fact."

Why would a grouchy old fuffertut like me buy a (Kindlesale, to be fair) copy of a library book he's already read? Because he plans to re-read it. Yep...I want to have it so that I won't need to fuss my drawers procuring it when I am most in need of a laughing, weeping, cheering-my-fool-lungs-out read that doesn't have the effrontery to wink at me or let me know it's clever-clever. Story gets told, ideas get presented, world gets saved, and just keep the sourdough starter firmly in place or it'll get weird ideas. The great wizards, the magi that serve the Duchess, they can throw fireballs around or rip mountains out of the earth, heal the dying, turn lead into gold. Me, I can turn flour and yeast into tasty bread, on a good day. And occasionally make carnivorous sourdough starters.”