A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking
by T. Kingfisher
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781614505242
Publication Date: July 21, 2020
Pages: 309
Genre: Fiction, Middle Grade
Publisher: Argyll

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...

This title flowed across my radar a while back, and I’ve seen a lot of other T. Kingfisher titles too, but this one is the title that kept standing out, so I thought I’d give it a go.

As the YA book it’s labelled as:  meh.  Maybe it’s me, but it isn’t all that dark and the voice is a bit juvenile for YA.  I suspect my 13 year old niece wouldn’t have patience for it.  But her younger sister, who’s 11, might love it.  So as a middle grade level book, it’s probably not bad.

Mona was a bit whiney (again for the YA it’s labelled as), but I loved Bob the sourdough starter, and the gingerbread man.  Neither of whom had any dialog, which might be a bit telling.  But Kingfisher packs a lot of personality into these two without giving them a voice.  The rest of the characters – the adults – all spoke to Mona as if she was 10 rather than the 14 she is, and yet she’s asked to save the kingdom single-handedly.

There is a very poignant scene at the end between a character named Molly Knacker and her skeleton horse; that scene stood out in what was on whole rather bland writing.

<img class=”alignleft wp-image-16083″ src=”https://www.secretreadingroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/monsters-300×300.jpg” alt=”” width=”110″ height=”110″ />I read this for Halloween Bingo 2022, although without any thought about what square it might fit.  After some consideration, I’m going to use it for the <strong>Monsters square</strong>, and re-assign my original book, <em>The Dark Place</em> to Genre: Mystery.  It would also fit <strong>Dem Bones, Gallows Humor, Genre: Supernatural, Spellbound,</strong> and <strong>Sword and Sorcery.</strong>