A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

This is the fourth book by T. Kingfisher that I’ve read—pretty much back to back—and the first one meant for younger readers. T. Kingfisher is a penname for Ursula Vernon, who mostly writes children’s books, but according to her afterword, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking was deemed too dark for her audience by all publishers who had shown interest in it, so she published it under her adult penname.

Mona is a fourteen-year-old baker who works at her aunt’s bakery, happily making bread and muffins. She’s also a minor wizard with affinity to baking—and only to that. She can persuade her dough to have the desired density or the bread not to burn in the oven. And she can animate gingerbread men to amuse her customers. She’s also responsible for the world’s angriest sour bread starter, Bob. It eats rats.

Everything is perfect, until the day Mona finds a dead girl on the floor of the bakery. Someone is killing all minor mages in their town. It’s followed by a fearmongering campaign against them, and a call for all mages to register. Angered by this, Mona decides to demand that the leader of her town do something about it, and gets pulled into dangerous political plotting. Soon she finds herself as the only mage left in town and it’s up to her to defend it with magic. And since it’s bread she knows, it’s bread she uses.

I found this an excellent book. Mona was a great character, resourceful and determined, and she grew a great deal during the course of the book. The story was intriguing and stakes were high enough to keep an adult’s interest. Descriptions of Mona’s magic were fun, and the side characters were great; special mention goes to the gingerbread man who was brilliant. I’m absolutely sure that I would’ve loved this book when I was twelve too. Yes, there were dead bodies and evil adults, but so there were in many other books too that I read at that age. Magic is always intriguing, especially when it’s used as imaginatively as it is here, and a child rising to save the day when adults can’t is always appealing. I would definitely recommend this to middle grade readers.