A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

My reflections on A WIZARD'S GUIDE TO DEFENSIVE BAKING, by T. Kingfisher, which Karen recently reviewed: The title alone is irresistible! This YA fantasy tale set in a secondary world is quite different in tone and content from Kingfisher’s superb adult horror novels. The only obvious similarity is that, like many of those books, this one is narrated in first person by a female character with a distinctive, witty voice.

Fourteen-year-old orphan Mona works in her aunt’s bakery. Mona’s baking talent encompasses more than mundane skills. In this world, many people have magical gifts, although more often small and specialized than big and flashy, and Mona can do amazing things with dough. She entertains customers by making gingerbread men dance. She keeps one long-lived animated gingerbread figure as a sort of pet. Her other mascot is a bucket of sentient sourdough starter named Bob. He lives in the basement because of his habit of eating animals that stray within his reach.

To recap briefly, as the story begins early one morning, Mona finds a dead girl on the bakery floor. Local law enforcement takes Mona into custody for questioning, and things get worse from there. Following her release after many hours, she’s attacked by ten-year-old Spindle, brother of the murdered girl. After Mona convinces him of her and her family’s innocence, the two of them team up to uncover the truth. A mysterious figure known as the Spring Green Man seems to be involved. Magic-users have been disappearing or dying. Aside from Mona herself, one of the few left in the city is Molly, a kindly but deranged woman whose gift is animating dead horses; she wanders around with a dried-up, nearly skeletal zombie horse. Meanwhile, their city-state is at war, and the authorities are cracking down on magical folk. In desperation, Mona and Spindle eventually sneak into the castle to appeal to the Duchess herself. As the plot thickens, Mona gets unwillingly involved in combat and discovers extraordinary uses for the baking magic she’s always seen as minor and ordinary. While fast-paced and entertaining, with moments of humor, this novel also delves into issues such as the nature of responsibility and heroism.

In common with other young protagonists in Kingfisher's fantasies, Mona considers her magical gifts trivial and unimpressive. Like her counterparts in (for example) MINOR MAGE and ILLUMINATIONS, she discovers her own true worth and surprisingly saves the day by making clever use of those modest abilities.

Margaret L. Carter

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