A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

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After all, Mona didn’t kill that girl but the person who did seems to be assassinating magical folks exclusively. Kingfisher’s latest in a run of excellent middle grade fantasies featuring intrepid children and young teens, including Summer in Orcus and Minor Mage. It’s worse when the city inquisitor decides to accuse you of the murder, for no particularly good reason. You won’t find world building on the scale of an epic fantasy here, but what you will get is a surprisingly touching and exciting plot in which the magic system plays a vital role. And that’s the point at which she discovers that EVERYONE has been hoping that someone else would fix the mess.

She accidentally made a sourdough starter familiar when she was terrified and now it is sorta alive, burbles at her when she comes to feed it or grab some material off it to make bread and she has named it Bob.

Mona is fourteen, and has what she sees as a very minor wizarding talent — her skills are, as she describes, mostly limited to “making bread rise and keeping the pastry dough from sticking together”, and at times animating cookies and making gingerbread men dance — and therefore is quite unprepared when her skills are needed to save the city. That the hope Mona manages to provide involves some very bad gingerbread men, a few very large bread golems and a whole lot of carnivorous sourdough starter is what makes the story so much fun.

The other downside (it’s all downsides) of Ursula Vernon being not as famous as she ought is that my library never gets any of her books — infuriating! A great atmosphere, hilarious worldbuilding, snappy dialogues and vivacious characters all mix together to create a delicious adventure with colourful magic as icing on top.On the scale of Kingfisher, I'd say Nine Goblins < Defensive Baking < Minor Mage < The Tomato Thief.

No, we really don't do enough societally to recognize the real quiet heroism demonstrated daily in ordinary (unglamourous) people fighting against incredible odds. Bob the sourdough starter is hilarious and steals every scene (and that ranks right up there with things I never thought I'd say about a book, along with spiders are cool). And I kind of applaud Kingfisher for trying to tell a story about someone who doesn't want to be a hero, and who doesn't get powered-up and stomp all over the story.First a bit of a murder investigation that rolls into a serial killer on the loose and Mina having to hide with the ramping up of wizardly persecution and registration, and then it swings into an attempted coup followed by in-depth preparation for a siege followed by the siege itself. I’m quite happy the story is finished and offered a satisfying ending but I would definitely not be opposed to the further adventures of Mona or her friends. But it never sugarcoats the fact that the situation is beyond dire – and that war is very definitely hell.

There should have been so many grown-ups who should have fixed things before it got down to me and Spindle. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona's city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. Good thing she has found a ally in street kid with a lot of street smarts and a gingerbread man she might have magicked just a little more than she was supposed to, to help her out. Often charming and personable animals are part of both authors’ formulas, but here instead of an animal sidekick we have animated gingerbread men and other bakery products with minds of their own, not to mention Bob the belching sourdough starter.When a body is discovered on the floor of the bakery her life is flipped on its head as she flees from a sinister figure determined to get rid of all wizards. die and those adults who should be in charge are fallible, this is still ultimately an uplifting and empowering tale.