Reading: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

[white_hart]

I've been meaning to read more of T Kingfisher's work for a while, and I couldn't resist buying her new novel, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, for the title alone. A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is set in a world where magical talents are reasonably common and very specialised; wizards generally have a single thing they can control, whether that be lightning, water, resurrecting dead horses or (like Mona, the narrator of the novel) bringing baked goods to life. All Mona wants to do is to continue to work in her aunt's bakery, honing her skills and tending to the carnivorous sourdough starter she keeps in the cellar, but when she finds a dead body in the bakery one morning she finds herself caught up in a plot to overthrow the ruling Duchess and take over the city where she lives.

This was a fun read, which reminded me a bit of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books in the way it mixes humour and seriousness with a young, magically gifted protagonist. I did struggle a bit with the fact that the city is threatened by an enemy called the Carex, Carex being a well-known brand of antibacterial soap in the UK, and I wasn't entirely sure that some of the baking detail was quite right (but maybe magic makes dough handle differently), but overall I liked it a lot.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This is a wonderful way to respond to all the sourdough on Twitter during lockdown.

[white_hart]

Apparently she started writing the book in 2008 but clearly decided its time had come!

[caulkhead]

I struggled rather with the Carex too. It didn't help at all that it was the brand we always had in the office, when we had an office...

[white_hart]

Yes, we had it in the office too.

[hilarita]

Ditto on the Carex.
Also ditto on the vagueness of the difference between cookie dough and bread dough.

But it's got a lot going for it, and I was only mildly irked by the irk-y bits.

[conuly]

Yeah, the general consensus on my journal is that Ursula Vernon is a delight, but nobody was surprised in her author's note when she said she isn't really a baker.

[cmcmck]

Pratchett's dwarfs go in for defensive (and aggressive) baking of course! :o)