A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking

A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking (2020) T. Kingfisher

Mona isn’t an impressive wizard. Her power is is with baked goods, which is very specific, and (as far as she can tell) not much good unless you’re a baker. Which she is.

But someone is killing wizards, and it seems like Mona isn’t quite as minor as she thinks she is.

She is, as I said, wizard that controls baked goods.

Bob popped several bubbles, which is his version of an enthusiastic greeting. Bob is my sourdough starter.

He’s the first big magic I ever really did, and I didn’t know what I was doing, so I overdid it.

You’re feeling really dry, I suggested to the bread. Really stale. Hard as a rock. Usually I have to be touching something in order to make it do anything really impressive, but for just going stale, as long as I can see it, I can work with it. It wants to go stale. Bread is very accommodating that way.

I have no idea what I thought this story was going to be, but it wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

Which is perfectly fine, because it was a fun story.

Generally you have to be careful when you add water and flour to a sourdough starter, to make sure that you’ve got the right proportions and all, but in Bob’s case, it was easy. I stuck both hands into the soup tureen and tried to convince him that what the world needed was a whole lot more Bob. As this coincided with what Bob himself had always believed, pretty soon I had commandeered a horse trough and had footmen dumping fifty pound sacks of flour into it.

Although this isn’t quite a kid’s book, it would definitely be fine for older kids. It’s just a little dark, and there are some themes that younger kids might not get. But there’s nothing in it not ok for kids.

Publisher : Red Wombat Studio
Rating: 7.5/10

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