Thursday, August 20, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher


A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is the latest novel from fantasy writer T Kingfisher (also known as Ursula Vernon), and is the latest in her "is this a kids book - who knows?" genre of fantasy short novels.  The last one of these she put out was Minor Mage, a short novella (reviewed here) about a boy and his armadillo familiar....being sent out by an angry mob of scared villagers on a quest and featuring murderous adults, a boy who makes harps out of murdered peoples' bones, and well...other things that don't typically wind up in kids' books.  Which is not to say it wasn't a strong story, with really enjoyable characters, and a pretty darn cynical take on adult society.  So naturally when this month came with the announcement of a second book like this one - one with another child wizard with oddball talents and a very COVID appropriate familiar (a sourdough starter!), i marked its release date instantly on my calendar.

And A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is very similar to Minor Mage in theme, except honestly it's a bit better.  Once again we have a group of very lovable characters to follow, whether that be the 14 year old girl whose magic only works on bread and dough, the pickpocket from the slums, or even the crazy woman who can reanimate dead horses' bones.  And we again have a story in which children are forced to act because of adults' failures, one in which the costs of heroism are fully apparent.  These are dark themes for children is what I'm saying - all in a book that also contains animated gingerbread men, a sourdough starter that's basically an eldritch horror, and well....cookies!  Only Kingfisher/Vernon could pull this off, and yeah she did so damn well.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
14 Year Old Mona is a baker, with a minor talent for wizardry.  It's not a very good talent - she can only magick up bread and dough, which is good if you want perfectly baked bread or dancing gingerbread as a distraction, but not good for really anything else.  Not like those other wizards, who can manipulate water or summon lightning or whatever.  Whereas the most powerful thing Mona has ever done is create an unkillable animate sourdough starter that has a tendency to eat small things.  And honestly, all that's fine with her, as she goes about her daily life of helping her aunt and uncle run their bakery - the best bakery in the City of Riverbraid.

But when she gets up at 4AM to get ready for opening one day, she finds the corpse of a dead girl in the kitchen.  And when the constables are called, an Inquisitor from the Duchess' palace comes and accuses Mona of murder - a charge she only gets out of due to the Duchess' interference.  But as Mona gets back to the city, she discovers that it is not as safe as she once thought, with minor magickers like herself going missing or leaving, and a newfound fear of magick in the streets.  And with the Duchess' loyal army of powerful wizards gone from the city, it may be down to her - and the other down on their luck people from the streets who might be willing to help - to save everyone.
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Again, it's hard to review this book without flashing back to Minor Mage, because this book features some very very similar themes.  Like that book, our child protagonist, in this case 14 year old Mona, doesn't want to be a hero.  She just wants to be a baker, because that's what she enjoys at the moment. She's 14 - so obviously that could change as she grows, but for now, she's happy living with a pair of relatives in her aunt and uncle who actually love her, even if they aren't her deceased parents.  And yet events transpire that there is literally no one else who can possibly take the necessary actions to save everyone in the City from adults going horribly wrong.  The difference of course from Minor Mage is that the adults going wrong in this case are incited by greed and lusts-for-power, whereas in that book the adults forcing the child on a journey were incited by fear and panic.  But both books are very much about the theme that the hero's journey isn't something we should force on children....and this book even goes further, and suggests that the title of "hero" is used too often even beyond that to try to avoid the ramifications of what such quests and other impossible tasks have on people - both physically and mentally.

That last paragraph really makes this book sound dour and serious, and while the themes are indeed so (and so I don't regret starting this review with the same), the story plays with these themes in very ways that seem silly and creative on the surface, as with any T Kingfisher novel.  So of course our heroine is a very lovable 14 year old baker with wizardry simply to make dough do what she wants....and whose reaction to stress has resulted in things like a sourdough starter that's basically an eldritch horror - a lovable eldritch horror mind you, but there's a reason her uncle won't go down there.  And Kingfisher manages to find some very creative and inventive ways for her to use her magic, which makes the novel really fun to read to see what's going to happen next.  And then there's Mona's supporting case, most notably Spindle, a pickpocket from the streets who showcases that street smarts is honestly more impressive than nearly any other kind of smarts - particularly that of the noble class - and Knackering Molly, an insane magicker whose power is....to make dead horses walk.

And then there's Mona's parental figures - her aunt and uncle.  I've mentioned them above but I want to mention them again here, because honestly it's nice to see a pair of parental figures who actually are lovely and supportive like they are.  The book takes them out of play for large stretches of time, and yet when they do show back up they are full on about backing Mona up both emotionally and physically with the baking, which is a delight.  So much of this book (and minor mage) is about adults and other humans being horrible beings, which is what requires so much of people who shouldn't have to give it, but Mona's parents really showcase how not everyone is like that, and prevents this from being some sort of dark book overall.

All of this leads to a plot that essentially features two parts with both parts winding and turning in ways you might not expect.  As always with Kingfisher, the book sets up all the parts necessary for the ending to come about well in advance so as to make them seem natural and fair, but the book is tricky about how it does that - so in particular the way the final conflict is resolved involves a major fake out which took me by surprise but which really fit the narrative better than if it was played straight.  There are some predictable parts - an antagonist's actions in the final two chapters are so obvious that I kept waiting for them to occur until they finally did - but overall the story works so well and never outstays its welcome.

So yeah, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is great.  It's fun and creative and yet serious at the same time in how it deals with the themes of heroism and what we use the "hero" label for, and how inappropriate it is to subject children - and others - to that label.  But it's still lovely and enjoyable at the same time.  It's a hell of a combination and I highly recommend it.
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