A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

the book is funny and has an intriguing premise which i appreciated, but the ending felt very rushed and left a lot of threads untied for me. the villains felt two-dimensional, like they were just villains for the sake of the plot. then again, maybe i’m expecting too much from a book that’s targeted at younger readers.

i’m also disappointed with the portrayal of the secondary antagonists as uncivilised, barbarian cannibals. that blatantly colonialist rhetoric felt very out of place in a book with generally progressive, anti-fascist themes.

the book also could’ve used better editing. i noticed that characters had names swapped or changed out midway and there were quite a few punctuation errors.

The young teenage baker and bread wizard Mona finds herself in a series of events that spiral out of control in a swirl of politics and war.

As far as YA books this is pretty cute and decent. It has an interesting take on magic, and the main characters were compelling. There was a bit of a lean into toilet humor at points that was kind of eye-roll worthy, but overall, pretty enjoyable.

A YA book with more murder than one might expect, and an awful lot of allegory. Wizards look just like normal people, but someone in power wants them all registered and blames them for the ills in society.

I think I would have found the plot too heavy-handed (not really been into YA since I was one) if not for the author's yet-again delightful whimsy. This is narrated by the protagonist, who is a baker, and so all metaphors and the like are baking related. Everything has the colour of honey, the consistency of dough, or the smell of almonds. The actual enchanted gingerbread men and sourdough starter are the icing on the cake.

No, I am not sorry.

I think it's time to bake some gingerbread men and draw angry eyebrows!