2020/93: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- T. Kingfisher
Monday, August 17th, 2020 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth2020/93: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking -- T. Kingfisher
Described by the author in her afterword as 'a weird little anti-establishment book with carnivorous sourdough and armies of dead horses', which is wholly accurate. It is a delight.
Mona is fourteen years old, and lives with her aunt and uncle, who run a bakery. Mona is already a successful baker herself, a wizard of bread-dough and cookies: she knows how to persuade dough. Unfortunately, at the beginning of this novel, she discovers a dead body in the bakery, and that sets off a chain of events that endangers Mona's life and the lives of everyone in the city. Inquisitor Oberon is cracking down on magic-users, requiring them to register with the Loyalty Board 'for their own safety'. Mona's friend Knackering Molly (whose companion is a dead horse, and who is not wholly sane) warns her that magickers from the poorer parts of town are disappearing. The police have become a force to be feared. And the Golden General, the city's hero, has led the army off to confront a threat that may not be real.
This is a novel about the downside of being the teenager who saves the day. Mona, with the dead girl's brother Spindle (who's about ten) keeps asking why none of the grown-ups have stopped things before they got this bad. She does not feel qualified to be a hero: "It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job." And she is not especially brave: it's just that circumstances conspire to put her in terrifying situations.
Being a T Kingfisher novel, though, it's funny as well as dark. Mona's gingerbread-man familiar is cute, and Bob (the rat-eating sourdough starter) is a truly unique character. There's a Diana Wynne Jones feeling to some of the characters, and an irreverent note to Mona's thoughts as she hides, and runs, and breaks in, and fights. I also liked the way that everything wasn't all right at the end of the book.
Great fun, quite dark, very timely. Also made me want a sourdough starter of my very own.
It seemed like once you agreed that the government could put you on a list because of something you were born with, you were asking for trouble. [loc. 1581]
Described by the author in her afterword as 'a weird little anti-establishment book with carnivorous sourdough and armies of dead horses', which is wholly accurate. It is a delight.
Mona is fourteen years old, and lives with her aunt and uncle, who run a bakery. Mona is already a successful baker herself, a wizard of bread-dough and cookies: she knows how to persuade dough. Unfortunately, at the beginning of this novel, she discovers a dead body in the bakery, and that sets off a chain of events that endangers Mona's life and the lives of everyone in the city. Inquisitor Oberon is cracking down on magic-users, requiring them to register with the Loyalty Board 'for their own safety'. Mona's friend Knackering Molly (whose companion is a dead horse, and who is not wholly sane) warns her that magickers from the poorer parts of town are disappearing. The police have become a force to be feared. And the Golden General, the city's hero, has led the army off to confront a threat that may not be real.
This is a novel about the downside of being the teenager who saves the day. Mona, with the dead girl's brother Spindle (who's about ten) keeps asking why none of the grown-ups have stopped things before they got this bad. She does not feel qualified to be a hero: "It doesn’t make you a hero just because everybody else didn’t do their job." And she is not especially brave: it's just that circumstances conspire to put her in terrifying situations.
Being a T Kingfisher novel, though, it's funny as well as dark. Mona's gingerbread-man familiar is cute, and Bob (the rat-eating sourdough starter) is a truly unique character. There's a Diana Wynne Jones feeling to some of the characters, and an irreverent note to Mona's thoughts as she hides, and runs, and breaks in, and fights. I also liked the way that everything wasn't all right at the end of the book.
Great fun, quite dark, very timely. Also made me want a sourdough starter of my very own.
