A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

Product Information

Winner of the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Young Adult Book, this quirky, charming, and funny fantasy explores what happens when a girl who was never considered 'strong' — including by herself — is forced to be the one to save the day. Mona is an orphan who works in her Aunt Tabitha’s bakery, using her talent with baking (and a little magic) to help with her job. Which is ridiculous and insane and she’s very aware of the fact that there are lots of adults who weren’t adulting very well at all.

stars, almost 5, and I can very much recommend it, especially as a winter holiday read: there's lots of yummy baking going on and despite of its dark themes, it always manages to maintain a warm and lighthearted tone. She has a lump of sourdough and a gingerbread man as funny sidekicks, and also makes friends with a street kid who teaches her how to survive when things suck. If you are on the lookout for an excellent fantasy that will make you laugh AND make you think, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking has the perfect recipe. I want to have it so that I won't need to fuss my drawers procuring it when I am most in need of a laughing, weeping, cheering-my-fool-lungs-out read that doesn't have the effrontery to wink at me or let me know it's clever-clever.He was steadying himself with a hank of hair in one hand, and with the other he reached up and caught the tears I hadn’t known I was crying.

This book was the kind of story I wish I had when I was a teen—just the right amount of sarcasm and dark humor mixed with incredible worldbuilding and a nonstop storyline. I liked the Duchess, and the fact that this anti-establishment book clearly demonstrates how absolute power isn’t absolute and is also fallible.

Mona’s wry and often disgusted commentary on what’s happening around her and just how far the situation has been left to go awry reads like both Sixteen Ways and the Discworld. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. It’s fun to see Mona bringing a rather stale gingerbread man to life, but to have the gingerbread man unexpectedly develop its own personality is, well, icing on the cake. None of this is terribly useful magic, apparently, though she can convince dough to be better, as in fresher, softer, tastier.

Both funny and completely believable, the way Mona’s desperate efforts to save the day made this a gripping read so that I stayed up far too late to discover what happened. I felt that it had such rich themes and such a wonderful premise that even more could have been made of it, we could have gone into much more detail concerning the magic system, the world, etc. When you're different, even just a little different, even in a way that people can't see, you like to know that people in power won't judge you for it. I don’t even care about pastries, but think I may sell my soul for a freshly baked sweet bun right now. I don't think I've ever listened to so many chapters about battle and preparation for battle in a middle grade book as I did in this one.Mona of course is in the middle of it, discovering more and more about her power, and what it can do.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking won the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction for Best Young Adult Novel of 2020, [1] the 2021 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, [2] the 2021 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Book, [3] the 2021 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel, [4] and the 2021 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. Locus commended Vernon's "ability to craft engagingly quirky characters", and her portrayal of "a Pratchettian world where magic makes for a mostly amusing background, except when it doesn't. Not that the stabbity-stabbity gingerbread man on the cover isn’t adorable, but it was definitely the title that got me. Una novela juvenil entrañable, adictiva y con una chispa especial gracias a su genial narradora, su ambientación es realmente lo que hace la lectura un poco de "lugar feliz" al menos para mi (la ciudad medieval con magia, hechiceros y conspiraciones) pero también tiene momentos bastante oscurillos y sorprende con alguno de sus giros y reflexiones. I’m quite happy the story is finished and offered a satisfying ending but I would definitely not be opposed to the further adventures of Mona or her friends.From the adorable cover and title (and the fact our main protagonist is fourteen years old), I thought this was an MG story. I had a little bit of confusion when the audiobook was narrated in a British accent (although I don't think the narrator was British? T Kingfisher's books are like a hug - a dark, sometimes frightening hug, but with characters that you can't help falling in love with, just a little bit. Had Kingfisher been content to keep it a smaller story like in Minor Mage, it would have worked better for me. Pure unadulterated fun seemingly aimed at middle school aged children who like some darkness in their reading or adults who still enjoy some magic in their lives.