T. Kingfisher is an author I’ve seen floating around in the blogosphere a lot. However, I always doubted whether these books were for me, as I’m not much of a horror reader. And let’s be honest, most books by this author fall into the horror category. However, in spring 2025, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking was published in Dutch and immediately caught my attention. It’s not horror, but still fantasy. Was this an introduction to a new-to-me author gone well?
About the book
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher Published by Argyll Productions on July 21, 2020
Pages: 306
ISBN: 9781614505242
Genres: Fantasy, Middle-grade
Rating: 3/5
Fourteen-year-old Mona isn’t like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can’t control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance.
But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…
My review
Before reading
Quite frankly, I totally didn’t register that this was a middle-grade fantasy. I hardly read middle-grade, so I was a bit taken back by this fact. However, I still wanted to give this author a fair chance, especially because my fellow bloggers speak so highly of Kingfisher’s books. I therefore went into this reading experience with quite high expectations, I simply wanted to share in this enthusiasm.
Characters
Unfortunately, I had some trouble with the characters. For me personally, they stay a bit too superficial. However, for the age group this book is aimed towards, main character Mona is pretty relatable. She is fourteen years old and deals with all the insecurities that comes with adolescence and growing up. On one hand she can care for herself and knows what she wants, whereas she has a lot of insecurities on the other hand. Mona seems to have high self-esteem, but in reality she is just a teenage girl that simply doesn’t know everything. Kingfisher has elaborated these contradictions pretty well. Unfortunately, the secondary characters stay quite superficial too. I wanted to know more about Spindel and the others, but this is probably not the type of book to expect this from.
Writing
The writing style is fine and pretty accessible. Despite me not liking the characters that much, it invited me to keep turning those pages. The language is not too difficult and suits the target audience pretty well. I therefore flew through this book pretty quickly.
Plot
For middle-graders, this plot is simply awesome. It’s action-packed and pretty tense at times, without being too scary. Of course this depends on the reader. For me however, it wasn’t all of the above. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the plot, but it didn’t keep me on the edge of my seat. What I did enjoy however, were the underlying deeper layers. Mona is a wizard and in her kingdom, wizards are seen as lesser citizens. They are chased after and even killed. This means they face oppression and racism on a daily basis. Mona wants to stop this and fights against it. She wants to improve the world, but she is convinced she lacks the skills to do so. Kingfisher portrays this insecurity again pretty well, but also shows that you don’t have to be a superhero with badass magic to be an actual hero. You can make a difference anyhow, anytime, even if you don’t have much resources but dough that reacts to magic. I think this message hidden in those deeper layers is important and fits the aim of learning the reader a lesson without this being too obvious. Nevertheless, this doesn’t take away from the fact that advanced – and therefore maybe too much of a critical – reader like me, was not fully intrigued. It was just too easy and simple for me. This book is classified as cozy fantasy by many, but I disagree on that as it’s not cozy at all for the target audience.
Final thoughts
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher is not the introduction to a new-to-me author I was expecting to get. This is partially on me for not being aware that this is a middle-grade novel. However, it is an awesome book for this target audience. The story is action-packed and fourteen year-old Mona is pretty relatable for readers the same age. However, it just wasn’t really my cup of tea. It never really clicked, apart from the message underneath. I strongly recommend this to middle-graders though, but I have to find me another book by this author to give her a fair chance. Will be a challenge as I don’t read horror LOL.
