If you read T. Kingfisher already and have not gotten to A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking yet, you are at the right place. If you have not gotten into T. Kingfisher’s works yet, this is also the perfect book to get into her works.

Hi, welcome to The Calcuttan Bibliophile. I review, recommend and bring hype to underrated books here and I believe T. Kingfisher needs more hype — if for nothing else, then for me to have more readers to geek out with over her new releases.

Mona is a bread wizard. She convinces dough to rise just enough and cook exactly perfectly. There might be a sentient roent-eating dough starter that she has named Bob, but Bob stays in the cellar and only hisses at people. Mona also makes gingerbread men dance from time to time to entertain the customers.

There is politics afoot. The city-state she lives in with her uncle and aunt is ruled by a Duchess and her council. There are war wizards who are part of the army, there are smaller wizards who are like Mona, who work with other elements making smaller magics. But Mona is dragged into this complex politics when she found a dead body in the bakery.

She is first suspected of the murder, then exonerated by the Duchess herself who refuses to believe Inquisitor Oberon that a 14 year old bread wizard murdered another minor wizard. She then has the assassin Spring Green Man come after her at the bakery.

Now she believes all that she has been hearing. There is a plot against magickers. People are out there to eradicate their kind. The way Kingfisher frames this bit of politics is very real. Oberon wants the wizards gone. He is having them killed so that most of them leave the city. The ones who stay, he wants their names on a list so that they can be tracked.

The discrimination, the change in attitude in regular people as these new circulars go up and the list — Kingfisher takes a hard stand against it all. This is all told through the perspective of a 14 year old so the language is simple and keeps the humour alive even in very serious situations.

Kingfisher questions the idea of heroism as this 14 year old baker is called upon to save the city against a mercenary army and an assassin hot on her heels. Mona is helped by a street urchin, Spindle, brother to the murdered wizard in the bakery. These two untrained and unprepared children are supposed to save the city as all other means are exhausted.

Mona does not take this lying down. She does her duty, she does more than that, but she does stop to question how it came to this where the city had to rely on an untrained child wizard. She asks that question again and again and even poses it to the Golden War Wizard.

The Golden Wizard’s experience, combined with what Mona’s uncle tells her about medals he received and Molly losing her mind after coming back from war, this book is a strong critique of governments and has intense anti-establishment ethos. This made me question how far this book is even for children but the world-building is so complete that you would not see all of this as propaganda or moralising.

I am a T. Kingfisher fan and was struggling to find a 5-star read recently. This hit the spot exactly. This was a complete top-tier even by T. Kingfisher standards. I definitely recommend you to check this book out if you are looking for something high-stakes with a guaranteed happy ending, something that is smooth with world-building, funny, sarcastic and a little dark.

You can grab your copy of A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher here.

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Have you read A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher? What are your thoughts on it? What are your favourite children’s fantasy fiction books?

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