#A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

[lakecountylibrary]

any recommendations for light/silly fantasy for someone who's read most of them? favourites are: finding home by hari conner, so this is ever after, emily wilde, the ruthless lady's guide to wizardry, legends and lattes, terry pratchett. also liked the very secrety society of irregular witches, the league of gentlewomen witches, tress of the emerald sea, some other f t lukens books, swordheart, fangs by sarah anderson. so anything with those vibes that are not one of those. I do want to read half a soul and psalm for the wild-built but I can't get them currently through my library.

Wow you were not kidding when you said you had read most of them! Many we would typically recommend are already in your list, but we DO have some more for you that hopefully you haven't read!

Oh, and real quick: You may have already done this, but if you haven't - check and see if your library has a purchase request or interlibrary loan service. Many libraries do, and often people don't know about it. They might be able to get you Half a Soul and Psalm for the Wild-Built if they know you're looking for them!

Now on to the recs:

Rachel says:

I have not read it yet, but I have heard great things about A Lady's Guide to Marvels and Misadventure by Angela Bell. And as a kid, I loved Bunnicula by James & Deborah Howe.

Abby says:

Try A Spell for Heartsickness by Alistair Reeves. The MC is a manic witch with a snarky corvid familiar, and they have to navigate setting up shop in a remote village that's harboring secrets and surrounded by some creepy woods.

Since you like FT Lukens I think you'd like this too.

Robin says:

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan - it's portal fantasy and the main character is incredibly genre aware. And sarcastic about it. The author is on tumblr and it shows (in a good way!)

Since you like T. Kingfisher, if you haven't continued on with Paladin's Grace yet it's very much in the vein of Swordheart so give that a look. You could also try A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking which is a bit different to the World of the White Rat books but still great!

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede was a formative read for me. Princess Cimorene is determined to avoid marriage so she arranges to get herself carried off by a dragon. It's a delight. Start with Dealing with Dragons.

--

Hopefully there are a few there you haven't read yet and that you'll like! You can also check out our fantasy tag for all the fantasy recs we've made here over the years, light-hearted and otherwise!

[freckles-and-books]

Current read. So good so far. I expect nothing less from Kingfisher.

[msunitedstatesjames]

So, unlike some more enlightened people in the world, I just discovered T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon in 2021, and I can't believe how much I was missing.

I've read, I think, seven of her books now, and every one has been so well done. How can this woman write fantasy, horror, humor, romance, steampunk, fairy tale retellings, classic literature retellings, books for adults, books for teens, books for children, and often three to five of the above genres at once, and all of them are so good?

I've seen some of her work classified as cozy, which is kind of funny when you read a few of her books (they're anything but low stakes), but she has such a way of infusing every story with so much warmth and humor and love that I can understand why people say her writing is cozy.

This woman really wrote a book about a sister on a quest for revenge against the prince that has been systemically abusing and murdering her sisters (while she shares the road with a witch, a demon, a bone dog, a dude who recently escaped faerie enslavement, and a failed fairy godmother), and the book was both heartwarming and hilarious while breaching really difficult topics.

And the best part of all of this is that T. Kingfisher does all this, more often than not, in like 200ish pages.

But also, I just bought Swordheart and Paladin's Grace, and I'm really excited to see for the first time what she does with a book that's more than 300 pages.

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[lottiesoka]

“If you have ever prepared for a siege in two days, then you know what the next few days were like. If you haven’t, then you probably don’t. Well… a big formal wedding is about the same (and because we do cakes, I’ve been on the periphery of a few), except that if things go wrong in a siege you’ll all die horribly, and in formal weddings, the stakes are much higher.”

[fantasybooksreviews]

Welp, I'm still alive

OK, I made this blog moooonths ago, completely forgot about it, and haven't actually posted anything yet. But, I'm back, let's read some books!

Edit: Gonna tag all my moots on my main blog cuz I want people to actually see this lol hi guys! @irishfry @cactus-with-boobs @bagel-is-yum @im-an-anthusiast @uwathebestgirls :)

[advashaviv]

ADHD and quitting: there’s also a good sense!

It took decades. Not years. Decades.

Us ADHDers DNF (= do not finish) so many things, that even leaving a book that doesn’t click with us ends up feeling like a failure: here’s another thing I started and will never finish.

After decades of forcing myself through books I did not connect with so as not to “quit”, I realized I’ve been wrong all this time.

A better, more correct way to look at this is - here’s me re-evaluating and realizing that this specific effort is simply not worth it!

Today I quit reading Terry Pratchett’s “The Colour of Magic” a third way in. Not because it wasn’t good, not because I’m a bad reader, and certainly not because I’m a failure.

The book is funny and cool, but at the moment I need characters to deeply connect with. This is not that kind of book.

Glad I realized this was the reason for my very slow advancement with it!

As a farewell to Pratchett, here’s a quote that seems like a description of the path of an ADHD thought: 😁

“In his somewhat defenceless state a stray thought, wandering through the dimensions in search of a mind to harbour it, slid into his brain.”

Starting T. Kingfisher’s “A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking” now!

[unfavorableinstigation]

Things I'm loving about A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking as a middle-grade fantasy:

Not only is the "where were all the adults" question addressed, it's addressed through the protagonist asking it. And the question itself does double duty, since the asking of it in the first place makes a fantastic coming-of-age marker.

Very thoughtful use of magic as day-saver. Magic sometimes stands in in kids' books for the possession of some kind of virtue like pureness of heart or strongness of will. Here, the valued trait is basically "the creativity to work with what you've got to solve the problem at hand". Pratchettian in a way, but the particular twist to building skills and working the problem is so Vernon.

Really interesting found-siblings arc, in a way that underscores the value in that specific kind of relationship.

[flightfoot]

Just finished "A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking" by T. Kingfisher. It's the one about a baker wizard who has a sourdough starter familiar that was mentioned on that one popular tumblr post, though honestly this one gingerbread man she made acts more like a familiar to her than Bob does.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I like how it showcased the ways people could make use of even fairly specific talents. A lot of wizards in this world could only really make one specific type of "thing" do what they want, whether it's bread (or really, anything created from dough) like Mona, or making dead horses walk, like Molly. So there's a lot of emphasis on working with what you can do, rather than worrying about what you can't, and not underestimating your abilities just because they seem silly and minor at first blush.

Anyway, basically, a dead girl's found in the bakery, Mona's called up to the palace as a suspect (she found the body), and is quickly found innocent and sent home. But over the next few days the magical folks in the city are all spooked, and there's efforts to make all mages register, and propaganda about how magical folks could be spies and traitors...

I don't want to go too much further into that so I don't spoil the rest of the story.

There's also this theme that crops up a lot during the second half of the book about "heroes", and how that term's often used to kind of make it okay that people had to suffer and die when, if other people had done their jobs properly, they wouldn't have had to. That it's great for Mona to have been able to accomplish what she did during this book, but that it shouldn't have been on a fourteen-year-old girl to begin with. I saw that sort of thing pop up a lot back in 2020 and 2021 with how nurses, doctors, and other essential staff were being hailed as "heroes" for working during such dangerous times, often with inadequate equipment, and then have it noted that afterwards, many of those same staff who were being hailed as heroes were still being underpaid.

There is one thing about the book that I really didn't like though. One of the main threats to the city Mona lives in is this group of mercenaries from some far away place, that apparently is cold and inhospitable. They got hired to help one city-state take out another, then decided they like these lands much better, and have just stuck around burning down fields, raiding and pillaging cities and taking all their stuff, and even eating people because apparently they're cannibals for some reason. At no point are they characterized as being more than some horrifically violent, evil, foreign mob who only exist to cause pain and suffering. Heck, even with their only job seemingly being fighting and killing, they're still characterized as selfish and unwilling to commit to battlefield tactics like overwhelming an enemy, when it would put the first few people at the front of the charge at risk, because they don't have the discipline of a regular army I guess.

I can see why it's useful to have some major threat like this, but whom you don't have to show any sympathy for or feel bad about being killed or injured, and who you don't have to try and have the leader negotiate with because they're so cruel and enjoy spreading pain and suffering so much, that there's no point. But the only reason it doesn't ping most people's "racism" radar is that their appearances are never described. But using this depiction of this group of people... honestly, it reminds me of "indigenous cannibals" and how that stereotype has been used in many movies, books, and tv shows to have the (white) protagonists be menaced by some group that's depicted as being ready to chop them up and eat them if caught, no questions asked. It's the same sort of narrative convenience being taken advantage of here, where you don't need to ask about negotiating or worry about the ethics of killing the invading army, because they're dehumanized to such an extent that you just don't worry about it.

[rainbowofcrazy]

One of my fav reads of 2024: A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (narrated by Patricia Santomasso)

I still gotta dig into more T. Kingfisher but I adored this tale of murder, magic, baking, and sourdough! Heckin yeah!

[checkoutmybookshelf]

And the Familiar was a Sourdough Starter

This is actually not a book I picked up, it was a book a friend who is very into baking loaned me. And let me just tell you, it was a DELIGHT from start to finish. There were baked goods, an aggressive sourdough starter, and so, so many gingerbread cookies. There were also excellent questions about what it is to be a hero, the limitations and failures of authority, and under what precise circumstances climbing up a garderobe becomes a viable option (spoiler alert: it's when there are literally no other options). Let's talk A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.

There will Be SPOILERS below the break! Be warned!

Fourteen-year-old Mona is a baker first and foremost. If she sometimes can save overworked dough with magic or make a like of gingerbread men can-can, well thats just a thing she can do. She is a baker. Until, of course, a dead body shows up on the kitchen floor.

Dead bodies showing up randomly is just never, ever a good thing.

Its even less a good thing when a bougie, dickheaded wizard from the castle decides you did it, and because a whole lot of people at a whole lot of levels failed catastrophically in their job, you end up in the position of having to climb a garderrobe to galvanize a weak leader into not doing a magical racism. And then because EVEN MORE PEOPLE FAILED TO DO THEIR JOBS, you at 14 are the last wizard left to defend the city (which is currently sans army) against a bunch of mercenary raiders. Oh, and your magic is entirely bread-based.

I, much like Mona was, would have been royally pissed that I had to be a city-saving hero at 14 because the system and a bunch of key individuals failed that hard and it somehow got left to me. And that is possibly one of the best parts of this book, is that discussion that heroes rarely feel heroic, and then asks WHY. And the answer is almost always some variation on "because a bunch of other adults fucked up." And that sucks, and it's hard, and it's unfair, and all of that is acknowledged in story. But Mona still has to step up and BE that hero.

Thankfully, however, the book at least acknowledges that the 14-year-old should never have to make the sacrifice play. Knackering Molly, a deadass (pun fully intended) horse necromancer who was heavily implied to have been forcibly employed by and subsequently deeply traumatized by the army in her youth, steps up to make the sacrifice play to save the city that did her so dirty. And she does it not because it's heroic or even because it's the right thing to do, no. She does it because if she doesn't, then another wizard kid--of whom she is rather fond--would have to. It's not fair that Molly has to take that hit either, but she was a grown-ass adult who was capable of making that choice, and I love that she did it for Mona. If Mona hadn't been in the picture, I think Molly would have let the city fall without a second thought. And that might even have been the right choice.

Wrapped up in Mona's hard lesson in adults fucking up is a hard lesson about the fact that authority can be weak and corrupt, and it can and will use state actors (the "all cops are bad" energy of a couple of scenes in this book is legendary) to oppress and murder people without power or authority. It encourages questioning and holding authority figures accountable. And once the fight is over, it acknowledges that being given a butt-ton of awards and recognition doesn't make any of it ok. Mona is still angry at the Duchess after all is said and done, and that is very much framed as perfectly understandable and acceptable.

Now, while the politics and power brokering and coming into an adult understanding of how systems of authority work are really excellent parts of this book, they're not the only excellent bits. We have got to talk about the magic system.

People who hate soft magic systems should leave now, because the magic system in this book is softer than raw dough. There is no Sandersonian breath counting here. But I have always thought that magic systems shouldn't get in the way of a good story, and I like a good soft magic system. This one also goes back to basics with what they call sympathetic magic--basically, if you have a bit if a thing, you can command the rest of the thing (you might recognize this as thaumaturgy).

This works beautifully for baking magic, because you can do a LOT of this with dough. And Mona does, from little magics like saving overworked dough or stopping biscuits from burning to full on bad gingerbread men who sabotage the enemy and GIANT BREAD GOLEMS. Seriously, the magic and the baking works together with a natural synergy that just happens effortlessly. The gingerbread men are sassy and wonderful.

But of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention Bob the Sourdough Starter. Bob is...an accident, more or less, from when Mona panicked that she had killed her aunt's sourdough starter and threw magic at it. Bob was the result. Bob eats flour, sugar, odds and ends of baking, and the odd dead fish when nobody's looking. He also has definite opinions about people. Mona is the center of his world, and Spindle and Aunt Tabitha are acceptable. Uncle Albert gets growled at, and when Mona yeets Bob at the Spring Green Man during his attempted assassination of her, Bob burns the Spring Green Man like acid. Needless to say, when the city is besieged, they yeet chunks of Bob at the oncoming hordes and it is...disturbingly effective.

In this house, we stan Bob. From a safe distance and with a haddock I hand, if at all possible.

Overall, this book was a delight to read, and I'm a little sad I have to return it to one of my book buddies. Mona was a treat as a protagonist, the supporting cast was colorful and fun, and the stakes were realistically high. I highly recommend this treat of a book.

[litsnobconfessions]

A Year of Animation Day 63: Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Date: March 4, 2025

Day: 63

Content Watched: Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

Year: 2010

Rating: PG

Run Time: 92 minutes

I don't know what exactly made me fall in love with Katheryn Lasky's Guardians of Ga'Hoole series in the first place, other than I've had a thing for owls for a while now. But the film adaptation was released just after my birthday, so my friends and I went to see it together. When the credits rolled, a friend of mine said, "I... would have written than differently..." to which the only other person who had read the books responded, in unison with me, "it was written differently!" And thus, I was never particularly impressed with the movie. But it is beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that I still have a poster of that classic shot with Soren flying through the rain. And that is why I picked this movie for this project. Not because it's an outstanding film, but because it has outstanding animation. Let's get into it.

As I said before, this movie is just beautiful to watch. Pick any scene where the characters are flying (which is easy because they're owls) and freeze-frame, and you'll have a beautiful still. The scenery is grogeous (well, the author's Australian, I hear Australia's beautiful this time of year.) Even when they're flying up to St. Aggie's, which is dark and grim, being the lair of the villain, the flight is beautiful. The lighting is also very pretty, and reminds me a lot of HTTYD. Considering they came out the same year, I have to wonder if they used the same software or the same techniques, especially since they were also both flying movies.

Another thing both films have in common is that they came out in 3D. That is, I saw HTTYD in 3D, and while I don't think I say Ga'Hoole in 3D, that little feather coming off and floating during the title sequence looks like something that was definitely put there for there the 3D. Yet that feather is the only apparently put-there-for-3D thing I noticed, so I'm guessing that also like HTTYD, they decided that the flying scenes would be the most interesting part of 3D, and that's why they're so beautiful.

One of things I really enjoyed about the book series was the all the different owls and owl facts, and I suspect (I hope!) the animators had a lot of fun getting to draw all the different owls. I did get around to watching the 1978 Watership Down (more on that when I get to it) and in a behind-the-scenes feature, the animators talk about getting bored with drawing rabbits. With the owls all different, there was at least more variety.

And then, of course, there are the way the characters are brought to life. I think Digger is the most obvious because he's very energetic and expressive. It's been forever since I've read the books, but I think he was like that in the books as well--always telling jokes and such. Ezylryb (my favorite character) is another one that is very expressive, being that he's possibly "short a few talons." I suppose he's a bit like the owl version of Mad-Eye Moody or the Kingkiller Chronicles' Master Elodin, including being somewhat deshelved and how his exrpessions vascilate between operating on whim to knowing exactly what he's talking about.

It's clear that Kludd was also carefully animated. He's got some darker feathers on his face that look like scars, including some around his eye that look like someone scratched his eye. Combine that with his feather mohawk--the owl equalivalent of a bad boy hairdo--and he's very obviously villain coded. This is a little annoying actually because it's just so... simple to make him the villain of the story. There's not much to him. He's evil because he is. Though I do remember that being the case for the books as well.

Which brings me to the thing I never liked about the movie: the merging of the villains. One of the things I loved about the book series was that metal beak and St. Aggie's were separate threats. I always thought it was really neat that there wasn't just a single big bad, but two, who were in competition with each other. And to be fair, I didn't finish the series, so maybe they do eventually get merged, but it was disappointing to see the movie take away the thing that made the books most stand out for me.

The pacing was also a little off for me, though adaptaing multiple books into a single movie is probably going to give you problems. Mostly, I wished we'd spent more time at the tree, getting to see more training sequences and watching them all get chosen for their various chaws (though maybe that happened later in the series). I know that Soren trains to fly through the absolute worst of weather and do things like put out fires, and I would have liked an extra 10-20 minutes to see more of that happening (even if it wasn't our heroes doing it--just to know that owls did it.) They also could have given the Soren/Otulissa relationship more breathing room (I think that was a thing in the series? It's been over a decade, ya'll.)

I think the themes maybe got a little bit muddled too? The scene that hit hardest for me this go around was when Soren realizes that Ezylryb is his hero, Lyze. Soren tells Ezylryb that he's heard about all these glorious stories his father has told him of the Ga'Hoolian battles, but Ezylryb's version? Doesn't sound glorious. It sounds like Hell. Again, all this talk of heroes has got me thinking about A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking. And Ezylryb kind of hints at that, especially when he talks about the disappointment of meeting your hero and learning he's real. But at the end, Soren is still telling his stories of glory, and Ezylryb is encouraging him? So I guess he just needed a fight to get out of his funk? 

But let's end on a good note, shall we? Literally with the end--the credits. I simply loved the way the credits are animated because, as we know, I love that cut-paper look.

Tomorrow we return to The Dragon Prince to begin arc 2.

[adhd-pixie-nightmare-girl]

"You expect heroes to survive terrible things. If you give them a medal, then you don't ever have to ask why the terrible thing happened in the first place. Or try to fix it. How else are you gonna have heroes?" -A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher

A moodboard inspired by Mona from A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.

[cultivating-wildflowers]

"Attack" is not a command I've ever given to bread before, but if those rats last winter were any indication, Bob knew exactly what to do.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher

[chaos-has-theories]

Spent pretty much all of today listening to the audiobook of A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher and *high pitched hum* that was GREAT. Good fun. It feels a bit like Terry Pratchett's Dodger, but set in a world like Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge and the main characters are Tiffany Aching and the Gingerbread Man from Shrek.

Anyway, that was great fun, I now desperately want to get into baking more, I've worked on multiple creative projects, and I desperately want to make fanart. (I probably won't, but. MONA. And there's some absolutely great scenes that I need to see.)

[vole-mon-amour]

I'm reading AWGTDB and in chapter 10 Mona says how she throws bread to ducks in the canal. I wonder if the author knows that it's something that can kill ducks or if it's something she wrote through Mona with her lack of knowledge.

Anyway, please don't feed bread to ducks. Ducks are into peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn. It's safe for them, too (as far as I know). You can also buy something from a pet store specifically for ducks.