This book is filed under: books that I procrastinated a really long time on. And I really have no excuse – I procrastinated on T Kingfisher’s Nettle and Bone for a while, only to discover that I really liked it, and then… didn’t pick up another book. Even though this book has a delightful title and I’m sure I’ve seen some blogging friends talk about it as well!

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is a fun story about Mara, a fourteen-year-old baker who goes to work in her aunt’s bakery one morning and finds a dead body. When she is briefly accused of murder of the dead body, she quickly finds herself embroiled in the city’s politics, picking up a gingerbread man with an attitude and a talented thief as companions along the way.

Though this book has a lighthearted premise (i.e. magical powers expressed in baking), it does turn dark very quickly. It’s not just the body in the bakery, it’s also the othering of a minority group, a realistic look into how authority figures may just be figureheads, and the difficulties of being courageous in the face of danger. This is a lot to handle and Kingfisher generally writes about these topics well – I think there was one section in the middle where I felt the story was approaching allegory about WWII, but it generally stayed a fantasy adventure and I liked that Mara reacted to everything the way I think a typical fourteen-year-old would.

Speaking of Mara, she was a great protagonist. I was rooting for her all the way and I thought that her reactions to everything going around her was believable. I could actually see this as having been a series, from when she starts learning about her magic to when she actually has to make decisions that impact the whole city. But, it’s pretty much all in one book because the story moved at a fast clip. In fact, I was surprised by how the book went from a small adventure (i.e. investigating a death) to a big adventure, with the fate of kingdoms in the balance. That said, I didn’t feel that the plot was rushed and I found myself enjoying how Kingfisher manages to work baking magic into the plot; we learn with Mara how her magic can work and that is part of the fun of the book.

Overall, this was a fun book that made me wonder why I keep procrastinating on T Kingfisher’s other books. I will definitely have to pick up another one before the end of the year, so let me know if there are any that I absolutely have to read.