(courtesy Argyll Productions)
If you have ever seen a medieval battle scene where an army of armour and arrows and trebuchets (great big wooden slingy things) is laying siege to a walled city or castle, you will be well acquainted with how these conflicts generally go.
There are lots of battering rams to take down supposedly impenetrable castle doors aka portcullis, a shower of arrows so dense it cuts out light, and soldiers, determined to invade or defend, who battle it out from afar and then up close, all of it done with a great deal of noise and fury.
But what about giant dough golems? Or angry blobs of sentient sourdough starter? Ever seen those doing their thing in these epic medieval battles?
Likely not which is why you need to be immensely thankful to the buoyantly expansive imagination and skilful writing of T, Kingfisher, the pen name of Ursula Vernon, who gives these unlikely characters of war in her gleefully fun but emotionally resonant novel, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking.
The joyously quirky title aside, which is all kinds of intriguingly silly fun in and of itself, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking manages to be both a riot of whimsical what-ifs and a reasonably serious coming-of-age tale of one young girl whose magic, still young and unformed, extends solely to summoning life in the gingerbread people and cookies of her Aunt Tabitha’s bakery.
Spindle looked up at me [Mona] with dark eyes. His face was pale and smudged, like an unwashed ghost.
‘Be careful,’ he said.
Mona doesn’t think much of her magical gift.
While the rest of us might marvel at her ability to bring baked goods to life, limited though it might mostly be (with one entertainingly divergent exception), Mona doesn’t really think her skills are much else beyond the bakery’s doors where great wizards accompany the city’s troops on campaigns against warringly agressive tribes like the Carex, who lay waste to farmland and city with cruel indifference, and where other magical beings can bring dead horses to life (more useful than you might think) and speak over great distances through water.
Next to that kind of reality-shifting magic, what does Mona really have to offer?
Not much, she thinks, but after the fourteen-year-old orphan becomes embroiled in a murder investigation into who’s killing off the city’s wizards and some very real realpolitiks where palace officials are plotting against the ruling duchess, she discovers in a tale both heartwarming and emotionally impactful, that perhaps she’s worth a whole lot more than she’s given herself credit for.
To say much, plot-wise beyond that, would be to spoiler away this playfully buoyant novel, but suffice to say, that the back cover blurb only hints at the many joys and the great meaning inherent in A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking which is as apt to break your heart as it is to highly amuse you with witty asides and fizzily fuzzy, playfully snarky dialogue.
It is, in so many ways, a lot of fun and it’s that sense of mischievously, seditious observational fun that carries the plot through some very good and highly entertaining twists and turns.
(courtesy Wikipedia)
Central to the story, of course, is the delight that is Mona.
She might only be fourteen and overwhelmed at times by the hugely portentous events that overtake and subsume her, but while she is vulnerable and scared at times, she is also near-fearlessly brave and full of the kind of can-do integrity from which real heroes are made.
But here’s where things get really and interesting.
While A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking revolves around Mona coming into her own and doing some rather brave and spectacularly awesome things with her magic and tons of dough, and it’s as epic and hugely immersive as you might hope, the novel is also rather insightfully sage and honest about what this kind of heroism costs you.
Sure, Mona in ways that must be left to the reading, does save the day, but she is also wise enough to know that while you do what you need to do for the righteous and good cause you believe in, that that kind of of-the-moment behaviour is merely a means to an end and not the end in itself.
Believe your own heroic PR and you are doomed to an echo chamber of ego-stroking nothingness that does no one any real good long-term; rather impressively, it manages to impart this wisdom without once diminishing the great and necessary acts Mona commits in the service of her city, the Duchess, and ultimately, those she loves.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t have time to worry. There was too much else to be done.
‘Your oven awaits, Wizard Mona,’ said Argonel.
‘Don’t call me that,’ I said tiredly, and went to go build the city’s defenders out of bread.
What also strikes you too is how this whimsically fun novel also manages to make some on-point observations about the nature of power and privilege and how simply pursuing those as ends in themselves can corrupt and ruin a person and ultimately potentially doom an entire city of people.
That’s a lot of very pithy thinking about war and power and its ability to corrupt, but also in the right hands, elevate, and it makes this light, bright and very funny novel feel far more weighted and meaningful than you likely expect it’s going to be.
A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking may have a delightfully fey and fun title, and some very funny and joyously silly moments that will make you smile, laugh and clap your hands with joy, but it also packs an emotional punch, ruminating on what it’s like to grow up before your time, to not believe in yourself and to have to make some very big decisions when you should just be hanging out at the mall (or whatever the medieval equivalent is).
Ostensibly a resident of the Middle Grade and Young Adult genres, A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking has a great deal to offer anyone of any age, amusing with its imaginative silliness and cleverness, making your heart grow warm with the power of found family, and serving up some salient truths about some pretty intensely big issues, the kind that can make or break you, and the world in which you live, but which, if handled properly, can shape things for the better, not just for you but for everyone you love.