A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is a novel by T. Kingfisher. It won the 2021 Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction, as well as the Lodestar Award.
Mona was happy to be an apprentice baker, using her otherwise almost-useless powers to make bread rise and cookies dance. But when an unknown figure starts killing minor magic-workers, Mona is forced to use all her skill to save herself, and her city.
Contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless:
- Played with. The Duchess is aware that things are going badly in her city, but the politics are such that she is scared to try to fix it. Mona eventually decides that the Duchess is probably just not very suited to ruling, since she only got the position by having the right parents. Lord Ethan, meanwhile, is only useless because he's already got his hands full trying to hold off the impending invasion.
- It's pointed out that the only reason all of the story's crises have fallen to a fourteen-year-old girl to solve is because of the repeated failures of the adults in authority to handle things before it got that bad.
- The Artful Dodger: Spindle, and his sister
- Bandit Clan: The Carex first came to the land as mercenaries, but now are unpaid bandits.
- Big Damn Heroes: When the dough golems begin to flag, Knackering Molly summons every single dead horse in the entire city to drive back the invaders. Even the ones that are just bones. Even the ones that are just dust.
- Blob Monster:
- Mona once accidentally brought some sourdough starter to life. "Bob" now lives in a bucket in the bakery's basement eating the occasional rat. Mona eventually unleashes Bob, first on the Spring Green Man, then later on an invading army.
- Mona makes a second one by animating a giant pile of raw dough as a last-ditch attempt to hold off the invaders.
- Cast from Hit Points: Magickers fuel their workings with their own energy. For something small, like a skeletal steed or some gingerbread men, they barely notice it. For something big, it starts as immense physical strain and then slides into this territory. Knackering Molly fuels her army of undead horses with her life-force, making a Heroic Sacrifice so that Mona won't have to do the same thing with her bread golems.
- Explosive Overclocking: Shoving more magic into something than it can handle will result in this. Mona experiences this when she tries to make a bird out of dough that can actually fly, which is beyond the capabilities of her magic. She later intends to weaponize it during the siege by spending the rest of her life force to detonate one of her creations in the middle of the attacking army, but Knackering Molly beats her to the punch.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Knackering Molly saves Mona from having to do this by doing it herself, expending all her life-energy to raise an enormous army of undead horses, who attack and destroy the besieging army.
- Lethal Harmless Powers / Swiss-Army Superpower:
- Mona starts the novel able to keep pastry from sticking together. Midway, she and Spindle escape across a toxic canal on slices of bread. By the end, she's defending her city with golems built out of bread dough and lethally acidic sourdough starter. (Her attempt to use pairs of pastries to spy has very limited success, though.)
- Knackering Molly, similarly, can only reanimate dead horses. But there are a lot of dead horses. And the skeleton kicking you to death doesn't care if you hit it with a sword.
- It's discussed that being a powerful wizard has less to do with how much power you have and more to do with how you use your power. One mage is mentioned whose only power was the ability to make roses grow. She leveraged that ability to become an incredibly feared assassin — even decades after her death, several cities refuse to allow rosebushes within their walls.
- Master of One Magic: Mona can only do magic related to baking ... but it turns out that "related to baking" has quite a lot of room for improvisation. Knackering Molly is even more limited: Molly can revive dead horses as zombies, no matter how long they've been dead.
- Mundane Utility / Utility Magic: Mona uses her magic for baking. Knackering Molly uses hers to take dead horses away to the knackery (hence the name). A royal water mage can effortlessly boil water for his tea.
- Never Found the Body: After the siege, all that is ever found of Lord Oberon are some of his personal effects. Mona decides she doesn't much care whether he's actually dead or if he got away, so long as he's gone.
- Psycho for Hire:
- The Spring Green Man, who is extremely enthusiastic and persistent about hunting down and killing his targets.
- The Carex began as this — they were originally mercenaries from a distant land hired to fight in a local war. Once the war ended, they decided they liked the area so much better than their old home that they never left, instead settling in and periodically pillaging nearby settlements ever since.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Duchess, who gives people fair hearings when presiding over a trial and is firmly against any policy that would relegate magickers to second-class citizens. She also takes urgent warnings seriously, even when they're being presented by two children who just crawled out of her toilet (there being no better way to reach her).
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Knackering Molly was once an army wizard. She won't discuss what happened, but it's the reason she isn't quite right in the head and doesn't trust the government.
