A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

the book is funny and has an intriguing premise which i appreciated, but the ending felt very rushed and left a lot of threads untied for me. the villains felt two-dimensional, like they were just villains for the sake of the plot. then again, maybe i’m expecting too much from a book that’s targeted at younger readers.

i’m also disappointed with the portrayal of the secondary antagonists as uncivilised, barbarian cannibals. that blatantly colonialist rhetoric felt very out of place in a book with generally progressive, anti-fascist themes.

the book also could’ve used better editing. i noticed that characters had names swapped or changed out midway and there were quite a few punctuation errors.

The young teenage baker and bread wizard Mona finds herself in a series of events that spiral out of control in a swirl of politics and war.

As far as YA books this is pretty cute and decent. It has an interesting take on magic, and the main characters were compelling. There was a bit of a lean into toilet humor at points that was kind of eye-roll worthy, but overall, pretty enjoyable.

Muy cuqui.