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A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon)

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

This book, y’all. This book.

The setting is somewhere between Saladin Ahmed’s Dhamsawaat (but much wetter) and Terry Pratchett’s Ank Morpork (but slightly less Ank Morpork) and any one of the adults could easily have been Commander Vimes or Doctor Adoulla…. but they were not.

For the matter, they were exactly the kind of fallible adults that anyone fourteen and up is embarrassed to find out adults are.

But A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking  isn’t about the adults, not directly. This book is about a fourteen year old girl named Mona who is good with baking.

REALLY good with baking.

I mean I’ve done my fair share of baking (around Mona’s age) and I never saved a single cookie by asking it not to burn. I never had a gingerbread man get up and dance off the cookie sheet (which was probably good), nor did I have a pet sourdough starter.

Maybe I should say a sourdough starter familiar because Bob’s a bit more than your average Covid-19 “the stores are out of yeast” bakery pet.

It would be difficult to say that Mona would’ve had a boring life, she was already an orphan when the book opened, and all the folks living in the area already knew she was one of the many minor wizards in the city. Still, one presumes that her life would’ve been a big quieter if Mona hadn’t found a dead girl named Tibbie on the floor of the bakery one morning, then been charged with the crime, then been found innocent, then been threatened by a high official then discovered the real murderer was trying to kill her.

Frequently in this book, Mona loses her lunch and I think it’s a very reasonable reaction to what’s going around her. Like many T Kingfisher protagonists, Mona is pragmatic, but in this case she’s only as pragmatic as a fourteen year old can manage, and let’s face it, that’s not very far.

But Mona’s got a sourdough familiar, a gingerbread cookie familiar, dough tricks up her sleeves she doesn’t even know she has, and allies in a ten-year-old thief, a crazy dead-horse witch, a Duchess, and an Aunt I want to grow up to be some day.

And if you’re going to save a whole city, it turns out those are good allies to have.

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Day 675: weeds weeds weeds

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 675:

I’m marking off large areas and cleaning them up so I know what I’m up against. Found a cave, cleaned it out of what little ore it had, then filled it up with fill so I wouldn’t need to deal with it. Found a steep cliff, cut it down to a more climbable surface (you never know when you need to run around here) and used it as part of the fill. You know, general stuff.

I’m starting to collect the sand now, and get it somewhere that I can haul it back to my forges to smelt.

I have a terrible headache and I don’t know why. I come home tired every day, which is good, but my eyes are aching. I wonder if I need to invent sunglasses somehow. Maybe with the glass.

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Day 674: Small forest fire

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 674:

Sure enough, some of the trees (and the road) had caught fire by morning. I put them out and lined the whole thing with brick and put an end to that nonsense.

But it made me aware of exactly how dangerous these outer areas I haven’t explored are… and in new ways all the time. So I’m going to clean them up and figure out what I’m up against here.

Hopefully I’m up against a lot of sand, actually. I could use some.

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Day 673: MORE FIRE

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 673:

Today I learned that while surrounding lava with glass will keep it contained, it can still set a wooden road on fire.

I also learned that if a local merchant and two llamas are nearby, they will stand around and watch the road burn.

Neither of these things please me, but at least I know where I stand with the locals. (A few feet away, also watching the road burn, in this case.)

So I’m going to spend tomorrow rebuilding the hopefully not-on-fire road in the hopefully-not-on-fire woods, only this time, with brick.

Nursery rhymes have to pay off sometime, and we’re going three little pigs on this one.

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Day 672: FIRE

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 672:

Local idiot builds wooden road next to open lava pit, is shocked at the result.

Maybe i need to figure out how to make breathing masks.