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lightreadsA Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
4/5. The one about the fourteen-year-old apprentice baker who has a bit of magic, that only works on bread, and how she saves the city. Part quirky feel-good stuff, part super serious war and danger stuff. It’s a bit oil and water in places rather than melding into contrasting layers – she really could have toned down both modes half a notch – but I really liked it. It’s scary and funny and sad and brave. It’s about how awful it is to have to be the hero in a situation where you have to do it, but only because lots of other people (adults, specifically) have failed you. Also, there’s a homicidal sentient sourdough starter, which is worth the price of admission.
Content notes: Violence, murder, kids in peril.
4/5. The one about the fourteen-year-old apprentice baker who has a bit of magic, that only works on bread, and how she saves the city. Part quirky feel-good stuff, part super serious war and danger stuff. It’s a bit oil and water in places rather than melding into contrasting layers – she really could have toned down both modes half a notch – but I really liked it. It’s scary and funny and sad and brave. It’s about how awful it is to have to be the hero in a situation where you have to do it, but only because lots of other people (adults, specifically) have failed you. Also, there’s a homicidal sentient sourdough starter, which is worth the price of admission.
Content notes: Violence, murder, kids in peril.
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Date: 2022-06-20 05:51 pm (UTC)I just read this one and I liked it enough that it overrode how annoyed I was at the audiobook reader, who kept putting on these really bad accents. At the onset I kept gritting my teeth at this accent that kept slipping from Irish, to bad Australian, to a sort of over-enunciated posh that some Americans think sound British. But by the middle of the book I was so invested that it was just how these characters spoke.
Anyway, yeah, I loved that it wasn't "yay, I'm a teen hero!" and instead it was "this is bullshit, I'll do this but the adults should be doing it." And that she didn't forgive people just because they were sorry. The people who died shouldn't have died and she made sure they remembered.
And the sourdough starter was awesome.
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Date: 2022-06-20 05:54 pm (UTC)Yes, I had the commercial audio on this one and Spindle, in particular was . . . a choice.
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Date: 2022-06-21 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-20 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-21 09:05 pm (UTC)