Had Kingfisher been content to keep it a smaller story like in Minor Mage, it would have worked better for me. Loved the gingerbread man/familiar, loved Spindle, loved Bob, and especially loved Molly and her undead horse Nags. Mona is 14 and has a magical gift for baking, which she has to repurpose into self defence and then defence of the city in the face of danger. That the hope Mona manages to provide involves some very bad gingerbread men, a few very large bread golems and a whole lot of carnivorous sourdough starter is what makes the story so much fun.

Not that the stabbity-stabbity gingerbread man on the cover isn’t adorable, but it was definitely the title that got me. She accidentally made a sourdough starter familiar when she was terrified and now it is sorta alive, burbles at her when she comes to feed it or grab some material off it to make bread and she has named it Bob. Bob the carnivorous sourdough starter was a definite favorite, along with the gingerbread man familiar and Spindle the pickpocket were the main secondaries, along with Knackering Molly who can raise dead horses and is a touch not all there, and Mina’s aunt and uncle. After all, when Leia talks about Obi-Wan being her “only hope” at least her expectations are fixed on a grown up. It certainly doesn't hurt anyone to be told fictionally that evil should not ultimately succeed, that they can't leave it for others to fight, good people do die, and that, by inference, the hero, as well as the reader will have to work hard to defeat their own particular evil/s.The supporting characters have fantastic depth and personality which really blends well to create this fabulous story.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is a 2020 young adult fantasy novel by Ursula Vernon, under her pseudonym T.When teenage bread wizard Mona discovers a corpse in her family's bakery, it triggers a chain of events that leads to her managing the city's defense against military assault, with the aid of animate gingerbread men and her familiar — a sourdough starter. Story gets told, ideas get presented, world gets saved, and just keep the sourdough starter firmly in place or it'll get weird ideas. It all starts with a dead body in the bakery — “I haven’t seen a lot of dead bodies in my life—I’m only fourteen, and baking’s not exactly a high-mortality profession” — and from there eventually leads to some life-or-death stakes for the entire city-state.