A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking cover art

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

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A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

By: T. Kingfisher
Narrated by: Patricia Santomasso
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About this listen

Fourteen-year-old Mona isn't like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can't control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter, and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt's bakery making gingerbread men dance.

But Mona's life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona's city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona's worries....

©2020 T. Kingfisher (P)2021 Tantor Fiction Mysteries Mystery & Suspense Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy City Magic Users Feel-Good Funny Wizardry

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All stars
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Enjoyed the story but the accents were painful so took me out of it. If you want someone to be English please just use an English voice actor.

Fun story

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Great story and funny at times. Really enjoyed it . Narration was excellent and loved her voice. Recommend

Fun story

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This was super nice and cozy, I'm glad I listened to it. I liked the combination of classic epic fantasy battle with cozy aspect of baking. The characters are very lovable. I didn't like that the author took some obvious elements of other fantasy stories, but it worked ok here. The narrator has maybe a little too mature voice for the MC.

Had fun

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Nice story, which kept me engaged. I did spend the first third trying to work out what accent the narrator had. It was very distracting. Her voice was vaguely annoying, but I stuck with it because I liked the story.

Narration was interesting....

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Low pressure fiction makes for a nice comfort read. Well written & well read by the performer

Charmingly Delightful

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I absolutely love the creativity in this book. I mean the title already gives a hint of what's inside. Such a wholesome story with carnivorous sourdough starters and mischievous gingerbread men.
Definitely Recommend for an autumn read.

So much fun!

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This isn’t a deep book - it’s heroine is 14, and it’s told entirely from her perspective, but she’s an engaging young thing who ends up having to deal with far, far more than you should at that, or any, age. It takes a while to get going and some of the events that transpire are a tad obvious, and some I thought obvious didn’t happen, so what do I know?! The latter part did pick up pace and it then rattled along to a rather good conclusion.

However, I was surprised to hear it read in UK English, by an American narrator. The narration, and Mona, are read in a rather cut-glass RP (received pronunciation) that, to be fair, the narrator holds well, but to my UK-English ears it sounded a bit carefully over-annunciated. Others characters came from all over, a bit of Irish, a bit of Australian, a bit of generic-rustic-yokel (think Sam Gamgee in the LotR films), and sometimes it was all a bit of a blend. I didn’t get why Mona, raised from a young age by her aunt and uncle, spoke so differently to them, and far more like the ruling classes. Mona is a baker, an ordinary girl, and no one else from her family, or the others we meet that she knows, speak that way. I thought I’ d get used to it, but I didn’t, and it nagged at me all the way through.

I’m not a young adult, or even an older child, so I’m not the target audience here, and I’m not criticising the story - it’s good, the characters are utterly engaging, the lesson that grown ups can’t always fix things is well learnt, there’s a battle at the end that is rather bloodless (lots of whacking and hitting), and,

SPOILER

just in case these things bother you,

someone you get to know as the book progresses dies. And it’s sadly done.

But the accents annoyed me. I mean, American author, American narrator - why go England-English?

Engaging characters, bit slow to get going

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Really good performance rof a really good book. I binge listened it. Definitely recommend

Loved it

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I am not quite sure what I expected from this book.

What I found was an exciting story filled with action, adventure, intrigue and baking.

I very much enjoyed the book, and would happily recommend, even if you are not a baker!

A well baked book

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Engaging characters and well read. Charming and funny, it keeps you reading. Would recommend it.

Great cozy fantasy

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