Reader Score
85%
85% of readers
recommend this book
Winner of the 2021 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book
Winner of the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction
Winner of the Locus Award for Young Adult Fiction
Winner of the Dragon Award Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel
Winner of the Mythopoeic Award for Children's Literature
Winner of the Cóyotl Award for Best Novel
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...
PRAISE FOR T. KINGFISHER
"Dive in... if you are looking to be charmed and delighted."LOCUS
"...[A] knack for creating colorful, instantly memorable characters, and inhuman creatures capable of inspiring awe and wonder."NPR BOOKS
"The writing. It is superb. T. Kingfisher, where have you been all my life?"THE BOOK SMUGGLERS
"...you walk away going 'Damn, that was good but there's a new layer of trauma living inside me.'"KB SPANGLER, DIGITAL DIVIDE