Extra Nate: The Bread Mage

Ben if you’re reading this, and you’re not, you’re welcome to make superficial edits to this post. Like changing “Bread Mage” to the actual name of the book and “Evil Inquisitor” to whatever that guy’s job title actually was. I can’t be bothered to go back and look, re-reading books isn’t in my contract.

I’ve been struggling to decide what I’m going to write about with regards to the Bread Mage book we recently read. As you know, I’m contractually obligated to write a blog for each book we read, at least when I haven’t declared a state of emergency to the Words About Books Congress. The book is an odd mixture of trying to be a “cozy” book and also kind of an adventure book and an exploration of some fun weird powers. I think we both talked about the clash between cozy and adventure on the podcast proper, so I wanted to briefly talk about the weird powers. Then I guess I’ll also talk about the two major moments in the book that didn’t quite ring true and why.

Weird Powers

I like weird and interesting powers being used in creative ways. What I mean is that the character is magic but they’re not throwing fireballs or commanding lightning or more “normie” magic. Instead they can create a 5×5 cardboard box out of thin air or they can sense all canned food in a 5 mile radius or they are unable to get drunk no matter how much alcohol they consume. The enjoyment comes with how these little things are used by the character in interesting ways, usually to get the better fo those more traditional wizards.

In a D&D setting where I’m the DM, I enjoy giving my party “worthless” magic baubles and seeing how they can creatively use them. Like a rope that automatically unties knots in itself whenever you let go of it or a staff that stands perfectly balanced and upright when not in use. Again, the fun is to see how the players use these seemingly useless magical items to solve puzzles in fun and creative ways.

Having the power over bread sounds like such a power. Mona can use her magic to prevent bread from burning, decrease/increase staleness, and do funny dances with gingerbread men. So the disappointment comes when the author runs out of creative ways to use this power and just resorts to bringing bread to life. Then she brings bigger bread to life. She makes sour dough starter, so she makes more sour dough starter. Then she brings tinier and evil-er gingerbread men to life. At this point she’s just a summoner (or the necromancer from Diablo 2) except instead of summoning demons or the undead, she’s summoning living bread golems. It’s really disappointing and she never actually defeats a more traditional wizard with her bread powers. She never really uses this power in a fun or interesting way.

We touched upon that a bit in the episode but I wanted to highlight it further. Just like I wanted to highlight two problems where even I had some trouble with the book.

My Problems with The Bread Mage

I’ve found that I like trying to analyze books. Which is good, because it’s my job. Not my real job, mind you. My imaginary part-time job that’s funded by my chads and lads over at Patreon. So I’m not here to CinemaSins ding the book for little nitpicks. I’m not an idiot. I understand that sometimes characters make stupid decisions. People do that all the time. Characters are also allowed to make emotional or irrational or illogical choices as long as its plausible. I also understand that a piece of work doesn’t need to be logical to our world. Their world has their own internal logic and as long as that logic is consistently adhered to, we’re fine.

Anyway my first issue is that the Evil Magistrate was so easily overthrown. I thought it was a little off that the Duchess wasn’t complicit in his plot, but fine. Whatever. I’ll go along with the idea that she really does hate that the Evil Magistrate was using his power to persecute mages and to try and take over her throne. She also either didn’t know he was exercising all this power in this way and/or she couldn’t stop him. Until a teenager and a little boy climb up her shitter and tell her to be strong and get rid of that guy. And that works.

She says “I don’t know what to do” and Mona is like ” but you’re the Duchess though” and she’s like “oh yeah!” She is then like “alright he’s too well-connected at court. We can’t act on him in court… so I’ll just use my guards as a cudgell and force him out.” With no consequences from the court and the nobles who supposedly back him. She just takes his title, his lands, and forces him out. It was that easy. Sounds like maybe he actually wasn’t as connected as we were lead to believe or we just needed to get on to the next story beat and let’s stop talking about the court because we need to move on to Bread-based Mortal Kombat, idiot!

My other big problem was how quickly people turned on mages. Look, I read the book. If I was supposed to believe that mages were second-class citizens, I never got that from Mona’s perspective. Some people thought mages were a little weird but nobody was outright hostile to them. Not in this city, anyway. Sure, other cities were kind of racist towards mages. The bad guys at the end killed their mages outright at birth by abandoning them in the forest. This town doesn’t do that.

The thing that caught me the most though, out of all of this, is that the closest thing they have to a hero of the people is a mage. The Golden General protects this city. He comes off as like a celebrity hero who saves the day time and time again. It’s a weird touch that he’s a hero respected by all but also the very second he goes away the magic-racists come out of the woodwork because some asshole noble says that magic-racism is okay now. Especially because the thing that precipitates this… is that mages are being killed?

It’s also strange that this is happening in their neighborhood. Even real-life racists who want to deport every Hispanic person on the planet usually expresses shock and dismay when their friendly neighborhood Hispanic person happens to be in the country illegally and were deported.

I don’t know if I can quite put my finger on why all this feels so wrong and out-of-left field. I think because Mona goes to great lengths to tell me, the reader, that this town is different and that mages aren’t discriminated against, that mages are the victims, and that it seems quite abrupt. I’m not saying it can’t happen. I’m saying that it needed to be better communicated in some way to make it feel more true.

I enjoyed the book despite these flaws (I still gave it 4 stars) but I can understand Ben’s 3-star “mid” perspective as well. I also get that it’s easier to critique than to create so when I say that there are some small changes to be made to make the book overall better and more enjoyable, I’m doing that totally from a perspective of arrogance. I am the best writer on this world or any other will ever know and you just don’t appreciate my genius. Blog over, go home.