Maire is a baker with an extraordinary gift: she can infuse her treats with emotions and abilities, which are then passed on to those who eat them. She doesn’t know why she can do this and remembers nothing of who she is or where she came from.
When marauders raid her town, Maire is captured and sold to the eccentric Allemas, who enslaves her and demands that she produce sinister confections, including a witch’s gingerbread cottage, a living cookie boy, and size-altering cakes.
During her captivity, Maire is visited by Fyel, a ghostly being who is reluctant to reveal his connection to her. The more often they meet, the more her memories return, and she begins to piece together who and what she really is—as well as past mistakes that yield cosmic consequences.
From the author of The Paper Magician series comes a haunting and otherworldly tale of folly and consequence, forgiveness and redemption.
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“In a controlled voice, with restrained emotion, narrator Kate Rudd presents the first-person point of view of Maire, who is abducted from her peaceful village by marauding thieves and enslaved. Determined to escape and find her way home, she’s visited by a spirit who seems to have played a significant role in a part of her past she can’t remember. As the spirit’s physical presence becomes increasingly insubstantial and fleeting, Rudd makes his voice become more and more of a whisper. As Maire recovers her memories, the spirit’s presence becomes less ethereal, and Rudd makes comparable adjustments to the volume and tone of his voice. Rudd’s voices for some of the ancillary characters are more emotionally expressive, balancing the mood.”
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