"High Fantasy. First Loves. Second-Hand Books."

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree is another cosy fantasy that you could almost fall asleep to! Almost...

This novel is a prequel to Legends & Lattes, taking a peek at Orc Viv's life before opening a coffee shop in Thune. Following a battle, Viv is injured and ends up in the seaside town of Murk, where she makes friends with Fern, owner of a rundown bookshop, and her furry pet Potroast. Between reading books recommended by Fern, she has a summer fling with the gnome owner of the nearby bakery, Maylee, clashes with the town doctor Highlark and Gatewarden Iridia, gets into a fight, which lands her a night in jail and battles not once but twice with a necromaner.

I borrowed a copy of this book from Taunton Library and listened to it on cloudLibrary. As with his first novel, Travis Baldree was the audiobook narrator, which I appreciated. I read this for the 52 Book Club Summer Reading Challenge 2024, for prompt 21, team football/soccer, double letter word in the title.

Excellent book. Very chill read with just enough conflict to be interesting. It is a prequel to Legends and Lattes but it is not required reading outside of the epilogue. 

Enjoyable prequel to L&L, with loveable characters I'd like to see more of. That said, I almost wish there were fewer so we could explore a few relationships more deeply.
This book is not as strong as the other in terms of having a cozy setting, I would say. The nature of Viv being there to recuperate means that she cannot build a hearth and home. The

looming threat once she gains the sword

also makes it difficult to settle into the cozier scenes in the latter half.
As always, the narration by Baldree is well done, and helps to immerse with the world.

 Viv’s career with the mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. She was wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer and is packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy town of Murk. So far the only action she has to look forward to is staring out at the ocean. Spending her free time at a beleaguered bookshop.

I enjoyed this cozy read. I read this before reading Legends and Lattes, so was not disappointed in the similar plotlines. It was just enough action to satisfy the D&D player in me but not not so much that it took away from the flow of the narrative. 

Somehow this book was thrilling, and cozy, and sweet, and almost kind of boring, but also really fun all at the same time. Viv is a brash, young, hotheaded, and impulsive Orc that gets herself into trouble and winds up needing to take a little sabbatical in this shanty seaside town. And while she’s healing, she’s falling in love with books, and repairing stuff, and getting into absolute nonsensical trouble with a necromancer. So fun! 

 

So despite wishing that I had read B&B before Legends and Lattes because of the chronological order of the story, I don’t think I would have been as taken with L&L the way I was if I read this one first. Like it makes more sense chronologically – – even though they weren’t released that way – – but also getting to meet Viv after she’s settled down and is more worn out by life and looking to retreat into a cozy little coffee shop becomes more gratifying after you see some of the things that she struggled with in her youth. I’ll never know but I wonder. 

 

B&B walks a fine line of cozy and slow and “holy crap that book is a portal” or “those bones are a talking creature”; wild and creative! And a romance subplot! I had a very good time.