BOOK REVIEWS: Bookshops & Bonedust, Legends & Lattes, & Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree
In 2025, I decided to start doing some talks at conventions to see if I could promote my novels a bit with a talk called Do We Need a Better Fantasy?, which I debuted at Archipelacon/Eurocon. It went really well and I was delighted that people came to talk to me afterwards to tell me how much they enjoyed it.
Interestingly, I was quite surprised that most of these people recommended me the same author: Travis Baldree. They were saying that if I’m interested in cozy low-fantasy, his books should be right up my alley. So, while I was in Sweden for SweCon/LunCon, hanging out with one of my besties, I picked up copies of Bookshops & Bonedust as well as Legends & Lattes, knowing that the latter was his debut novel and the former its prequel. As such, I did read them out of order, and I enjoyed them so thoroughly that I grabbed a copy of Brigands & Breadknives when it was released at the end of the year.
As I was writing this review, I ended up discovering there’s another book called Goblins & Greatcoats, which is currently available for free from Subterranean Press, so I nabbed that for later!
Premise
Legends & Lattes was pitched to me with an easy concept: an orc warrior, Viv, decides that she’s done with the adventuring life and decides to settle down and open a coffee shop, in a city that’s never heard of coffee (or chocolate, for that matter).
Bookshops & Bonedust is the prequel to L&L, flashing back 20 or so years to when Viv was just starting out as an adventurer, and it lays the foundation that explains how she got to where she was in L&L.
Brigands & Breadknives, however, I knew absolutely nothing about when it was released, but it seems to be centered around a character first alluded to in L&L, Fern, and then introduced properly in B&B, so once I learned that, I was curious to see what becomes of Fern in the “present” day, as she moves her bookshop next door to Viv’s coffee shop.
What I Loved (in the order I read them)
Bookshops & Bonedust
Everything.
No, that sounds stupid, but really, I don’t have any notes. I confess to being the most anal-retentive nit-picky reader out there, having spent over a decade in journalism, learning to analyze art and stories, as well as working as an editor for over a decade. Despite me having a lot to say about a lot of writing regarding pacing, purple prose, and so on, I simply have no feedback. This story is spectacular.
The beginning is compelling. The characters are interesting and relatable. Fern is a treasure. There’s intrigue and action, but most of the story is about Viv maturing a bit and learning some patience. There is a big, exciting climax, but the conclusion is very satisfying. It ends in a beautiful, bittersweet way.
I loved it.
Legends & Lattes
Also everything!
Why? Because this book is exactly what the world needs: adventure without apocalyptic intensity. Don’t get me wrong, high stakes high-fantasy is great, but there’s a severe oversaturation of it, as I mentioned in my review of Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself.
I really like the concept of someone wanting to introduce coffee to a world that isn’t broadly familiar with the concept. There’s such a magnificent interplay of real world and fantasy world in the book, and it was wonderfully balanced. I’m not even a coffee drinker, myself (I’ve never tolerated the taste), yet I still think this is one of the best things I’ve ever read.
Even better? The climax of this book is considerably less intense than that of its prequel. The climax is, for all intents and purposes, something the reader more or less expects to happen at some point throughout the entire novel. So to be able to set that up while not making it seem horrendously predictable—sublime!
Brigands & Breadknives
Fern is great, and getting a bit more insight into her world a good 20 or so years after she’s introduced properly in Bookshops & Bonedust was delightful. There is quite a lot of inner monologuing from her, which some might find a bit tedious, but I enjoyed it for the way it follows her journey of self-discovery through a very relatable midlife crisis. Also, Zyll was just wonderful. I love a weird, mysterious, inexplicable character and they were easily one of the biggest pulls to the story for me.
Overall
Travis Baldree’s characters are rich and deeply emotional, the books are very pro-queer, and the world doesn’t feel distinctly patriarchal, which I love. Anyone can be anything if it suits them, any romances are beautiful and tender—big shout-out to the prequel romance in Bookshops & Bonedust, which was so lovely, open, and low-drama that it brought a tear to my eye, even though it wasn’t the endgame romance for the characters. Friendship is developed honestly, loyalty is earned, and the stories feel like they’re about healthy community and connection, and that is what I think this world desperately needs right now.
So, yay, thank you, Travis, for moving from video games and audio narration into writing! You’re doing a brilliant job and I hope you don’t stop. I’m already looking forward to whatever comes next.
What Could Have Been Better
Bookshops & Bonedust
I’ve got nothing. I enjoyed this book from cover to cover and found nothing to complain about. Okay, maybe there was a clunky phrase once in a book, but really, no, I loved every bit of it. They weren’t exactly kishotenketsu—the stories did still have conflicts and climaxes, but the stakes were always far more personal than global, and that’s exactly the sort of books I want to read right now.
Legends & Lattes
Same as above! I really couldn’t find anything that I didn’t enjoy. I thought the pacing was excellent and the characters wonderful. Nothing stuck out to me as an issue.
Brigands & Breadknives
This was a very compelling read and with much more action than the previous installments of the series, but I admit that I feel like the ending didn’t quite pan out… not the way I expected, per se, but… I never really got a feeling that things wrapped up in an especially satisfying manner.
Light spoilers for the rest of this section, but here are my thoughts on the three main characters and how their arcs ended:
Fern - this was basically fine? I was expecting Fern to end up as an author somehow, so that pretty much played out how I expected. Though, I did find it weird that, as far as at least I understood, we never did find out who was running the bookstore in her absence.
Astrid - this was not at all what I was expecting. I felt like the book was building up momentum for Astrid to make a change in her life, the same way Fern was. She mentions many times the joys of dry socks and, under Fern’s influence, seems like she’s maybe ready to try something new. Honestly, I was hoping (not necessarily expecting, though), that Astrid would take over the bookshop and would become this sort of wizened store owner who would be telling her own tales as well as recommending stories to others. Even now, I feel like that might have been a more satisfying ending than what we got, which was an Astrid who had changed enough to desire companionship, but ultimately gets rejected when asking for it in the end. Kind of a bummer, won’t lie.
Zyll - I adored this character and a great deal of the intrigue in the story related to her mysteriousness. I was expecting a fantastic reveal at the end of what her game was the whole time and on first read, my response was, “Okay, weird, but sure.” However, I’ve opted not to actively put too much thought into it because I get the feeling that if I were to explore Zyll’s modus operandi in the book, it wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny and logic. Like, if the bounty was to bring Zyll to a certain town, but Zyll also was leaving from that town… does that make sense? Why did Zyll leave the town then? I’m not sure the logic is quite as fully realized as it could be. As I said, I opt not to think on this subject, lest it make me like the book less.
What Would I Like to See?
More! Write more books, please! Keep going!
Overall
If you need an afternoon to yourself, may I suggest doing what I did (or something similar): I set myself out a charcuterie plate, full of my favorite snacks, and curled up on the couch with Bookshops & Bonedust. Now, honestly, if you want peak enjoyment, you should probably get a chocolate croissant and a cup of coffee, but as mentioned, I don’t like coffee even a little bit, so I had to make due with a homegrown herbal infusion. Nevertheless, as someone who regularly forgets to take time to myself to enjoy things, I can’t think of a better way to enjoy a cozy afternoon than what I did that day after I came home from Sweden: had a nice tray of snacks, and read Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy. It’s like a balm for the soul in the best sort of way.
Curious about Bear’s fantasy? Check out the teaser sample of The Vitmar Chronicles, Volume I: An Ending & A Beginning!
