Book Review 2024 #10 - Travis Baldree's Bookshops and Bonedust
Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree
Published by: Tor Books
Publication Date: November 7th, 2023
Format: Paperback, 352 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy
Viv's dreams are finally coming true. She might be a young and inexperienced mercenary, but what she lacks in knowledge she makes up for in enthusiasm. But she is green, in more ways than one, and after spending the best two months of her life with Rackham's Ravens on the trail of the necromancer Varine the Pale and her army, the worst thing happens. She's injured. Sidelined in the seaside town of Murk. Room and board. And boy is she quickly bored. She has to be in fighting fit when Rackham comes back through town in a few months. Whatever it takes she will be ready. To that end she starts roaming the streets to build her strength up. Though it's not so much her strength as shoddy workmanship that results in her crutch going straight through the boardwalk in front of a bookstore. And Viv is an orc of honor. She goes inside to confess her crime and hopes to offset the damage by buying a book. Something she's never done. The store's own, a rattkin named Fern, is intrigued by Viv and gives her a book with the caveat that when she finishes it she comes back and tells her what she thought. She's not to worry about payment, she can pay if she decides to keep it. Viv decides to keep it. She never knew that books could be exciting and sexy and a whole new type of adventure. In fact she not only pays for the book but she fixes the boardwalk outside Fern's store. In fact soon Viv is a regular at the store with her new friend Gallina, a gnome who wants to be a mercenary just like Viv. They start to fix up Fern's shop, hoping to bring in new customers. Well, actually, any customers. Fern's at her wit's end. This shop was the dream of her father and she doesn't want to lose the last thing of his she has left. Well, if Viv has her way, Fern won't. They source new furniture and make reading nooks and book displays and have baked goods from the sexy dwarven baker down the street, Maylee. It might not be the recuperation that Viv expected, but it's turning out to be the one she needed. Until a man in gray appears. He sends a shiver down Viv's spine. The next day he leaves behind a satchel in the bookstore and nearly kills Viv in a fight but Gallina comes to her rescue. All three brawlers end up under the gimlet glare of Iridia, the head Gatewarden. They cool their heels overnight, but when dawn comes the mysterious stranger is gone but in his place is the certainty that he worked for Varine. The fight Viv was sidelined from might be coming to Murk. And now she has something more to lose than her life.
My book club read Legends and Lattes. And if there's one thing about my book club it's that we have such radically different tastes when it comes to books that we will never agree on anything. So for those of you thinking that Legends and Lattes is a fairly innocuous book you'd be wrong. Because one member had "issues." Of course this is the member whose tastes I am the least compatible with. They actually tried to defend Scattered All Over the Earth by Yōko Tawada, otherwise known as the book that almost did me in, as perhaps being written ironically. With that much hate and racism even if it was ironic the toxicity oozing out of the pages made me physically ill and put me in a reading slump for a long time. So their issues with Legends and Lattes? They felt that Viv didn't struggle enough in her decision to give up her mercenary lifestyle and that it was too much a fait accompli. They wanted turmoil and second-guessing. I personally didn't feel this because the journey of Viv wasn't her journey to realizing she wanted to change her life but to making her coffeeshop a success. So what they wanted was another book. What they wanted, ironically, was this book. When Legends and Lattes was chosen for book club I had just finished reading it the month prior and instead of rereading it I thought to myself, how about reading the prequel/sequel instead? Which meant that I could say, hey, you know all that lack of struggle you were complaining about? Read this instead. Because here we don't have a settled Viv, we have a young and hungry Viv who is in forced convalescence. She was trying to prove herself and waylaid by an injury she's a ball of pent-up frustration with no outlet. But I love that Viv. And I love that this is the proto Legends and Lattes Viv. You can feel her youth and her thirst for adventure, but you can also see how because of this injury and the friendships she's made in Murk this time was formative. This is where her love of reading started. As well as her love of baked goods... But what touched me most is Fern. Fern sees this injured orc shamble into her bookshop and sees someone who has never picked up a book. Someone who doesn't understand that adventure can be found on the page as much as on the trail of a necromancer. And she asks Viv to give her a chance to turn her into a reader. Because hasn't every one of us had a Fern in our life? Someone who hands us the right book at the right time and that's it. We're booklovers for life. Oh, and ironically, the fact that this book has a necromancer would have alienated a different member of my book club. We all might be booklovers, we just really love different things.
Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
