Legends & Lattes

I passed over this book when it was being hyped as the best thing since sliced bread back in 2022. It just looked too wholesome, too cosy, too self-consciously uplifting for me. I'm too dour for that kind of thing. I'm a good fit for that old joke "I was an optimist once, but I knew it wouldn't last.* Then, last year, in my contrarian way, I read the second book 'Bookshops & Bonedust', (which was actually a prequel) and was delighted with it. I liked Viv which was surprising given that she was an Orc mercenary (I was raised on Tolkien. Orcs are not supposed to be likeable.) and I lost myself in how joyful the book was.

So, this week, I finally read the original. It's not a complex tale. An Orc mercenary retires and sets up a coffee shop show more in a city where no one has ever heard of coffee. That's it really. And yet it was wonderful.

When I reviewed, 'Bookshops & Bonedust', I wrote, "I couldn’t say how the effect was achieved, but the book felt welcoming, the feeling you get when you step into a restaurant you’ve not visited before but where the aromas, the ambience and the attitude of the staff make it feel like home." This time, I want to see if I could figure out what Travis Baldree does that makes his books special. (I know, I should just enjoy the book, not vivisect it but it's a habit I can't kick).

As I read chapters about Viv turning a decrepit livery stable into a thriving coffee shop, I saw that Travis Baldree has a talent for making the mundane into something magical by adding, hope, kindness and tolerance.

There were tense, and even sad moments in the book but mostly it kept making me smile. It was sweet without being twee. It felt like a hope turned into a promise.

I think the power of the book comes from the different relationship Travis Baldree offers his readers. Instead of being asked to suspend my disbelief, I was being encouraged to extend my belief. I accepted that invitation, breathed in the scent of freshly brewed coffee and just-out-of-the-oven baking and let myself live in a little pocket of happiness. show less

Well, @travis_baldree’s LEGENDS & LATTES is fucking delightful. I read it in two sittings, which almost never happens these days, and I loved every page. Viv’s desire to create something special and defy societal norms about who a person is viewed as vs. how they view themselves is something I think a lot of people will appreciate. The other characters in TBR story are just a thought out and watching Viv create her own found family was exactly what my #queer little heart needed right now. If the world is exhausting you right now, take a moment, pour your favorite coffee (or beverage of choice), and let this delightful, quick, cozy fantasy warm your heart. @torbooks, great job on picking this up and publishing it!

#queerbookstagram show more #alphabetmafia #books #bookstagram #book #booklover #reading #bookworm #bookstagrammer #bookinfluencer #read #booknerd #bookaddict #bookreview #booksofinstagram #torbooks #readingtime #bookblog #blogger #bookrecommendation #booksbooksbooks #readersofinstagram #reader #booklove #instabooks #fantasy #travisbaldree #frommybookshelfblog #frommybookshelf show less

Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes is a delightful gem of a book that wraps you in its cozy embrace from the very first page. It’s a low-stakes, heartwarming fantasy that feels like sipping a cup of your favorite latte on a chilly day.

The story follows Viv, an orc who decides to retire from adventuring to open a coffee shop—a bold and unusual choice in her medieval fantasy world. The concept alone is charming, but it’s the execution that truly shines. Baldree masterfully creates a sense of warmth and welcome, making the reader feel like part of the community Viv builds.

The minor characters are memorable and endearing, from the inventive hob carpenter to the vivacious succubus barista. And let's not forget the cat, who adds a touch show more of whimsy and comfort to every scene it graces.

Beyond its engaging characters, the book is a love letter to food and drink. The detailed descriptions of coffee and pastries are so vivid they’ll leave you craving a freshly baked cinnamon roll.

If you're looking for a break from high-stakes, action-packed fantasies and want something cozy, wholesome, and utterly charming, Legends & Lattes is the perfect choice. show less

How cozy is this book?

There's a scene in which a small business owner, reluctant to pay protection money, meets with the local crime lord. The crime lord busies herself during that conversation by crocheting doilies.

That is how cozy this book is, and that is just a little too cozy for me. To be fair, it's right there on the back cover of the book: "A novel of high fantasy and low stakes."

Our protagonist is Viv. She's an orc, and after 20-some years of raiding, marauding, and battling, she's tired and longing for a simpler life. She abruptly leaves her fellow raiders and moves to a small city to open a coffee shop.

And that is the principal action of the novel. We watch as Viv finds a location, hires a carpenter to renovate the building, show more adds a barista and a baker to her staff (a baker who will apparently invent cinnamon rolls, biscotti, and chocolate croissants), and becomes a pillar of the local business community.

There is minimal drama (low stakes, remember?) involving the aforementioned crime lord and a former marauding colleague of Viv's, but there's never any real sense of peril. Everything is sweet and gentle and anachronistically (*) cutesy to the point that I wanted to throw the book against the wall. I was reminded of Dorothy Parker's review of The House at Pooh Corner: "Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

(* -- Oh, I know, I know; it's a fantasy world, so how can anything really be anachronistic. I'm not buying that argument. The version of a coffee shop presented in this novel is so late-20th-century American that the place might as well be called Starbucks, and it feels jarringly out of place in an otherwise blandly generic high-fantasy universe.)

It's a book in which even when something finally happens, nothing seems to be happening. It's precious and twee and so syrupy that I felt I might have to double up on my diabetes meds. Yuck. show less

An orc decides to give up adventuring and open up a coffee shop. Apparently this is the standard bearer for "cozy fantasy." If this is the epitome of cozy fantasy, then apparently cozy fantasy is an utterly boring genre where nothing happens. I've read some discussion of the book, and often people stereotype its detractors as needing big battles and epic adventures... but unlike many readers of fantasy, I read outside of the genre as well and know how much a good writer can do with seemingly little. One of my favorite books is Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, which is about a guy who realizes he's getting old, that's it. The problem isn't that this is a novel of "low stakes," it's that it's a novel of no stakes.

Viv opens her show more coffee shop... and basically encounters no problems that aren't resolved within about ten pages. There is almost no interpersonal conflict—everyone she meets is instantly helpful all the time—and very little internal conflict as well—having decided to do this thing, she does it. I couldn't help but keep thinking what Terry Pratchett would do with an orc running a coffee shop. It would be hilarious, of course (whereas I remember laughing about once here), but more importantly, there would be some kind of conflict from what the protagonist was expected to be (a violent orc) and what the protagonist wanted to be (a coffee shop owner), both internally and externally. There's none of that here, the rich potential of this idea goes completely unmined. You never have a sense that Viv could fail, even though most new restaurants in our world close within a year because they can't turn a profit. This is still true even when her shop burns down! It comes across as a minor, temporary setback.

There's just no depth of character here. I hate for a review to be "how I would have written it," but if I'd written it, the orc would have had to struggle to put away her old mindset, struggle to make connections, even struggle to do basic customer service. Because, who wants to read 250 pages of someone easily doing everything they want to do? (Apparently lots of people.) I love stories where groups of disparate people overcome their differences to accomplish something... but these people don't overcome anything, much less their differences!

There is a sort of subplot about a local crimeboss trying to extort protection money from the coffee shop, but it ends nonsensically. After refusing to pay and refusing to fight, Viv just begins... buying her off with free baked goods? How is that any different from paying, morally speaking? Then the brutal crimelord is just another pal.

Often I can read a book and not like it and see what other people appreciate in it anyway... in this case, I can only wrap my head around it be assuming the people who made this book into a sensation have absolutely no discernment. I get wanting something "cozy"... but I also feel like coziness is pointless in fiction if it doesn't come after some kind of struggle. I had a friend in college would used to complain there weren't more "slice of life" stories. When quizzed, it turned out she meant a story where a woman met a man and lived happily ever after with no issues coming up. I thought it was pretty self-evident why stories like that didn't exist, but maybe I should send her a copy of Legends & Lattes. show less

This one was touted as a sweet, pleasant, cozy, good-hearted read, and that sounded like exactly what I was in the mood for right now, but... Well, I'm afraid for me it missed "cozy" entirely and landed straight on "irredeemably bland."

Which is too bad. The premise sounds like a lot of fun. In a D&D-style setting, Orcish adventurer Viv has decided to hang up her sword and pursue her dream of opening a coffee shop, even though pretty much no one around her has even heard of this exotic gnomish stuff called coffee. And the way she sets about basically creating a 21st-century coffee shop in this fantasy world did, briefly, seem kind of cute. Oh, look, now they've invented biscotti, ha! Except... Well, you know how, these days, coffee shops show more all over the place have started to feel completely interchangeable? And, yeah, there's a comfortable familiarity to that, but maybe a bit of local color might actually be more interesting? This is basically that in novel form. No local color, no sense of the fantasy setting as a real place that matters in any way. Just your average boring completely familiar coffee shop with some vague fantasy flavor. For those familiar with fanfictional tropes, it's basically a coffeeshop AU without the AU part, and... Well, maybe before picking this one up I should have thought about how much I dislike coffeeshop AUs and the way they suck out all the specific details of settings and stories that make them interesting to me and replace them with the boringly mundane.

Mind you, it could have worked, anyway, if it were played with the right kind of humor, or if the characters were compelling enough to carry the whole thing by themselves, but no and no. And the oh-so-pat "and then everything works out fine because of the Power of Friendship!" ending was far too cartoonish for me.

Then again, maybe the simple truth is that I'm entirely too Gen X to really enjoy anything that's praised on the back cover for being "wholesome." show less

{first of 2+prequel in Legends and Lattes series; fantasy, friendship, NaNoWriMo, coffee, steampunk} (2022)

The sub-title is 'High fantasy. Low stakes. Good coffee'

I like the way Baldree takes every fantasy trope and turns it on its head; our hero is an older female orc warrior (who visits libraries), on the point of retiring as we read the prologue (we enter on her last sword-stroke). This is not an adventure story; it is what happens after the mission is accomplished or what happens behind the scenes in the everyday lives of characters that heroes pass by.

Viv wants to start a café in a city that's never heard of coffee so she has to build from scratch. She's saved the bounties she's earned and she has a secret weapon; a Scalvert show more Stone which, according to her readings, should attract good fortune. So, having done her research, she enters the city of Thune, finds a good location and starts building her business - literally from the ground up, including the building itself. Along the way she finds good people, who become good friends, who help her in her quest.

This story was pitched just right, like a warm cup of coffee on a brisk autumn day; the sub-title is accurate. It's a gentle story which leaves you feeling good after reading it. It's not about high adventure and derring-do but the quest down unknown roads and the friends you make on the journey. Of course, it's not all smooth sailing and Viv comes up against trials like the neighbourhood bully-boys who want their protection money and the jealous business rival but her friends, both new and old, pitch in to help.

There are no humans in this story though most are human-like. I was amused by Baldree reinventing the wheel (and the pinwheels, cinnamon rolls, biscotti etc.) with Thimble's pastries and things like the gnomish 'auto-circulator' (ceiling fan). The gnomish inventions, such as Viv's flame-powered coffee machine, give this fantasy a slightly steampunk flavour.

A couple of minor points (and just my opinion): to be honest I wasn't entirely comfortable with the arrangement that Viv came to with the Madrigal, though she was obviously happy with it. And, though the villain's comeuppance was very apt, I'd have preferred the other one that was posited for them.

I think this is Baldree's ode to coffee, he describes savouring a cup so lovingly. Try it.

(October 2023)
3.75 stars show less