Time for some cozy fantasy with Legends & Lattes

 

Today I’m talking about Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. This is one of those books that I’ve seen around for a good long while and finally came around to getting it and reading it. Similar vibes to Felix Ever After where it has taken me ages to get here.

The blurb says that after decades of adventuring, Viv the orc barbarian is hanging up her sword for good. Now she sets her sights on a new dream: opening the first coffee shop in Thune. Even though no one there knows what coffee actually is. If Viv wants to realise her plans, she’ll need help from unexpected quarters. Yet rivals old and new stand in the way of success. And Thune’s shady underbelly could make it all too easy for Viv to take up the blade once more. But the true reward of the uncharted path is the travellers you meet along the way. Whether bound by ancient magic, delicious pastries or a freshly brewed up, they may become something deeper than Viv could ever have imagined.

The prologue was little more than the end of Viv’s final adventure where she decides it’s time for something new. Then the first chapter hops to the city that she’s moved to and decided to settle down in and you see her, with the spoils from her adventuring, buying an old livery that she wants to convert into a coffee shop. While she’s clearing out the place with her new bestie, Calamity, this fake nicely dressed man comes in, asking what she’s doing, and it’s clear he’s giving off crustina boots vibes and that he’s kind of shady because it turns out he’s part of a crime syndicate who run the part of the city they’re in. She also ends up hiring a succubus called Tandri and there’s a lot of exposition about the construction.

Now I want to preface this point by saying that the cover of the book literally says “low stakes” on it, so I wasn’t expecting high action or anything like, no major fight scenes. Nothing like the Dragon Age trilogy I recently read that one of which much have spent an entire chapter on a dragon fight, but I think, in the first hundred pages of the book, it could have benefited from having the cast getting to know each other some or spending time together, because it kind of just felt like things were happening and we were being told said things were happening. Like, Viv was opening a coffee shop, changing her entire life. I’d have liked to have known how she felt about it a little more. It was when Viv actually opened the shop itself, that’s when I felt like it started to properly come alive. To me, it’s the issue that I understand that she needs to actually open and set up the shop, but the actual set up wasn’t that interesting to me. Again, once they opened, however, that’s when it got going. I think this book got stronger once all of that was done, because, for lack of better phrasing, that’s when things started actually happening. People started showing up and the very minimal conflict ended up happening.

I think this book could have taken a crumb from traditional fantasy by being longer. Now, is this my favourite criticism of books – to say I want more of them – yes, it is. But I wanted more. Particularly with Viv and Tandri. There’s a point the two of them go on a picnic, and this is about two-thirds in, and this was the first point where I thought something might have genuinely happened between the two of them, because there had been little touches and little things they’d said to each other prior, but nothing major. And did I scream? Did I yaas? Perhaps I did because I thought something was finally going down. But my point is that I would have loved to have seen some other little bits leading up to the two of them, you know? A little slower on the burn before this picnic. Even if had been something like having a rush one day in the shop and the two of them are conveniently falling over each other. Something nice and tropey.

Saying all of that, this book isn’t about the romance, I figured it to be more about found family than anything else, especially since Viv did used to be this gruff adventuring orc. The scalvert’s stone that she acquires right at the start of the book is allegedly meant to bring good luck and fortune to the person that has it, but there’s this gnome that comes and hangs out at Viv’s coffee shop who ends up sharing that it’s not so much meant to bring good luck and fortune, but more meant to bring, as best I can describe, similar vibes and things together. So, with Viv wanting her coffee shop to succeed, the scalvert stone was meant to bring similar people to Viv actually to Viv. People that maybe wanted something solid, to settle, and with a similar dream to Viv. And in the end, it brought Calamity, Tandri, and Thimble to Viv, who ended up being the ones responsible for the coffee shop’s journey. As a little aside, the best way I can describe Thimble, who was a rat man (literally) in the book, is that he was basically that autism beast that someone drew. I don’t know how to describe it, but that’s literally how I saw him, as that little white creature. All he wanted was a big kitchen where he could bake his sweet treats.

This book ended a lot more suddenly than I was expecting it to. I’m one of those people who will flick right to the end of the book immediately because I want to know how many pages are in it – I just like numbers. And I saw that this book (or my copy) was 300 pages, then to my surprise, the story ends about 260 pages in. Then those last pages are a side story set before the events of the book that cover how Viv discovered coffee in the first place. It was fine. It was one of those things where I read it and was like, “Oh, that’s what it was for.” It wasn’t until the last few pages that I realised that’s what it was doing, because for the most part, it was just a mission that Viv was on with an old partner, Gallina – shoutout to Allie X, Galina wake up core. But the length of the book was my biggest gripe with it. Because, yes, things happened, but that was just it for the most part. A lot of it was things happening and I think with more content, like a typical fantasy book (like I’ve already mentioned when talking about Viv and Tandri), would have made this book so much deeper than it was. As it stands on its own, it was perfectly fine, just like the cover said: “High fantasy, low stakes”. But I wanted more.

Okay, bye!