Review: Bookshops & Bonedust, by Travis Baldree

[Russ Allbery]

Bookshops & Bonedust
by Travis Baldree

Series:    Legends & Lattes #2
Publisher: Tor
Copyright: 2023
ISBN:      1-250-88611-2
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     337

Bookshops & Bonedust is a prequel to the cozy fantasy Legends & Lattes.
You can read them in either order, although the epilogue of Bookshops &
Bonedust spoils (somewhat guessable) plot developments in Legends &
Lattes.

Viv is a new member of the mercenary troop Rackam's Ravens and is still
possessed of more enthusiasm than sense. As the story opens, she
charges well ahead of her allies and nearly gets killed by a pike
through the leg. She survives, but her leg needs time to heal and she
is not up to the further pursuit of a necromancer. Rackam pays for a
room and a doctor in the small seaside town of Murk and leaves her
there to recuperate. The Ravens will pick her up when they come back
through town, whenever that is.

Viv is very quickly bored out of her skull. On a whim, and after some
failures to find something else to occupy her, she tries a run-down
local bookstore and promptly puts her foot through the boardwalk
outside it. That's the start of an improbable friendship with the
proprietor, a rattkin named Fern with a knack for book recommendations
and a serious cash flow problem. Viv, being Viv, soon decides to make
herself useful.

The good side and bad side of this book are the same: it's essentially
the same book as Legends & Lattes, but this time with a bookstore.
There's a medieval sword and sorcery setting, a wide variety of
humanoid species, a local business that needs love and attention (this
time because it's failing instead of new), a lurking villain, an
improbable store animal (this time a gryphlet that I found less
interesting than the cat of the coffee shop), and a whole lot of found
family.

It turns out I was happy to read that story again, and there were some
things I liked better in this version. I find bookstores more
interesting than coffee shops, and although Viv and Fern go through a
similar process of copying features of a modern bookstore, this felt
less strained than watching Viv reinvent the precise equipment and menu
of a modern coffee shop in a fantasy world. Also, Fern is an absolute
delight, probably my favorite character in either of the books. I love
the way that she uses book recommendations as a way of asking questions
and guessing at answers about other people.

As with the first book, Baldree's world-building is utterly unconcerned
with trying to follow the faux-medieval conventions of either sword and
sorcery or D&D-style role-playing games. On one hand, I like this; most
of that so-called medievalism is nonsense anyway, and there's no reason
why fantasy with D&D-style species diversity should be set in a
medieval world. On the other hand, this world seems exactly like a US
small town except the tavern also has rooms for rent, there are roving
magical armies, and everyone fights with swords for some reason. It
feels weirdly anachronistic, and I can't tell if that's because I've
been brainwashed into thinking fantasy has to be medievaloid or if it's
a true criticism of the book. I was reminded somewhat of reading Jack
McDevitt's SF novels, which are supposedly set in the far future but
are indistinguishable from 1980s suburbia except with flying cars.

The other oddity with this book is that the reader of the series knows
Viv isn't going to stay. This is the problem with writing a second
iteration of this story as a prequel. I see why Baldree did it — the
story wouldn't have worked if Viv were already established — but it
casts a bit of a pall over the cheeriness of the story. Baldree to his
credit confronts this directly, weaves it into the relationships, and
salvages it a bit more in the epilogue, but it gave the story a sort of
preemptive wistfulness that was at odds with how I wanted to read it.

But, despite that, the strength of this book are the characters. Viv is
a good person who helps where she can, which sounds like a simple thing
but is so restful to read about. This book features her first meeting
with the gnome Gallina, who is always a delight. There are delicious
baked goods from a dwarf, a grumpy doctor, a grumpier city guard, and a
whole cast of people who felt complicated and normal and essentially
decent.

I'm not sure the fantasy elements do anything for this book, or this
series, other than marketing and the convenience of a few plot devices.
Even though one character literally disappears into a satchel, it felt
like Baldree could have written roughly the same story as a
contemporary novel without a hint of genre. But that's not really a
complaint, since the marketing works. I would not have read this series
if it had been contemporary novels, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a
slice of life novel about kind and decent people for readers who are
bored by contemporary settings and would rather read fantasy. Works for
me.

I'm hoping Baldree finds other stories, since I'm not sure I want to
read this one several more times, but twice was not too much. If you
liked Legends & Lattes and are thinking "how can I get more of that,"
here's the book for you. If you haven't read Legends & Lattes, I think
I would recommend reading this one first. It does many of the same
things, it's a bit more polished, and then you can read Viv's
adventures in internal chronological order.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2023-12-22

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-88611-2.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)             <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>