Bookshops & Bonedust by: Travis Baldree

 

When I read Legends & Lattes I noted that it wasn’t a book that was in the genre I generally read, but it was incredibly charming, incredibly cozy, and incredibly romantic.  It was also quite a quick read from start to finish, and Travis Baldree wrote and released the follow-up exactly one year later with Bookshops & Bonedust, instead of continuing the story, jumping back for a prequel story about Viv before discovering her love of coffee.  Baldree’s prequel continues the general vibe of being a cozy fantasy, however, the perspective of Viv here is quite rough: she is still a mercenary and believes that might just be her only purpose in the world as an orc.  It’s a particularly interesting element for the character as an issue prequels can generally fall into is the problem of knowing where characters have to end up, the story already has an endpoint where it must go and while this can be rectified depending on the genre, it’s something that is largely an issue.  Bookshops & Bonedust is a prequel whose biggest issue is that it falls into this problem because the reader knows where Viv is going, Baldree writing on the strength of making this earlier Viv being different enough from the Viv the reader is familiar with while essentially following the same, very cozy, plot of Legends & Lattes, but with a bookshop.  Now the setting itself is something that largely tempers the similarities between the two books, and Baldree does succeed at largely making Viv feel less developed, but not in perhaps a lazy way.

 

Viv’s arc here is getting her to the point where she would be fully willing to leave the mercenary life behind her.  She is a woman who largely wants action and is dealing with a society that as an orc has the world look at her as a warrior and just a warrior, potentially a very dangerous one.  Baldree’s opening chapters of Viv being unable to do anything and walking with a cane are genuinely great and a fascinating little character study.  She is stuck in a small town and has her eyes on a largely disused bookshop, something that when she enters she nearly destroys some books and the proprietor, Fern, and her pet, Potroast, are determined to make friends.  This leads the three of them down a rabbit hole and around town into revitalizing the bookshop as Viv discovers a love of reading.  Yes, this is essentially the same plot but the switching of the roles so Viv is the one who has to learn to accept new ideas and fall in love with reading action and romance.  Now without the slow burn of the romance that was the heart of Legends & Lattes, Baldree replaces it with an interesting series of female friendships and expansion of one’s own worldview which is incredibly fun.  Like Legends & Lattes there is a third act “big bad”, one that had been foreshadowed and built up nicely throughout the novel, though not nearly for the same impact which is perhaps the thing that’s holding Bookshops & Bonedust back from being perfect.

 

Overall, Bookshops & Bonedust is a book that’s going to give readers essentially the same feeling of reading Legends & Lattes while potentially setting up something for the sequel.  It falls into some of the general issues of prequels and removing the romance doesn’t quite hit the same, but the new characters are equally as wonderful and it’s just nice to see more of Viv.  Baldree clearly struggled with finding what would be his second book and I hope the third will work out and exceed the ever so slight step down this book represents.  8/10.