Bookshops & Bonedust
by
Travis Baldree
Prior to seeing this prequel and the original (Legends and Lattes), I had never heard of “cozy fiction” as a genre. How would that even work as a narrative? How can a story be cozy and not have drama or action or some such driving it inexorably forward and conflict to test and build our characters?
This story is technically a prequel story but the author has placed and spaced it so nicely that you can read both books in any order it seems, and it takes nothing away from either. Plus I got a nice hardcover edition that has this really nice artwork on the inner cover lining! 🙂
Here we dive into the action-packed life of Viv the Orc who is badly injured during a quest with her adventuring party – mainly due to her youthful over-eagerness and her warrior/barbarian like thirst for combat and to prove herself. Rackam, the leader of The Ravens, a legendary adventuring group, decides to leave Viv behind in the tiny coastal town of Murk to hopefully heal and survive; a fate that Viv loathes as she does not know that The Ravens will ever return for her and her fiery warrior spirit detests her injury related weakness and the ill-fit of herself in this idyllic little town. It doesn’t help that the local head of law-enforcement eyes her with much suspicion. As time passes, Viv meets some interesting characters like the grumpy Elvish doctor who saved her life, the local Dwarven baker who sparks some embers within Viv right from the start, Gallina the knife-happy Gnome and Fern, the owner of the titular bookshop that’s hobbling along to survive.
The bulk of the book itself is a wonderful example of something I am not used to in a lot of fiction – relationships, introspection and character interactions as the driver of the choices as narrative and all without a load of melodrama and tension. These are all people living their lives and we see the impacts of how the crossing of their paths and choices made along the way create ripples and some entwining of paths and purpose. The dangers that Viv faced in her past with The Ravens looms somewhere on the horizon as the land itself is under threat from the aforementioned Big Bad Necromancer they were hunting, but the stakes within our story are not focused there per-se, these are the lives of the people outside the adventure story you might otherwise read and only occassionally touches on that as a peripheral part of the narrative.
Baldree does a truly remarkable job and his development of Viv and the growth and evolution of her character are both enjoyable and at the same time a journey that is deeply believable. The interactions with Fern and others always feels real and true to the personalities built and the stakes are purely personal for everyone – it was a remarkably nice change of pace for me in a story and frankly has made me want more such stories to read. He keeps all the threads, even the peripheral ones, moving smoothly forward from start to finish and there are surprises aplenty and even some of the ways the surprises are handled are themselves surprising, right up until the finale which I truly did not see coming and I loved it.
I am grateful for whatever fortune brought author Travis Baldree and his writing into my purview because I read this book (I managed to find a copy of this before the first book) and it became my favourite book of the year and one of my favourite fantasy stories in a long time. Hereafter I plan to look for many more cozy fiction books if I can find ones of even similar quality because it brings a more grounded and relatable experience and in a world filled with drama and tension aplenty, it’s nice to have a calm space to slide into for just a little while. Cannot wait to read the next!
View all my reviews
One Happy Monk 
Leave a comment