Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes

I was contacted, somewhat recently-ish, by my friend Tom. He's the same guy who introduced me to aseries I have reviewed here. He told me that there was a new book I needed to check out. I obediently rushed off to Amazon for a copy of Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes. I'm glad I did.

Legends and Lattes is a work of "cozy fantasy" and it's my first time reading in the genre. I have to admit that I enjoyed it. I was kind of surprised that I did, but I was surprised the first time I read Nathan Lowell's work, too. This is an awesome book, but it's kind of a strange departure for me.

The first work of fantasy I read was The Hobbit, followed by Lord of the Rings. After that, it was immediately on to the Dragonlance Chronicles, then the Dragonlance Legends. One right after another with no pause in between, since my buddy Jeff introduced me to the idea that a fantasy genre even existed. Prior to that my reading had been confined to Science Fiction, Non-Fiction and the occasional detective story. My point in mentioning all of those is that they were all heavily action based, high stakes stories with intense battle scenes and a sense of impending doom should the heroes fail. Legends and Lattes has almost nothing in common with those stories outside of having a fantasy setting but I loved it.

Our heroine, Viv, is a female orc and a former adventure with a significant savings of her ill-gotten gains and a passionate love of coffee in a part of the world where coffee is an unknown commodity. Viv is alright with that though. She brought some beans and an industrial sized coffee pot, complete with steamer. She can make her own coffee and sell it to the people in her new town. I mean, maybe. Maybe even probably. Viv is lucky in that there is no local Starbucks. She is unlucky in the fact that she's selling coffee to people who don't even know what coffee is. But she can make the coffee, and if she can find someone to buy it...

The other thing Viv is really good at making is friends. She finds people to help her build and run her new coffee shop on the bare bones of an old stable. There are enough technical details included to keep a yahoo like me, who can somewhat swing a hammer and has hung a bit of siding and done some household projects, satisfied with their accuracy. Whether a master carpenter would agree is, of course, a question for a master carpenter, but if you lack that degree of knowledge and experience, it should be enough to keep you from wanting to knock the author out. 

Speaking of accuracy your friendly neighborhood blogger has a history degree and finds himself wondering if Baldree's depiction of starting a new business is historically accurate to Renaissance Europe, which would be approximately the right period for Legends and Lattes. Your friendly neighborhood blogger is also a goofball and doesn't know for sure, but it feels right. I was satisfied with the way things went in the book.

I may have overstated the lack of violence in the book slightly. While there is very little actual fighting, there are a few threats of physical force. The strange part is that it only rarely happens and never really boils over. Viv actually hangs up her sword on the wall. But still, organized crime has its place in many fantasy settings and if Thune doesn't have the deep history of a city like Waterdeep, well, this is only the first book.

Thune is actually a well developed city, complete with everything from docks to trash dumps with a sprinkling of homes and businesses in between. Thune lives and breathes and is as much a character in the story as Viv herself and I like that. When I went to see Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves one of the coolest parts of watching it was seeing some of the iconic locations of the Forgotten Realms. Icewind Dale, Neverwinter, and Baldur's Gate (along with other places)  all feature prominently in the movie. Thune is too new and Baldree too relatively unknown to have that kind of drawing power, but it has the potential to make it that far. He just needs more fans and a few decades to get there. This makes sense because, according to his author bio, Baldree used to work in the video game industry. He has obviously learned something from his experience. 

My only complaint about Legends and Lattes, and I may very well be nitpicking here, is that there should have been a map of Thune included somewhere in the book. I get a decent picture of what the city looks like, but it would be better if I had been handed one. Maps are something lots of fantasy fans absolutely love and this feels like a fairly easy problem to fix. Maybe Baldree has a friend in the video game industry who could help him. For all I know, Baldree may have drawn some video game maps himself. 

You may, if you choose to do so, use that paragraph as an excuse to buy and read the book, thus looking forward to the next one as much as I am (And it's not out yet. I think I'll go cry.) and becoming a fan. I'm pretty excited because there aren't many authors that I have honestly followed since their first book, but this is my chance to get in on the ground floor. 

The sequel, Bookshops and Bonedust is already available for pre-order and I can't wait to get my grubby little mitts on a copy. I haven't been this excited about a new series in a looooong time. I haven't been this excited about a new subgenre in a long time. Fantasy author Genevieve Gornichec has called Legends and Lattes her new comfort read, and I think that fits. This is definitely an enjoyable fantasy read that you can dig into right before bed time and drift off peacefully to sleep afterward.

Legends and Lattes
Travis Baldree
Tor Books, 2023

Legends and Lattes is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no cost to you.