Legends and Lattes (Legends and Lattes #1)

After months of asking and pushing, I finally got my partner to agree to read along with me. We however have slightly differing likes and dislikes when it comes to books. They enjoy the lengthy heroic fantasy books and I can’t stand anything longer than 500 pages at most nor do I enjoy learning about yet another variant of orcs, humans and elves battling it out under different religions and with a whole plethora of heroes each with terribly long names. This is how we agreed on Legends and Lattes. It’s still fantasy, satisfying my partner, but its low stakes and cutesy vibes assured me that I was not gonna get dragged into a legendary adventure fighting some grand evil.

Legends and Lattes tells the story of Viv, an orc mercenary who wants to leave her old life and open up what is essentially Starbucks in a fantasy world. She’s got plenty of money from her years of adventuring and she’s even got her hands on a magical bauble supposed to bring success to her endeavour. This however isn’t a story about the difficult reality of opening and maintaining a successful business, instead Legends and Lattes is content with telling a story about making friends. Viv will be meeting a range of characters, most of which are either unbelievably nice or just quirky enough to be chuckle worthy.

For better or for worse, there isn’t much else to sink your teeth into past the interpersonal relationships. The world doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, as once you’re done having a giggle about the semantics gymnastics done by the author to not use the words “croissant” or “frappuccino” in her fantasy world, you’ll be met with copious amounts of goblin engineering justifications for any and all fancy machinery. This isn’t unusual by any means, goblin engineering being the “don’t ask, it’s magic” of technology, but I’m more used to seeing it justify the existence of planes instead of a Mastrena machine and air conditioning. Of course, not all is roses and sunshine as Viv and her friends will face threats from within the city and from the outside as Viv’s past comes back to haunt her. However, those conflicts are handwaved away in a ridiculously childish and easy way.

This isn’t Game of Thrones though nor is it even a young adult heroic fantasy sage, it’s a cute one-off story about friendship. Every character has their own charm and every chapter almost tells a fully rounded story so much so that I could see it being an easy to adapt family TV show. This isn’t a striking story that will stay with me for years but it does just enough to differentiate itself from the rest and I don’t think you could find a comfier read no matter how much you tried.