Bookshops and Bonedust (Legends and Lattes #2)
Genres Fantasy, Light-hearted, Cute
8.5/10
As a prequel to Legends and Lattes, Bookshops and Bonedust follows Viv’s story as she is unfortunately left behind due to her injuries sustained whilst chasing a necromancer. Whilst frustrated by her state, she quickly makes the acquaintance of the inhabitants of the little village of Murk and gets busy helping the local library with getting her business back up which might just change what Viv is looking for in life.
Highlights
- Still cosy and comforting.
- The stakes are more interesting than they were in Legends and Lattes
- As is the overall world
- It begs to be adapted into an animated family show
The first Legends and Lattes was a bit of a sleeper hit for me, I remember its vibe distinctly and there’s nothing much that managed to scratch a similar itch since but it also told a fairly unmemorable story. The world also failed to feel real with the author’s unabashed take on writing the story of the opening of a Starbucks in all but in name. Not only does Bookshops and Bonedust without fail fit right back into that comfy niche, it also improves on essentially all of its predecessor’s shortcomings.
Whilst the first book introduces Viv’s character, it’s really only here that we get to understand who she is. Viv in Legends and Lattes is a mercenary who decided to become a barrista because she had enough (?), it was good enough for the story it was telling but didn’t tell much about why she was a mercenary in the first place nor why she decided it was time for a career change. Whilst she is still already a mercenary at the start of this book, she is the rookie of her mercenary band and her ambition gets her promptly into trouble
Centring the plot around the renovation of a library instead of a definitely-not-Starbucks helps ground the story in its own world. There isn’t any particular exposition or lore dump moment, Travis Baldree still takes a very soft approach to world building with the simple premise of it being a medieval fantasy world with a bunch of different races and magic existing and never putting too much focus on any of its elements but it still works as the story’s stakes are in line with the story being told this time around. Legends and Lattes had an issue with the story subtly revolving around a magical luck stone that Viv had whilst only rarely actually mattering and feeling terribly dissociated from the Starbucks side of the story. Bookshops and Bonedust doesn’t have that issue by keeping the necromancer threat a reoccurring issue throughout the book and even links it to the library creating a much more homogenous story.
That’s not to say the story is perfect, in particular my partner found issues with character development being lacklustre in some aspects and even story beats being set up without pay off.
Spoiler
Most notably, Viv’s injury being caused by her own recklessness should set up for her to learn from this mistake, but the ending fights have her rush into a horde of undead all the same.
Gallina, one of the book’s recurring characters is also mostly absent during the story’s climax, making her role questionable aside from being a tie in to the beginning of Legends and Lattes.
Despite the story having odd bits of other books Viv is reading in-universe, her reading experience has little to do with the story’s resolution which feels like a missed opportunity given the book’s theme.
Many of these issues I can however easily forgive because I still see this book saga through the lens of a family friendly animated series. The laid-back atmosphere, cute characters, low-stakes action and simplicity of the world building all still lend themselves beautifully to either a 90min Disney style feature film or a couple seasons of 20min episodes. The awkwardness in this conversion however is in that the author clearly isn’t trying to do this nor to aim for that target audience if the number of “fucks” said is anything to go by.
Nonetheless, Bookshops and Bonedust still works for what it wants to be. It’s a refreshing palate cleanser, it never becomes a frantic page turner and it’s never so interesting that you’ll want to stay up all night reading it but it’s a perfect lazy evening read and as the cover so perfectly says it’s a “warm hug of a book”.