by Travis Baldree ★★★★☆
The occasionally-used subtitle of Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes is "A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes", which is an apt description. Our main character is Viv, an orc who has spent decades as a hired battle hand, who finally is looking to hang up her sword and focus on a more peaceful existence. As is stated early in the novel, "Viv had reached her limit of blood and mud and bullshit. An orc's life was strength and violence and a sudden, sharp end -- but she'd be damned if she'd let hers finish that way." She charts a new course to the city of Thune, one she meticulously selected from several options and determined was the best fit for an unusual last chapter for an orc: purveyor of the city's first-ever coffee shop.
Viv, having tried coffee once during her travels, is so enamored with it that she is confident that the citizens of Thune will also fall in love with the beverage. To help her succeed on her quest is an artifact that Viv captured during her very last adventure, the "Scalvert's Stone". It is rumored in song to bring good fortune to its bearer. Viv pairs it with a witching rod to help her divine the perfect location for her coffee shop. Those tools lead her to an old livery that appears destined to be the location, and her quest to bring coffee to the people of Thune begins.
What follows is, as advertised, a low-stakes journey. Viv has a fair bit of coin from her travels and days as a mercenary, and so money isn't initially an issue. She develops a core group of employees-turned friends, including Cal, a hob who helps to build the shop; Thimble, a rattkin who is a genius at baking; and Tandri, a succubus who Viv trains to be her barrista. The pages of the story are more often devoted to the stepwise construction and evolution of the shop and to the developing relationships than anything else. There is some light conflict, from the local muscle wanting Viv to pay tribute and from some jilted members of her past band of mercenaries, but it is mild by any standard. This is mostly a novel about friendship, starting over, and leaving the past behind.
I chose the audiobook for this one, and that's a format that I'd strongly recommend if novel finds its way to your TBR (or TBL?) shelf. It's read by the author, and it's particularly well-done. I was thinking as I was listening, "Baldree may have even more promise as a narrator than as an author", only to find out in the acknowledgements that audiobook narration is actually Baldree's primary profession, having narrated hundreds of books in the past. Writing Legends & Lattes -- his first authored book -- was a passion project that derived out of reading so many others' works.
At under 300 pages, the novel makes for a quick and easy read (or listen). It's light fantasy -- while some of the characters are derived from the realm of fantasy, they could just as easily be universally human -- and there's little in the way of magic or swordplay or other things one might often associated with a typical fantasy novel. There is, however, an underlying sweetness that was a bit reminiscent of The House In the Cerulean Sea in that regard. Come to think of it, there are several parallels with that heartwarming book, from the main characters' struggles to find their identity to the supernatural cast of characters surrounding them. While I preferred Cerulean, I can imagine fans of that book will also enjoy this one.
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