The second book in, and prequel to, Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes series.

I very much enjoyed the first book in the cosy fantasy series that has took the bookish community by storm—you can read my review of Legends & Lattes here—and so I was very excited when I saw that another entry was in the works. As with all things on the endless TBR, it’s taken me a while to get to Bookshops & Bonedust but it certainly provided me with some lovely, warm respite this winter.

Blurb

Viv’s career with the renowned mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk – so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it. What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a struggling bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted. Even though it may be exactly what she needs. Still, adventure isn’t far away. A suspicious traveller in grey, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.

Sometimes, right things happen at the wrong time. Sometimes, what we need isn’t what we seek. And sometimes, we find ourselves in the stories we experience together . . .

Review

Bookshops & Bonedust is an odd one. I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading, but I find that after the fact I don’t have very much to say about it. This book follows a very similar path to its predecessor, which was excellent, so you’d think there’s no way to go wrong here, right? But, after having some time to think on it, I believe that’s where the problem lies.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some real standout characters (such as Satchel), and it was good to see a younger Viv as well as how she met a certain stabby gnome, the prose is beautiful, and the food descriptions are utterly pornographic, but the book felt… unnecessary, perhaps? I think it stuck too rigidly to the formula of the first book, or perhaps it felt too much like a re-skin (to borrow a term from the videogaming world) in swapping the coffee shop for a bookshop.

All in all I’ve come away with the feeling that, while enjoyable in its own right, it just wasn’t overly memorable. And that’s despite having higher stakes than the first book. I’m still going to read more in this series as it develops, though. As at the time of writing, Brigands & Breadknives is due to come out later this year, and that’ll be an interesting departure without Viv as the main character.