Review: Legends & Lattes

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'd been going back and forth about whether I wanted to read this, having read mixed reviews, but two members of my writing critique group recommended it, so I gave it a go.

I'm glad I did. Unlike the earlier, in some ways similar, novella Coffee, Milk & Spider Silk , it makes full use of its sword-and-sorcery setting, mashing it up with modern coffeehouse culture but at least changing the names of things in a way that made sense for the fantasy world. The fact that Viv is an orc and used to be an adventurer matters, in a way that the MC in the other book's identity as a drider and a former cop absolutely did not.

I should disclose that I dislike coffee, as Tolkien said of Dune, "with some intensity," and don't frequent coffee shops, but I still enjoyed this cosy fantasy about the first coffee shop in a fantasy city. When I say "cosy" fantasy, that's partly about tone (I wrote about this in a blog post a couple of years ago, entitled, tongue in cheek, A Cozy Manifesto); but it's also about the stakes being relatively local and personal, rather than global or cosmic or even national, and this book certainly matches that part of the definition. Still, an important element of the book is that not only Viv, but a number of other people, come to care about the success, and indeed the existence, of her coffee shop; the stakes are interpersonal as well.

And this isn't just a slice of life, in which Viv and co. putter along putting new things on the menu from time to time, though it's that too. There's a plot, with challenges to overcome, and part of the importance of it is that Viv doesn't deal with it the way she once would have when she was an adventurer (of, if I had to guess, the Barbarian class), by taking her greatsword off the wall and going about beheading people; she forms alliances instead.

If I have a quibble, it's that the challenges are overcome quite easily, though that's not unexpected in a cosy, after all. People (mostly) act sensibly and with goodwill; the one character who would belong in a grimdark fantasy stands out in stark contrast. This warm tone is the essence of cosy.

In terms of editing, apart from a few too many commas between adjectives that don't require them (a mistake practically everyone makes these days), and a dangling modifier or two, it's very clean. In an interview that's included in the back, the author quotes (unfortunately without attribution) an excellent piece of writing advice that he follows, and that I wish more authors would follow: "Write using words you know, in your own voice."

The result is an enjoyable, well-executed piece which makes me want to read more from this author.

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