Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree
Blurb:
Return to the fantasy world of the #1 New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes series with a new adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller Fern
Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!
If only things were so simple…
It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.
A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.
As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when nothing seems inevitable.
Review:
This is the book that took me out of a MAAAJOR reading slump. It's been, if I remember correctly, three months since I’ve reviewed a book, and about as long since I’ve read one. Brigands and Breadknives did a great job to get me out of that slump, and I’m back into reading again.
I adored Legends & Lattes, and equally loved Bookshops & Bonedust. That said, I had high hopes for Brigands & Breadknives, and walked away with mixed feelings.
This is a story about Fern, one of the main characters in Bookshops & Bonedust, as she leaves Merk to journey over to Viv’s corner of the world, setting up a brand new bookshop. Anxiety grips her almost immediately, and this new part in her life is filled with fear around every turn. One fateful night, wondering if this is where she wants to be and what she wants to do, she walks into the story of a living legend, and must decide just who—and where—she wants to be.
I can’t really say much more, save that the goblin, Zyll, stole the show. The other character in our main cast, Astrix, was an aloof, but likable, elf. Together, they navigate the wilds while trying to make sure they can turn in their bounty: Zyll.
The shenanigans they get up to are a lot of fun. I will never say no to a talking sword, especially one thats more annoying than it is sagelike. The humor, as in the prior two books, did not miss. Just as Travis has done before, we laugh when our characters laugh, and feel when they feel.
The setting here is out in the countryside, compared to a village or city. It is a bit all over the place, travelling to crazy villages high on a mountain, or in a bog, or in snow-steeped hills. They all feel wonderful, but not quite as real as we were made to feel in previous books. I never found myself settling into any one of them as if I were actually an adventurer on the road, ready to face peril and whatever the world was set to throw at me.
The B-plot was, to be completely honest, a lot more interesting to me than the A-plot. I suspect this has to do with the fact that the A-plot is Fern having a mid-life crisis, and I myself haven’t reached that point in life. The B-blot consists of various ne'er-do-wells after Zyll, coming and going at every turn. I do suspect, however, that people who have experienced a mid-life crisis, or are experiencing one, will resonate with this book a lot more than I. The resolution to the A-plot was a bit of a headscratcher for me, to be honest, and one I was neither expecting nor overly satisfied with. I will not say I disliked this book, because I certainly enjoyed it a great deal, but it was definitely missing the spark that Baldree had when crafting Legends & Lattes.
However, for all the people out there that have a distinct dislike of cozy fantasy (for reasons that are largely ridiculous and not at all applicable, in my opinion, though I will not get into that here), this book has a lot more action than the last two, and straddles the line between a typical adventure fantasy and a typical cozy fantasy. Take that how you will, but there is potential for readers on either side of that line to really like this book.
Overall, I would recommend this book to people feeling lost in life, especially after having gone through a great deal of time and effort to get where they are. I won’t say this book will resonate with older crowds, because I’m not sure thats not the only audience, but I think I am just not a point in my life to fully appreciate what Baldree has done here. One day, when I’m older, I hope I can revisit this and really digest just what was written, and the message Baldree was trying to tell.
A solid addition that falls a bit short of where Baldree left off in Legends & Lattes, Brigands & Breadknives is a bittersweet romp through the countryside, full of fun, adventure, and all sorts of hard questions everyone will have to face one day.
