Legends & Lattes: 5 Minute Review
Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes is a fantasy slice of life novel about a former breaker-of-creatures-and-things turned cafe owner. Viv, our orc fighter main character, has decided to retire unceremoniously and open a cafe. Taking the spoils from her final kill – some calcified organ said to have magical properties – Viv leaves her former band of adventurers without word and heads to Thune, a river-side mill town that she had identified as being suitable for the organ to work its lucky magic. Following a magical breadcrumb trail, Viv finds a suitable home for her prize, sets about buying and rebuilding the old livery that rots in the lot she’s chosen, and then begins to put down roots. Her roots find sustenance in the form of companionship in a new place, each feeling a bit out of place and out of sorts. Through coffee, an open cafe door, and a bit of quiet comradery, Viv finds herself in a home built both with carpentry and good company. Legends & Lattes is occasionally romance, occasionally comedy, but always sweet, extolling the virtue of community and teaching faith in others.
Other reviews describe it as “kind” or “cozy”, and I can only agree. More, I found Baldree’s writing as gentle on the soul as their characters, with prose that are easy to read and digest as well as a judicious eye for tension. Legends & Lattes is not without antagonists or strife, but rather Baldree makes the deliberate and repetitious choice for difficulties to be resolved (mostly) with companionship and a willingness to lean on others. It’s not just that the plot is kind, but rather that the lesson therein is kind. The elderly gnome Durias assured Viv: “it’ll work out just fine, you know… the shop, but the rest of it, too”, and to be reminded of that is as cozy as any cafe. Baldree accomplishes exactly what he sets out to do, with only just enough otherwise to bring intrigue to the events therein. If Legends & Lattes sounds like something you’d enjoy, you will. If it’s not, well that’s just fine.
On a more personal note, I read L&L in one sitting while “working” at home. I’d been threatened with a floor-wide inspection by DC’s Department of Buildings on Monday, and I spent most of the day drumming with anxiety over that (they didn't show, the fuckers). It’s been a long year, and spending the day reading was settling. More than that, I haven’t torn through a book so quickly–at least, not by choice–since I was in my early twenties. The woes of graduate school, especially comprehensive exams, really burned out my love of reading and I’ve struggled to find it again. These days I go to comics or manga for easy reading, but Baldree’s prose were familiar and gentle to read and that made it easier than previous attempts at proper reading sessions in my post-grad era. I’m thankful for it.