I recently read Legends and Lattes (by Travis Baldree) on the recommendation of my wife, and I’m so glad I did. This chill little novel is the perfect combination of fantasy and whimsy and scratches the itch of slice-of-life stories with reasonable, personal stakes. This review will attempt to be spoiler free.
Viv is an orc, a fearsome barbarian in your typical D&D-esque party. But she is exhausted with that life of endless fighting and killing, and she is ready to retire to quieter places. Her retirement plans? To open her own coffee shop after falling in love with the drink during her adventuring days. She does just that, while hiring and then befriending a cadre of compelling and loveable characters.
The most enjoyable and refreshing thing about this are the stakes. The world isn’t ending. There isn’t some Big Bad Evil Guy threatening to subjugate the land and force the heroes to brave death and destruction to defeat them. One of the biggest obstacles Viv faces is opening a coffee shop in a town where no one has ever heard of coffee before.
This is not to say there isn’t conflict in this book. Life is conflict and making choices and dealing with the consequences of those choices. Only, those choices and conflicts don’t have to be global-annihilation scale to be important. Deciding what to put on your menu and how to teach a skeptical town to try something new can be terribly-important conflicts. And the story embraces that. The relationships and the personal growth are the beautiful centerpiece of this charming tale.
Sometimes all you really want is to hang up your sword and pour a steaming hot cup of bean juice.
Baldree is writing more books that promise to be of the same slice-of-life vein, and so I will look forward to reading those when they come out.
