Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree

Bookshops and Bonedust is the second book in the Legends and Lattes series by Travis Baldree. I’d been gifted the first book by son for Christmas.

Bookshops and Bonedust

The 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 . . .

My Review of Bookshops and Bonedust

I did enjoy Legends and Lattes, but probably a bit more than Bookshops and Bonedust. Described as cosy fantasy we find Viv recovering from battle in a town called Murk. She’s still Viv the warrior though and she’s not found herself like she does in the first book. This makes her less likeable. The other character’s were not so likeable either.

The good part was that it was set in a book shop where Viv finds herself helping the proprietor, a foul mouthed rattkin, Fern. They clean up the shop and make it profitable and towards the ending Fern even holds her first book club.

In the meantime we have magic and danger, homunculi and a necromancer and a very powerful book. I felt the book didn’t have the same movement than the first, although it was interesting to see how Viv was before she left her gang to settle in a coffee shop.

I think I’ll read the third book in the series Brigands and Breadknives just to see how it all concludes.

If you like fantasy but find it all a bit too complicated then this series will give you a different perspective. It’s cosy but still has action and danger and all the mysterious things you’d expect in a fantasy story.