Bookshops & Bonedust

Image credit: Amazon

Still very much entrenched in the world of high fantasy and low stakes, I have just closed the cover of Travis Baldree’s prequel to Legends & Lattes: Bookshops & Bonedust – a cosy story of high fantasy about first loves and second-hand books.

Viv’s brutally glamorous career as a mercenary is just taking off. But it’s a fact of life that disaster always strikes just when things are getting good. Running with a renowned mercenary group called Rackham’s Ravens Viv is badly injured during a hunt for a fearsome necromancer, and she finds herself stranded in the sleepy seaside town of Murk to recuperate. Laid up with a bad leg and a growing fear that she might not be able to return to the action, what’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do? Spending time in a struggling bookshop is certainly not how she would have imagined spending her time, but nevertheless when Viv discovers Thistleburr Booksellers she also discovers that adventure and excitement comes in different shapes like a fowl-mouthed rattkin proprietor, a flour-dusted dwarven baker, and a rambunctious gnome with a penchant for knives. Who knows? Maybe the action Viv craves is not as far away as she thinks.

As is the case with any particular mood you get into with reading, it ebbs and flows. For the last couple of weeks I have been all about cosy fantasy reads that I can while away some sunlit afternoons with, but it seems this mood is now ebbing as I found Bookshops & Bonedust to just not be as cosy and enveloping as Legends & Lattes. It’s a sweet and relatable story of self-discovery and growth through finding new interests, with a slightly more dramatic, adventure-y twist in the third act.

The prose is simple, not particularly memorable, but it does transport us into the sleepy seaside town: though this could just be because we are so overexposed to this kind of setting in a plethora of genres that it’s very easy to be transported there with just a few words.

It’s interesting to read a prequel written after a book establishes the central character, mainly because we get to see a greener (no pun intended) and underdeveloped version of this character that we’ve previously come to know. In Viv’s case, she’s young, aggressive, and itching for a fight; devoid of the wisdom and appreciation for the less-stabby pleasures the world can offer. This brings a little humour to the book in the scenes where people raise their eyebrows when they see her reading a book but for the reader, it does deplete her character a little bit, which is fine for the story but meant that I found it a little harder to pick up the book again once I’d put it down.

Image credit: Fantasy-Hive

But with a supporting cast of colour characters, I’m not saying this book is devoid of appeal. Filled with action, romance, comedy, and cosy vibes, Bookshops & Bonedust is a fine little fantasy read if you have the time to while away.

Author: Travis Baldree, 2023

Published: Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London, 2023.

Bookshops & Bonedust is the prequel to Legends & Lattes.