“Every book is a little mirror, and sometimes you look into it and see someone else looking back.”
It’s the last review of 2023! Considering the many ways this has been a stressful few months, I think we all need something comfy and whimsical to finish up the year, don’t you?
Travis Baldree’s second novel was supposed to be a sequel to his Hugo-nominated book Legends and Lattes. The characters had other ideas, so the story morphed into a prequel tale set during the very beginning of Viv’s career as a fighter with the adventuring group Rackam’s Ravens. The book starts in the middle of one of Viv’s first battles, with the young orc pulling far ahead of the other Ravens as she joyfully slashes and smashes her way through a necromancer’s hoard of skeletal warriors. And then the best possible thing happens…Viv gets stabbed in the thigh and almost bleeds to death.
Okay, that may not sound like the best thing to happen, hear me out…
Viv is young enough and strong enough to think she’s invincible, and the older and wiser Rackam knows her near fatal wound is actually the better outcome from doing something cocky and stupid in battle the way young warriors do (the worse option of course would be death; hers or one of her comrades.) Viv knows she’s messed up, and that it will take a while for her to heal. That doesn’t make it any easier when her comrades have to go on to track down the necromancer without her, leaving her to recuperate in the small sea town of Murk. Where it looks like nothing ever happens. And she’s self-conscious about having to struggle along with a crutch. And the local constable thinks she’s trouble waiting to happen (fair, since Viv did try to strangle the surgeon in a feverish delirium). The next few weeks are shaping up to be a slog of boredom and irritation, at least until she (literally) stumbles across an interesting little shop.
THISTLEBURR BOOKSELLERS
Just like Baldree’s previous book, the story is remarkably free of people being nasty to each other. It’s almost magical, how everyone’s first impulse is to be helpful. The townspeople are somewhat amused by the hulking orc fighter who’s landed in their midst, the surgeon Viv attacked when she was brought in is completely unintimidated by her, and even the Gatewarden’s attitude is less “we don’t take kindly to your type around here” and more “no making trouble in my town, I hate trouble”. But the real magic happens when Viv meets the bookshop owner Fern – a kind-natured and foul-mouthed rattkin – and Potroast, her pet gryphet (think miniature wingless gryphon with the size of a golden labrador Also the attitude.) It’s Fern who finally gets Viv to think of something other than leaving, and she does it by shoving a book into her hands and introducing her to the irresistible pastime known as “reading for fun.”
…despite the uncomfortable chair and the ache in her leg and the backwater in which she’d been abandoned, she was absorbed.
She was transported.
She was elsewhere.
Coffee and snacks was the big focus of book one, but here it’s books. Baldree sprinkles in snippets from various books that Fern recommends to Viv – usually a different genre every chapter – and there’s something very satisfying about seeing someone enjoy a work of fiction that they hadn’t ever considered, or maybe never even knew that it existed, and then realizing you now have someone to enjoy that with. The sharing and recommendations spread outward as people discover new works, and there are tons of hilarious moments, like an unlikely poetry fan, or a normally confident person getting completely tongue-tied when meeting a famous author, or a whole sub-section of fiction being described as, hee, “moist”.
Viv’s growing interest in literature combines with her growing friendship with Fern, which leads to her deciding to help Fern with her struggling bookshop. And of course that means lots of comforting sections of refurbishing the building, painting the interior, shopping trips to find furniture and rugs (accompanied by scenes of carefully arranging them to make cozy reading nooks), and fun little ideas to drum up sales, like making mystery packages of books labeled only by genre or keywords. (Hee. Like “moist” again. That’s never not going to be funny.) And it isn’t like Viv is sweeping in to “save” Fern’s bookstore. Fern is more than capable of saving herself, it’s just that sometimes you need an outside opinion, or someone to give a damn enough to pitch in and make suggestions, or even just a little reminder of why you’re doing all of this in the first place.
“Having you here is connecting me to why I do this. To why I used to love it. I don’t know if I can explain it, but watching you read what I give you, putting a book in your hands and seeing what happens to you once you put it back down…I can’t make you understand how that gives me something I didn’t know I had to have.”
There’s quite a bit about food in this book as well, since we’re introduced to a feisty dwarf woman who runs the local bakery, and who’s also refreshingly straightforward about her interest in Viv. The scenes of tasty pastries and hilltop picnics mesh nicely with the fantasy elements of magical books and spitfire gnomes and a very interesting new character found in the strangest place. (I really want to see some fan art of Satchel, even if I have to make it myself.) Things get so comfortable and easy that you can almost not blame the characters for taking a few too many chances and starting to mess with magical items that most people would back the hell away from.
For a few moments, Viv felt a nagging need to be the voice of reason, but in the end, there was no way in all hells she could leave well enough alone.
Keeping in mind the nature of the main antagonist, this book is slightly darker that book 1. Also scarier, but it’s the kind of scary that’s satisfying and mostly safe, like the memory of the first time you watched your favorite horror movie. It’s also slightly more bittersweet. We already know how Viv ends her career as a fighter – twenty-two years later, walking away alone – so Murk is not going to be her forever home and any romance is already destined to end. But it’s a Baldree novel, so everyone is going to say the right things and no one is going to hold grudges or lash out due to hurt feelings. It’s nice to think that some of these characters may make an appearance in a future Legend and Lattes story, and I do like the author’s wish in the afterward, that the book gave us a nice afternoon or three, and that it left us warmer than when we started.