Viv's career with the notorious 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 beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't possibly imagine.
Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, 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.
I really well enjoyed the accompanying book Legends and Lattes which was published first. I of course needed to pick up its prequel. I found I enjoyed this book even more than the first. A little more action than the previous book but I would still solidly place this book in the cozy fantasy genre. I found myself breezing through the pages and reading during breaks at work just to finish. I again would recommend this for a relaxing read.
This was a fun prequel to Legends & Lattes. It was a much stronger book for me with much more depth; Viv is stuck injured in a small seaside town and has to figure out what to do with herself while she's recovering. It's a cozy book about finding new directions, supporting friends who are stuck, and connections even when they're temporary. These are very different books, but it made me want to go reread Bujold's Memory, which is also a book centered on sorting out your life when its expected trajectory has been suddenly altered.
It's also a book about loving books and caring for a bookstore, which immediately endeared itself to me. Fern (the foul-mouthed rattkin who owns said bookstore) recommends Viv a series of books from different (in-world fantasy takes on) genres. The snippets from these books are entertaining but each one ties implicitly and explicitly …
This was a fun prequel to Legends & Lattes. It was a much stronger book for me with much more depth; Viv is stuck injured in a small seaside town and has to figure out what to do with herself while she's recovering. It's a cozy book about finding new directions, supporting friends who are stuck, and connections even when they're temporary. These are very different books, but it made me want to go reread Bujold's Memory, which is also a book centered on sorting out your life when its expected trajectory has been suddenly altered.
It's also a book about loving books and caring for a bookstore, which immediately endeared itself to me. Fern (the foul-mouthed rattkin who owns said bookstore) recommends Viv a series of books from different (in-world fantasy takes on) genres. The snippets from these books are entertaining but each one ties implicitly and explicitly into the themes and plot. Mystery! Action! Romance! Friendship! Local authors! Maybe it's a little too on the nose, but it worked really well for me.
(As a super minor aside here, it's also interesting to me about where the tension in this book comes from. Certainly, there's a larger necromancer in the background that creates the larger plot. Secondarily, money in the book is also a concern, but it's less that any of these characters will starve and it's more an emotional worry--Fern is concerned that her bookstore will fold and she will have failed her dad and her own dream. There's a lot of discussion of Viv paying for baked goods and her room and board, but despite being a young mercenary there's never any "how am I going to support this lifestyle of staying at this inn all summer" worries. It reminds me of the kind of cozy worldbuilding that Zandra Vandra does, where there's emotional tension but the normal grinding terribleness of the world has been softened at the edges.)
My takeaway from Legends & Lattes was that it was a cozy fantasy adaptation of a modern concept àla Pratchett, but I didn't get a particular feeling of depth.
With Bookshops & Bonedust, it's the converse - I felt like it was mainly a story about Viv and her forced journey of self-discovery, while all the rest of it was just set dressing.
