TL;DR Review: Cozy yet adventurous, entertaining but also immensely heart-warming, with fascinating insights into the author—and ourselves!
Synopsis:
Return to the fantasy world of the #1 New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes series with a new adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller Fern
Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!
If only things were so simple…
It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.
A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.
As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when nothing seems inevitable.
Full Review:
Brigands and Breadknives is one of the books I’ve been most looking forward to this year. After reading it, I can honestly say it both subverted and exceeded my expectations.
The second book in the Legends and Lattes-verse follows Fern, the rattkin bookseller we met in Bookshops and Bonedust. She’s left her home and life and shop behind to set up a bookstore next door to Viv and Tandri. Though she’s afraid of starting over, she’s willing to take a gamble on her friendship with our favorite orc coffee shop owner.
The launch of her new bookstore is a rousing success—only Fern finds herself not just feeling hollow, but actively wanting to flee. Never mind she has always been a bookseller and knows nothing else; she just needs to get away. Which leads her to crawling into the back of the cart belonging to renowned elven adventurer Asteryx One-Ear, the Oathmaiden, and falling asleep. When she wakes up, she’s too far from home to walk back, so she resolves to continue on the adventure until she can safely book passage home.
But as we quickly come to see, more than one adventure awaits. Asteryx is a bounty hunter, transporting her prisoner—a truly chaotic goblin named Zyll—across the continent to be delivered to justice. Zyll is more than just a handful; she keeps escaping her bonds, only to return with new friends (a monstrous chicken demon), new weapons (a talking Elder blade turned into a breadknife), and new enemies (the titular brigands). Asteryx and Fern keep doggedly moving onward, trying to corral the indefatigable Zyll, facing new challenges in the form of drawn blades, loaded crossbows, and existential crises.
Where Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and Bonedust used specific locations and settings to tell a smaller, more internal-focused story, Brigands and Breadknives takes us across this D&D-flavored world to slowly peel back the layers on Fern and Asteryx, to help them—and us—find the truth of who they are beneath the facades they show the world and the lies they tell themselves.
Though it’s an adventure, it still retains that cozy flavor and gives us those deep conversations in stuffy inn rooms, under the stars, or across a roaring campfire that delve into the characters’ true wants, needs, desires, and hopes. Through their journey, we come to understand a bit more about them—and through them, ourselves.
Because at its core, Brigands and Breadknives is a story about finding what we want to be and do, not living up to expectations placed upon us by others (even those with all the best intentions). It’s about making choices toward happiness rather than simply continuing on a road that seems clear, especially one that seems otherwise so successful.
As I write this, I can’t help wondering if this is reflective of the author’s story. Where Fern is a successful bookseller, he’s a successful audiobook narrator who has no need to walk down another road (the path of writing). And yet, by reading this story—and all his others—it’s clear to me that walking this path is a truth fundamental to who he is at his core.
All that to say, Brigands and Breadknives is a story as deep and true and insightful as any I’ve read, and one that absolutely had me engaged from start to finish. It’s earned its place on my Top 10 of the year and cemented Travis Baldree as an auto-buy author. For a cozy, heartwarming, and truly thoughtful read, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
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