Synopsis:
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.
Review:
Anyone who has read Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes and its sequel, Bookshops and Bonedust, would be well within their rights to assume they know what the latest installment has to offer. They might expect a cozy setting, a mix of strange but adorable fantasy creatures, and some kind of slow-burn romance that never quite turns into anything physical. There will be some external conflict as the past catches up with our heroes, but for the most part, the stakes will be low, and the coffee good.
Brigands and Breadknives trades on all these familiar tropes, but expands the scope a bit. After a minor scuffle on the road, we land in Thune, and the book brings the threads of the previous books together at last. Fern will build her new bookshop beside the now-thriving Legends and Lattes. A new chapter in her life will begin, reunited with old friends.
Trouble is, this new chapter looks an awful lot like the last chapter, and Fern’s conflict is an internal one. So, she does what any respectable Rattkin would do while in the throws of a midlife crisis: she gets good and drunk. Next thing she knows, she’s been hauled out of town in the back of a cart belonging to Astryx One-Ear, a thousand year old elf adventurer. Fern knows Astryx through books, but the reality is, unsurprisingly, more complicated.
Soon, they pick up a third in their party in the shape of a mute little goblin with a bad case of kleptomania and a mouthful of terrifying teeth.
The early going feels a bit clunky, with more time than is strictly necessary getting her on the road and more than a little plot gymnastics to keep her there, but once we (and Fern) accept that this is a quest narrative and not the familiar cozy romance, things start to move.
The quest is to deliver the little goblin thief and collect a great bounty, the same work Astryx has been doing for hundreds of years. And what do you know, the great Elf might be stuck in a kind of a rut as well.
The bounty, however, is too great to ignore. In fact, there are plenty of other folks with the same idea, and the little trio dodge and fight them all along the road, while also bonding. Fern meets a suave Rattkin who might be one answer to her ennui, but there’s more genuine chemistry between Fern and Astrix. Neither of them will speak of this, however. Luckily, we have a red haired, green skinned chaos Muppet to balance them out.
Oh, there’s also a talking bread knife, as the title suggests.
In the end, Brigands and Breadknives resolves in familiar territory, but this book has a distinct flavor, as well as a greater sense of scope. But as with all of Baldree’s books, it’s the characters who matter, and he’s given us several lovely additions to his expanding cast.
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