Legends and Latte's - Travis Baldree

You know what, I'm late to the party on this one. People have been talking up Legends and Lattes for years, and I finally picked it up on sale the other day. And you know what, it's really very good. I'm hesitant to use the word "cozy", but I will say it has a delicious blend of gentle relationship building, action which if not epic in scale is extremely personally important, and  an overall, well, vibe of something comfortable. You're watching someone start fresh, build a new life, a new person, if you like, and deal with the consequences of that choice - and those don't always go the way you'd expect. 

Part of the reason for that is the person. Viv is a killer. Well, was a killer, an ex-mercenary adventurer who got up enough of a nest-egg to retire and do something else with her day. But instead of taverns or more hitting people with sticks, she's decided to do something different, and build a coffee shop. In a town which hasn't heard of coffee. Did I mention she's an orc, a species which make great adventurers due to being enormous and having muscles you could break rocks on, but who are perhaps underrepresented in the coffee sector?

Viv is, in fact, a charming protagonist. She defies our own expectations, as well as those from people around her. Always careful, thoughtful, industrious, Viv is less interested in combatting stereotypes than in reforming herself away from her past. If she has a penchant for wanting to hit someone over the head with a sword hilt when they're being annoying, she rarely ever does. And her interactions with the system around her are similar - when organised crime shows up for a bit of protection money, being seven feet tall with a huge sword is a good opener, but Viv recognises that cutting them all into teeny tiny chunks might not be the best fit for her journey of self-actualisation, so decides to do...something else. Anyway, she's smart and funny and seems thoroughly oblivious to a lot of personal emotional interactions - there's a romantic sub-plot in here that had me covering my head with a pillow at one point. Less "will they won't they" and more "Are they ever going to admit to each other...?" That particular plot point, by the by, is a work of art. Watching two adults figure out that they like each other and what to do about it like adults is (annoyingly) refreshing.

Speaking of which, something Baldree does well is build networks. Viv meets a lot of people, and at least some of them become customers, become friends, become people she'd put her life on the line for. And from that, we can see these friends as people, as something more than single-faceted voices. They're fully realised characters. My only complaint is perhaps that the antagonists are less well rounded, but you know what, sometimes you just have that one guy who's an arsehole and needs a comeuppance. 

This is, really, a fun book. It's telling a clever story that, if it doesn't twist at every turn, definitely has the capacity to surprise. It's telling a story with personal stakes and making them matter. It's a story about someone leaving their life behind and building themselves something better, building themselves into something more like the person they want to be. And it does that with warmth and love and humour that makes it deeply endearing as well as thoroughly entertaining.