Viv’s career with the renowned 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 struggling bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted. Even though it may be exactly what she needs. Still, adventure isn’t far away. A suspicious traveller in grey, 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.
Sometimes, right things happen at the wrong time. Sometimes, what we need isn’t what we seek. And sometimes, we find ourselves in the stories we experience together . . .

‘Bookshops & Bonedust‘ was a delight, made all the better for being unexpected. I couldn’t say how the effect was achieved, but the book felt welcoming, the feeling you get when you step into a restaurant you’ve not visited before but where the aromas, the ambience and the attitude of the staff makes it feel like home.

I’d expected ‘Bookshops & Bonedust‘ to be funny in a ‘what a clever pastiche of D&D-based fantasy’ kind of way. I hadn’t expected ‘Bookshops & Bonedust‘ to have its own voice and to deliver an exciting story full of sword fights and dark magic that was really about the discovery of joy. I also hadn’t expected to find myself admiring how subtle the writing and the storytelling were.

I haven’t read ‘Legends & Lattes‘ the book that ‘Bookshops & Bonedust‘ is a prequel to so I went into the story cold and I had a great time. I was hooked before I was twenty per cent into the book. I LIKED Viv, a young orc warrior who, while suffering through an enforced rest in a small coastal town as she recovers from a life-threatening leg wound, finds herself falling love with reading because it transports her to somewhere away from the too-small room she’s lying in.

The images in the story would be familiar to anyone who reads fantasy and yet they felt fresh and, for once, they felt real in an everyday sense rather than like the set for movie. These weren’t characters in a video game. They were real people trying to get on with their lives. The thing that pulled me in the most was that instead of the familiar dank despair of those fantasy stories where the ‘forces of light are locked in a desperate and perhaps hopeless struggle to hold back the overwhelming might of the dark, this was a story permeated with the scent of fresh-baked hope and populated with people who I wanted to see succeed in living full lives.

Of course, the forces of the dark did turn up and were very scary in original and sometimes disturbing ways and the forces of the light did have to fight against overwhelming odds. The tension was high. The town seemed doomed. I wasn’t sure that Viv, or anyone else, would survive. All of that was great fun but it wasn’t what kept me shaking my head at how good the book was. That was something else entirely.

‘Bookshops & Bonedust‘ is a book that has a deep understanding of the nature of joy: the joy of friendship, the joy of battle, the joy of baking and especially the joy of books. I loved how simply and and effectively that joy was expressed. Here’s an example of the joy of reading, Viv is in a crowded bar. alone, immersed in reading the final chapters of the first mystery novel she’s ever encountered:

“She nursed a second beer while she tried not to race through the last three chapters of ‘The Lens and the Dapplegrim‘. Brand was a blur beyond her vision, and the noise piled up against the walls, leaving her alone in the center of a perfect sphere of story. Each word tumbled into the next, a rockslide of prose that would end in a dramatic confrontation between Investigator Beckett and the deliciously devious Aramy, with Leena’s life in the balance. At least that’s where she expected things to go. The book had a way of confounding her expectations, and every time it did, she experienced a thrill of delight.”

The familiarity of this made me smile, especially when I remembered that, when Viv had asked what ‘The Lens and the Dapplegrim‘ was about Fern had said, “It’s a mystery” and Viv had replied “You mean you don’t know what it’s about?”

A lot of the joys that Viv encounters during her enforced rest and recuperation are new to her. Watching her discover them added another layer of joy to the book. Watching her change and yet become more herself as her joys unfolded her like a blossoming flower bud added another.

Travis Baldree’s prose has a natural grace that can slip by unnoticed except for the feeling that it leaves behind. Viv’s character, her emotions, her identity, are evoked with a series of small touches like the simple, confident strokes of Japanese calligraphy. Here’s an example.. Viv’s attention is being pulled towards dealing with an emerging threat but her emotions are tangled up in her confusion about what she wants from her relationshop with Maylee. She knows that she messed up her last meeting with Maylee by letting her mind drift on to thoughts about the oncoming threat but now she has questions that she needs to ask Maylee::

*““Hey, you,” said Viv, with a small wave that felt ridiculous.

“Hey, hon,” replied Maylee. There was nothing reserved in her smile, as open and whole as though Viv hadn’t knelt before her on the boardwalk and bruised everything just the night before.

Viv felt the relieved shame of happiness over a problem deferred.”

I love how the delicacy of the words “bruised everything” and “relieved shame” help me see the huge, fierce, broadsword-wielding Orc for who she really is.

I’m recommending ‘Bookshops & Bonedust‘ to every reader that I meet. I’ve also added ‘Legends & Latte‘ to my TBR in the hope that it’s as good as its prequel.