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 surviving on inertia, 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 anything is possible . . .

IN A NUTSHELL
Probably the best book in the series so far. An exciting adventure, run through with humour, played out across a richly imagined fantasy landscape and grounded by a thoughtful internal quest for identity and purpose. Travis Baldree’s narration was pretty good too. 

I’m so glad that ‘Brigands & Breadknives’ wasn’t just a recycled version of ‘Legends & Lattes’. I loved that book, but changing towns, opening a shop and accumulating a supportive found-family can’t be everyone’s road to happiness, can it? I wanted something fresh and different. Fortunately, so did Travis Baldree. 

Fern’s story is not a repeat of Viv’s story. ‘Legends & Lattes‘ had Viv giving up a life of travelling and mercenary mayhem to live a settled life she’d long dreamed of. It was a great story. It was a static story, with violence and threat being used mainly as accent colours in the book’s palette. 

I liked that ‘Brigands & Breadknives’ started with violence and stayed with violence most of the way through the book. The world Fern lives in is a dangerous place. Unlike Viv, Fern doesn’t have a dream life that she’s trying to realise. Rather, she has realised, a little late perhaps, that the way she lives is no longer enough. She wants more and different, but she doesn’t know what that means. So she does what many people do, she got drunk and found somewhere to sleep it off. And that was the accidental start of her adventure. 

Fern is falling into her future. She’s on a journey to an unknown destination, through a hostile environment in the company of people she didn’t choose and doesn’t know. Fern’s external journey is matched by an internal one where she is trying to discover how to break through her own ennui.

Part of Travis Baldree’s magic is that, while delivering a thoughtful, sensitive book about replacing existential panic with a strengthened sense of identity, purpose and personal worth, he managed to let us all have some fun. Fern’s journey was an exciting adventure, filled with as much action as humour. There are lots of fight scenes and swashbuckling acts of derring-do. Moments of tension and pathos, and even a startling plot twist 

Best of all, Travis Baldree kept surprising me. His characters were travelling a well-trodden path in epic fantasy, but their choices were often atypical and always character-driven. And yes, ‘Brigands & Breaknives‘ did manage to raise my spirits just as ‘Legends & Lattes’ did.

I read the previous books in the series as ebooks because I’ve had bad experiences listening to authors read their own work. This time, I went with the audiobook because I liked the sample, even though Travis Baldree read it. Then I had one of those slap-my-palm-against-my-forehead moments, when I looked Travis Baldree up and found that he’s a professional narrator. So, not surprisingly, he did a great job with ‘Brigands & Breaknives’