(courtesy Pac Macmillan Australia)
Prequels aren’t always a good idea.
While we naturally want to know, being the endlessly curious creatures that we are, what led to the characters and places of a story we have come to love, it’s not always a satisfying journey to go on.
But as proof positive that it can sometimes be the best thing you’ll ever do, or at least one of them, I give you Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree which explains how Viv, the warrior orc-turned-cafe owner protagonist of Legends & Lattes, left her mercenary ways and found a new life of books, close friends and transformative romantic love.
As it turns out, and this will come as a no surprise if you loved Baldree’s first book in the world of Legends & Lattes, which, narratively at least, is actually his second book, the journey we go on is a thoroughly delightful one as we discover anew that we think we think we need may not what makes us happy after all.
As Bookshops & Bonedust begins, Viv is badly injured in a battle as part of a mercenary fighting group known as Rackam’s Ravens, against an evil necromancer’s skeletally animated forces and she finds herself, once she wakes up again, in the coastal city of Murk, in a small community outside the city walls.
None too happy to have been left behind, and angry at her own ill-judgment in the battle, Viv is resigned to waiting out the time it will take for her leg to heal with impatience and ever-mounting boredom.
Viv continued reading after her drinks and food arrived. She chewed and sipped absently, turning page after page, and was surprised when she noticed all three bowls were empty, her mugs drained. She didn’t even look up when the kid took them away.
After all, what does she know but wielding a sword and making well-paid battle with contractually obligated compatriots?
She can’t see much beyond the world she knows and think she loves, but as she hobbles down from her bed in the inn run by Brand, and then out into the neighbourhood beyond, she discovers that the world as she knows it may not be the one she needs deep down and that perhaps a simpler, quieter, more book-infused life could be just what the life doctor ordered (but not necessarily what her actual doctor, Highlark, an unconventional Elf thinks she needs).
Not that she sees any of that coming.
As she moves with some difficulty along the streets of the area in which Brand’s inn, the Perch, sits, she meets bakery owner, a Dwarf named Maylee, with whom she has a connection though it takes her a while to see it, and Fern, a swearing-happy rattkin whose shop, Thistleburr Booksellers, quickly becomes an unexpected home away from home for the recuperating mercenary.
A gifted second-generation bookseller, Fern knows almost magically what a particular customer needs to read, and it’s her gifted intuition that sees Viv’s time in Murk go from impatiently watching the clock tick down to when Rackam comes to fetch her back, if he comes to fetch her back, to one filled with discovering how rich and rewarding reading can be and how it can absolutely change your life.
(courtesy official author site)
In many ways, Bookshops & Bonedust is a deliciously wonderful love letter to the power of reading and bookshops to reshape who you are and how you see the world.
While Viv is reluctant at first, palpably and almost aggressively so, to see a world for herself in which she isn’t living day-to-day as a soldier of fortune, she soon comes to realise that there is a power in the gentle push-and-pull of day-to-day mutually supportive community (which winningly includes a sentient skeleton and a militarily eager gnome).
Buying pastries from Maylee, and later enjoying some rather lovely dates in and around Murk, and helping Fern change her bookshop from a heritage entity lingering in the past to something alive with rich, future possibility, Viv comes to understand that sacrificing yourself for others other than on the battlefield can change you and them and remake the world into something altogether more pleasing.
It’s not all idyllic life transformation though with a mysteriously lifeless figure in grey acting as a portentous sign of trouble to come, their presence leading to a confrontation which makes good use of Viv’s well-work skills of old while simultaneously affirming to her how much her new life and outlook matters to her.
Suddenly, all the old certainties are swept away and Viv finds herself fighting not for money but for heart, for her community and her friends, a motivation so profoundly different to what she’s known that it forever changes the trajectory of her life (which is, of course, where Legends & Lattes comes in).
Satchel stroked his bony chin with two phalanges for several moments, and the fire in his eyes brightened. ‘Perhaps there is a way. But it would not be easy.’
Viv smiled a predator’s smile. A smile nobody else in Murk had ever seen. ‘Tell me.’
Getting back to the idea of prequels, and whether they have any real value besides occasionally fouling up the stories they are meant to illuminate, what really makes Bookshops & Bonedust sing is the way Baldree masterfully takes us on the journey from the old Viv, who thought only of battle and bloodshed to someone who values books, loves her friends and see real value in a community of found family.
The Viv we meet at the start of Bookshops & Bonedust is altogether a different person to the one who is the heart and soul of Legends & Lattes, and Baldree rather wonderfully shows us, in ways that rings heart-stirringly true, how someone can go on a such a transformative journey.
But even more than that, this novel exists not simply to flesh out its sequel, which is never satisfying if that’s the sole reason for a prequel’s existence, but as a richly told, heartwarmingly honest and deeply loveable tale all its own that very much stands on its own two narrative feet.
You reach the end of Bookshops & Bonedust grateful for all the extravagantly rich world-building, the engaging, fully-formed characters and a story full of action and heart, and while it does give some extra depth and meaning to Legends & Lattes, what you really hold dear at the end is that doesn’t need a sequel to mean something and that whatever happens after this (and yes, we are privileged to know what that is), this story is very much its own cosily wonderful thing and you will value on its own merits for quite some time to come.