Matt
I became aware of this book through two different ways. The first was through listening to Baldree narrate the first book of the Cradle series (a series I firmly mean to get back to at some point). Generally when someone does a really good job narrating or translating a book that they didn’t write I feel obligated to check out some of their own work as a sign of appreciation. This practice was what led me to Ken Liu’s novels so I can say that it has very much rewarded me by giving me more good books to read.
The second way was through the low-stakes fantasy that has been getting popular over the past couple of years. Fantasy has historically been a genre with very high stakes. Someone has to save the world or the kingdom and their actions have consequences that will impact millions of people. And that has always been part of its appeal for many of its fans, myself included. But every cliche or trend will inevitably have backlash or media created that goes against the prevailing idea, and now we have low-stakes fantasy. The idea of ‘low-stakes’ fantasy is to have stories that take place in fantasy worlds without necessarily having world-altering consequences. Admittedly this is not something that I was super interested in initially. I like fantasy in part because of how much each story impacts the world it’s in. My thought was that low stakes are for other genres, not fantasy. But out of obligation to Baldree and some curiosity, I decided to make Legends and Lattes my first low-stakes fantasy book.
Despite my misgivings I will say that I did enjoy Legends and Lattes quite a bit! It does provide a cozy type of feeling that you don’t get from a lot of other fantasy books. Baldree proves himself to be quite the talented writer, to the point that I was outright shocked to find out that this was his first novel. Some of the worldbuilding is a bit clumsy at times but other than that this is a book that totally works once you buy into its premise that an accomplished orc warrior is retiring and just wants to settle down and open a coffee shop. Weirdly enough buying into this premise was one of the things I struggled with the most. This is just so different to any other fantasy book I’ve read in terms of how innocent it is. But once I got over that initial hurdle I had a really fun time.
You can kind of hear Baldree’s inner audiobook narrator come through in his characters. They are all described very vividly with distinct characteristics and I can easily picture Baldree imagining how he is going to narrate these characters as he is writing them. First-time authors can struggle with characters but I do think he does quite a good job with them here. The book really needs you to buy into this ragtag group as they try and build a small business and I felt like I did. Viv and Tandri are the obvious standouts but really every character here works.
Based on how much I liked Legends and Lattes, I feel like I need to give low-stakes fantasy more of a try. Well done Travis Baldree!
I became aware of this book through two different ways. The first was through listening to Baldree narrate the first book of the Cradle series (a series I firmly mean to get back to at some point). Generally when someone does a really good job narrating or translating a book that they didn’t write I feel obligated to check out some of their own work as a sign of appreciation. This practice was what led me to Ken Liu’s novels so I can say that it has very much rewarded me by giving me more good books to read.
The second way was through the low-stakes fantasy that has been getting popular over the past couple of years. Fantasy has historically been a genre with very high stakes. Someone has to save the world or the kingdom and their actions have consequences that will impact millions of people. And that has always been part of its appeal for many of its fans, myself included. But every cliche or trend will inevitably have backlash or media created that goes against the prevailing idea, and now we have low-stakes fantasy. The idea of ‘low-stakes’ fantasy is to have stories that take place in fantasy worlds without necessarily having world-altering consequences. Admittedly this is not something that I was super interested in initially. I like fantasy in part because of how much each story impacts the world it’s in. My thought was that low stakes are for other genres, not fantasy. But out of obligation to Baldree and some curiosity, I decided to make Legends and Lattes my first low-stakes fantasy book.
Despite my misgivings I will say that I did enjoy Legends and Lattes quite a bit! It does provide a cozy type of feeling that you don’t get from a lot of other fantasy books. Baldree proves himself to be quite the talented writer, to the point that I was outright shocked to find out that this was his first novel. Some of the worldbuilding is a bit clumsy at times but other than that this is a book that totally works once you buy into its premise that an accomplished orc warrior is retiring and just wants to settle down and open a coffee shop. Weirdly enough buying into this premise was one of the things I struggled with the most. This is just so different to any other fantasy book I’ve read in terms of how innocent it is. But once I got over that initial hurdle I had a really fun time.
You can kind of hear Baldree’s inner audiobook narrator come through in his characters. They are all described very vividly with distinct characteristics and I can easily picture Baldree imagining how he is going to narrate these characters as he is writing them. First-time authors can struggle with characters but I do think he does quite a good job with them here. The book really needs you to buy into this ragtag group as they try and build a small business and I felt like I did. Viv and Tandri are the obvious standouts but really every character here works.
Based on how much I liked Legends and Lattes, I feel like I need to give low-stakes fantasy more of a try. Well done Travis Baldree!