Brigands & Breadknives (Legends & Lattes #2) by Travis Baldree Narrator: Travis Baldree
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, gaslamp
Series: Legends & Lattes, #2, #2
Pages: 336
Length: 8 hours and 24 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on November 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Return to the cozy fantasy world of the #1 New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes series with a new adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller, Fern.
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 there isn’t a job to get in the way.
My Review:
Brigands & Breadknives brings the story that began in Legends & Lattes into a delightfully full circle that ties the events of Bookshops & Bonedust up into the story with a great big beautiful bow.
Legends & Lattes kicked off the whole cozy fantasy trend with its story of Viv, the orc who opened a coffee shop in off-the-beaten-path Thune, fell in love with Tandri the succubus, and they, with the magically delicious help of Thimble the rattkin baker and the whole, entire town of Thune, settled into their happy ever after with a whole lot of help from the friends they made along the way.
But orcs are more commonly soldiers than shopkeepers, so the story in Bookshops & Bonedust gave readers Viv’s origin story – or at least her change-of-heart story. That second book in the series – not a middle book at ALL – was a portrait of the middle-aged shopkeeper orc as a young mercenary, forced to stay behind her mercenary company to heal up from some serious wounds, making good friends, saving the day and more importantly, figuring out what she might want to be when it was time to retire.
In other words, it showed readers the decision-making process that eventually brought Viv to Thune to open Legends & Lattes.
This third book ties it all together. Viv has been in contact – if sporadically over the years – with Fern, the rattkin bookseller who befriended her in Bookshops & Bonedust. In fact, Fern is both the bookshop in Bookshops AND the origin of the Bonedust too.
Just as Viv has found her way by this point in HER story, Fern has seemingly lost hers. Fern, now a middle-aged rattkin, may be a reasonably successful bookseller, but personally she’s lost her way. Or at least her contentment. In spite of everything, Fern feels empty at a point when most of her life should feel full. Or at least full-ish.
Do rattkin have midlife crises? Because it sure sounds like Fern is having a doozy.
Which is where Viv’s letters and Viv’s encouragement to her old friend to come to Thune and open a bookshop next to the coffee shop find fertile ground. Leading Fern to trek to Thune in the hopes of finding whatever it is that seems to be missing from her life.
Only to discover that what’s missing isn’t in her life, it’s in her. So she runs away from, well, everything. Including all the friends who want to help her fill that hole that she can’t even admit is lodged in her middle.
Which leads her right, straight into the middle of someone else’s adventure – into the life and legends of one of the most storied beings in the world, riding side by side with Astryx One-Ear the Oathmaiden, guarding a prisoner, fending off bounty hunters, and pretending that she’s a lot more of an adventurer than she ever imagined she’d be.
Only to discover that running away has put her, by however roundabout a route, into the path that was always meant to be hers. All Fern has to do is stop living by what she imagines everyone else thinks she should be – and follow the path of her own star wherever it might lead.
Escape Rating A+: First things first. I listened to Brigands & Breadknives, read by the author Travis Baldree. There are not many authors who are as good at narrating their books as they were at writing them in the first place. But Baldree began as a voice actor, and became an author afterwards. He’s one of the few – along with Mary Robinette Kowal – who should ALWAYS read their books. ALWAYS. The narration of this was marvelous and made a great story just that much better.
Second things second, this is very much the story of Fern having the best and most adventurous midlife crisis that has ever been told. That it is told by the best and most profane storyteller to ever string a story together makes it just that much more fun – even as Fern is cursing herself and everyone around her pretty much every step of the way.
But especially herself.
The story isn’t quite as cozy as the earlier books – and it’s not meant to be. And not just because Fern never met a cussword she didn’t like the sound of. It’s not cozy because Fern herself isn’t a naturally cozy person – more spiky and prickly – and isn’t in anything like a cozy place in either her head or her heart.
She’s dealing with the cliche that goes “no matter where you go, there you are” and it’s not comfortable at all. That her urge is to keep running and hope it doesn’t catch up with her – even though it always does – is not surprising but it IS easy to empathize with.
This is, clearly, a story about the journey and not the destination. The destination is the LAST thing Fern wants to reach and she finds plenty of excuses to keep putting THAT evil day off as long as she can.
What makes the story so much fun is that Fern’s journey is to go on the adventure of a lifetime. It’s a madcap, out of the frying pan into the fire kind of story. An elf, a rattkin and a goblin go on a mad quest. It’s even more fun because it’s not the same mad quest, even though its the same prize at the end. Even better, the reward at the end turns out not to be the prize that each of them thought it would be.
Except maybe the goblin – but then she’s the only one who knew the truth all along. And the reveal is EPIC.
In the end – and along the way – Brigands & Breadknives does a terrific job of tying the first story, of middle-aged or at least middle-aged ish Viv forging a new path, opening the coffee shop and falling in love with Tandri, up with the second book of young Viv and young Fern bonding over books and stories and figuring out who they were and having an adventure, into this third story of middle-aged Fern and her midlife crisis joining Viv in Thune, realizing she hadn’t yet figured out who SHE wanted to be without worrying about what other people need and think and going on an adventure of her own and learning how to live both for and more importantly WITH herself.
As always and in the best cozy fantasy tradition, with a little help from her friends.
This book did turn the original Legends & Lattes into a delightful and satisfying full circle. It could end here. But I really, truly hope it doesn’t.