“Ladies’ stockins and exotic bean water. Gods help us.”
‘High fantasy and low stakes.’ Along with being a great pithy tagline, these words accurately describe the book. I went in with expectations of D&D-esque characters and all the low drama around opening a coffee shop. This is exactly what you get… but not much more.
A Refreshing Break
“It was like drinking the feeling of being peaceful. Being peaceful in your mind.”
If you read the other reviews for this book, you’ll quickly spot a trend. Most of the five star ones, would have given more stars if at all possible. Those who like this book, love it and I can see why. Low stake books are not common, especially not in fantasy settings. The sky has to be falling. The world has to be ending. All of civilization has to be under threat.
Even before this book, I have felt the fatigue from this. I started gravitating to the smaller stories, the more relatable stories and this book occupies a niche that is long overdue.
The stakes are never massive, but neither are they so low as to prevent a story. We see the high fantasy setting and characters just do normal life stuff, and the visits from Viv’s former adventurers help contrast this. We see them dealing with her change of circumstance, just as we do. This book relies on the tropes of the genre in order to provide a break from them.
Delicious Descriptions
“Little twirls of smoke dotted the rooftops, like freshly extinguished candles.”
This book’s second major strength is the quality of the language. The description describes ‘Legends & Lattes’ as ideal for readers of TJ Klune (Be sure to check out Mel’s reviews of his wolfsong series) and they’re not wrong. When it comes to description, the words he crafts are as evocative as they are poetic. You feel the setting and you can practically taste the cinnamon buns.
This book is an easy read and the scenes that embrace this are a delight.
Issues
“After twenty-two years of adventuring, Viv had reached her limit of blood and mud and bullshit.”
It came as no surprise to me that this book was originally written for NaNoWriMo, where participants try to write a fifty thousand word book in only a month. Despite the length of sixty thousand being a big clue, some of the scenes give it away more so.
Having participated myself, I’ve experienced that in order to write that much that quickly, you can’t question what you’re writing. If you have an idea for a scene, you write it and edit once the month ends. A number of scenes in this book reflect that attitude. Whilst the start is strong, we’re soon faced with an entire chapter of how they convert a stable into a coffee shop. We follow Viv and her newly hired craftsman Cal as they clear up dirt and install wooden beams here and there. We’re teased with themes of the book before being left to watch a slow motion montage. Whilst well written, it just isn’t interesting.
I was pulled out of the story again as they’re levelling up the café. Whilst necessary to the story, it ended up feeling like a video game. They unlocked new drinks and dishes as they ‘win’ each level.
Missed Potential
“Things don’t have to stay as what they started out as.”
If I were to read this as an early draft, I’d have loved it. There’s so much potential in this story. The concept is amazing. I loved Terry Pratchett’s ‘Going Postal’ and ‘The Truth’, two other books which focus on replicating the creation of modern day conveniences in a fantasy world. The characters are strong and distinct and you get attached to each very quickly.
I just feel like the potential isn’t realised. Viv is a strong character (pun intended). She’s determined. She’s planned ahead, albeit with gaps in her knowledge of business planning. She has a secret weapon (and a not so secret weapon hung on the wall). Despite this though, she is barely a protagonist. She relies on all the others for success. It’s Tandri the succubus who markets the café. It’s Thimble who creates the cakes. It’s Cal who mostly built it. This would all be fine if Viv had something to do.
Once she sets the gears in motion, she’s just there. The café comes under threat and we watch Viv deal with her worries. Can she solve this without resorting to the violence she’s tried to escape. It’s a delicious low stakes emotional turmoil that ultimately comes to nothing. The early threat is from a local Mafia. We get a great build up, but then it’s magically solved with no action from Viv, other than the fact she attended the meeting.
The second main threat, which I won’t mention for spoiler reasons, is solved almost as easily. I was promised a story where Viv the orc can’t rely on strength and brutality, but in the end she doesn’t replace that with anything other than people she knows.
Whilst having friends you can rely on, and being kind to them is a great life lesson, it isn’t a substitute for a great protagonist.
Living in Fantasy
“I used to be an adventurer like you.”
This unfulfilled potential can also be felt in the setting. Technically this is high fantasy. We have orcs, elves, magic and monsters but only really in name. We get brief glimpses of the racial bias each suffers but barely more than that. I’m a fan of slow burn character development, but it’s sorely missing from the book. If you took away the fantasy element, they could easily just be humans and we wouldn’t realise anything is different.
The lack of high fantasy is also obvious in the set up of the coffee shop. In Pratchett’s work, all the elements are reimagined in fantasy style. It might simply be that I’m far more unfamiliar with printing presses and the operational aspect of a post office, but this coffee shop felt unoriginal. By slapping the phrase ‘Gnomish’ in front of a machine, we suddenly have a coffee machine and air conditioning. Rather than invent any cakes steeped in the lore of a fantasy world, we get cinnamon rolls, biscotti and croissants. We even get coffee cups with your name written on them. There’s so much potential to see how a coffee shop could be created in a world that doesn’t know of them, but instead we only get a Starbucks with a D&D coat of paint.
With a bit more time and a few more drafts, we could have had a book that would not only reignite this genre as it has, but would hold its own later down the line.
In Summary
“Milky bean water. I’ll be damned.”
Overall, Legends & Lattes is a good book, and one I’d recommend to the right person. It exists in an undiluted niche, and delivers what it promises with excellent prose. It’s a great palate cleanser in a world of grimdark stories and world ending threats. I just think that it could be so much more.
Its high fantasy isn’t very high. Its low stakes are too low. The protagonist doesn’t do much, and the character development feels shoehorned in.
I mentioned Terry Pratchett above. It’s hard not to compare directly, and see what this book is missing.
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