Hmm.

This is. A book. A cute, fantasy book. But it lacks the punch its potential holds. It’s a really sweet concept! Rugged (hot) orc lady retires from carnage to open a coffee shop! She gets a found family, a girlfriend, all that good stuff, but. It reads so painfully plain for a book so rich with ideas. The writing style is very rudimentary and at first, I thought this book was PG but the swear words thrown in later on make it very clear this book pushes to PG13 and yet… no other content. You know how some people complain too much ‘spice’ in a book? This is a book that needed it. Viv & Tandri’s slow burn just being sprinkled in didn’t do it for me. I needed all those jokes about Viv needing a bed to lead up to something and it didn’t. Boo. The romantic tension was there, but about as tense as a rubber band.

Legends & Lattes clearly isn’t Travis Baldree’s first foray into fantasy, despite this being his first published work. The book reads like the guide to his beloved D&D lore but he forgot to drop us a glossary/lore dump/map/etc. somewhere in the novel. I couldn’t really get invested in the story either, because it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Was this a gritty, mournful redemption for Viv? Was it her & Tandri’s blossoming romance? Was this a heartwarming found family setup against a mystical backdrop?

It was all of those things but sadly, instead of melding perfectly like your ideal coffee order, some substances fell flat, others left a rather “meh” aftertaste and the sweet in betweens made it okay, but not worth visiting back. A cozy environment alone cannot make a story.

TLDR? For as short as this book was, it had way too much going on. Great premise, should’ve been longer/stretched out over the series.