Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Legends and Lattes

By Travis Baldree.

Prequel book review here. 

Viv, an orc mercenary, spontaneously decides to retire and use her savings--and a luck stone she got out of a creature's skull--to move to a new city and start a coffee shop. I note that coffee isn't all that common in Viv's world, so introducing the idea of a restaurant for drinks is a bit unusual. But she has good luck in finding a fixer-upper guy, a lovely business partner, an excellent baker, and various interesting people show up to study, play music, play chess with themselves*, etc. T There's even a friendly direcat that hangs out at the cafe and she's nice to everyone but jerks. I am Not A Coffee Person and I felt sad reading how other people experience coffee--clearly I don't smell it like Viv does. But I enjoyed the acquisition of a genius baker and how his baked goods really take off, that was quite cute. 

• I seriously want to know what's going on with that guy sometime. He seems to have some...temporal...things going on.

Despite the work situation being pretty dang smooth and easy, Viv has a few issues going on: (a) the local "insurance" racket run by someone called "the Madrigal" keeps sending thuggy guys around to get payment out of Viv, (b) the creepy college student who continues to obnoxiously hit on her partner Tandri (and works for the Madrigal), and (c) her jerky old coworker Fennus has figured out the whole luck stone thing and wants it for his own. I'll talk about this stuff below the spoiler cut, but at least one of these situations has a delightful turn to it, and when another situation goes wrong, it's heartwarming as to how everyone deals with it.

Almost everyone in these books is very sweet and endearing and supportive of each other, and this one kept me more interested than the prequel. Possibly because I Had whopping insomnia, but I read it off an on throughout the night and kept on going. Four stars. 

There is a short story at the back, "Pages to Fill," which is a prequel to the story in which Viv's in the town where she discovered coffee and is researching the luck stone. 

Spoiler space

Bookshops and Bonedust

By Travis Baldree.

I'm aware this is the prequel to a previously published big hit book. I got both of them from the library at the same time and knowing one took place before the other, read the prequel first. 

Viv is an orc working for a mercenary company that's after a necromancer. After getting hurt in the leg, she's left behind to recover in Murk, a sleepy beach town that doesn't seem to have much going on for it beyond the bar, the bakery, and the bookstore. While looking for something to do, Viv makes friends with Fern the bookstore owner, who pretty obviously needs to literally clean up her business and do some innovations to it to make more sales. Viv in turn gets into reading adventure stories and makes other friends, such as another wannabe mercenary and the baker that she ends up dating temporarily.

Periodically, some overall plot stuff happens with regards to the necromancer, one of her associates, and getting ahold of the necromancer's storage book and her friendly homunculus. Viv's on the case even while on medical leave and making friends, more or less.

I've heard this series/world/what have you is "cozy fantasy" and that's pretty much the case. I admit I'm not super into "cozy" these days--I've gotten pretty bored of cozy romances or anything that doesn't have a lot of plot. This isn't quite the case here, as plot is sprinkled enough here and there to keep my interest. I enjoyed it and it was a pleasant read, but I didn't feel super urgency to plow through it either (which is a bit awkward when my library loan is about to end and I still have to finish this one and read the other one by the end of the weekend).. Overall I enjoyed it, but not in any super urgent way. It was a comfort read and it's nice to see people making friends and figuring out ways to sell books and the like.

Three and a half stars. 

Starter Villain

By John Scalzi.

Charlie Fitzer is a former journalist turned substitute teacher, divorced with cats, living in a house he's being pressured to give up, and generally speaking, life kinda sucks. Then his uncle Jake dies. Charlie didn't really know his uncle since he hasn't seen him since he was five and the one time he heard from him, his uncle predicted the end of this marriage. But when Jake dies, Charlie's offered money to go to his funeral.

The funeral is decidedly weird...and filled with funeral arrangements labeled "Suck it, motherfucker," and a bunch of guys who are there to make sure Jake is dead. Then when Charlie tries to go home, it blows up.

Turns out Uncle Jake was a secret supervillain, and Charlie's the last relation of his. Jake has superintelligent cats (Charlie's two pets can type and invest in real estate) as spies, angry foulmouthed dolphins who want to unionize, an island lair, and Charlie gets an invitation to an evil villain convocation he's not allowed to refuse. He's being hit up for large amounts of money, and he's barely been on the job of starter villain. What's a newbie to do?

Honestly, Charlie does a pretty good working it out. He's respectful to people and animals, he gets them on his side, and he figures out how to deal with evil bastards even if he isn't one himself. You gotta respect the guy, and I frankly enjoyed reading this one. This was fun and smart. I think I give it four stars. 

The Kaiju Preservation Society

By John Scalzi.

This is a fun fluff-ish sort of book to take one out of the pandemic. Very literally.

Jamie Gray, our gender-neutral first person protagonist (a la Lock In), is a former PhD candidate who specialized in science fiction before quitting to join a food delivery start up as a marketing person, which they are inexplicably fired from at the beginning of the pandemic/book and literally forced into becoming a "deliverator." once their roommates bail and/or have no income. Then on their last delivery after the shitty food company is sold for billions, Jamie runs into an old acquaintance, Tom, who randomly offers them a job "lifting things" for an NGO. The job is too good to be true, financially, but you do end up disappearing for six months at a time while on shift.

While on shift ON A PARALLEL WORLD, WHERE THERE ARE GIANT RADIOACTIVE KAIJU. Jamie has just moved to another world, where they work with scientists studying the kaiju, and making sure they don't accidentally bleed over into our world, because these things are naturally nuclear and that's why they got attracted to/tied to our world once we discovered nukes. I admit that the science behind giant radioactive kaiju is fascinatingly weird (and amusingly grotesque when it gets into mating), and it seems to take the book awhile to start on plot because we're being introduced to this world and all of its very weird science.

Things start to heat up when Jamie's assigned to be "tour guide" and their shitty ex-boss Rob the asshole CEO is one of the VIP's, and acts just as arrogantly assholio as you might expect. Even though Jamie and coworkers school Rob in What Not To Do When Visiting Kaiju during his visit, clearly that lesson hasn't been learned when a reproducing kaiju hanging out by the world border--and her impending babies--disappear, and a bunch of staff members are killed. Jamie and their newbie cohort get together to get Bella the kaiju back before she explodes. The villain is...yeah, who you think it is.

Overall, it's fun fluff to go into a world where Trump and pandemic aren't especially relevant, there's miracle vaccines* and all anyone cares about is not being eaten or exploded by giant lizards. Not super deep, but entertaining in a mild sort of way and it's fun to tell people, "I'm reading about giant exploding lizards in this book." Three and a half stars. Mildly memorable if not super deep, but also, that's not the goal. It's a recreational book, and that's what it does.

* though Tom claiming that he needs a new teammate because the guy's in the hospital with covid looks shifty in retrospect. Did someone die or get mauled?....probably mauled.

Ruthless Vows

By Rebecca Ross.

Previous book here. Since this spoils the end of the last book, it's below the spoiler cut. 4.5 stars again, though! Marvelous finish to this duology.