River's Reviews > Bookshops & Bonedust

4.75/5

Every book is a little mirror, and sometimes you look into it and see someone else looking back.

This was amazing! I cannot properly express how much I adored, adored, adored this book!
I enjoyed Bookshops & Bonedust even more than Legends & Lattes (which I also loved so, so much)! The characters, the town of Murk, the bookshop, the pure comfort this story exudes. Everything was phenomenal and so delightfully atmospheric!

Our beloved orc, Viv, gets injured whilst her and the other mercenaries are pursuing a powerful necromancer. Unable to fight on her injured leg, she resides for a while in the seaside town of Murk so that she can have a (supposedly) peaceful recovery. Here we meet a loving and lively cast of characters, all with their own interesting lives and stories.

Viv is younger in this book (as it is a prequel to Legends & Lattes) and I liked seeing a more reckless and youthful side of her, but she is still very much the Viv we know and love. This story adds so much to Legends & Lattes and to what we know lies in Viv's future. It attaches a fascinating history to her as each person she comes across in Murk changes her, some only in little ways, others in big ones.
(Fern and Potroast, the gryphet, quickly became favourites of mine!)

Sometimes, it'll never be the right time. And sometimes, we aren't the right people yet.

This book perfectly balances the cosiness and the adventure. It definitely has higher stakes and more conflict than in L&L yet it never loses that great sense of comfort that both books nurture. That is the one thing I could say over and over and over again about this book; it is astoundingly comforting. I loved all the community of Murk, every single character brought such life to it. And, for me, a bookshop is the ultimate place of comfort. There could have been no better setting for this story. Travis Baldree is the master of making his books feel like a warm hug.

"Then why does this have to be the end of it?"
"Because I'm headed down the hill, and you're headed up it. I'm just glad we chanced to meet on the way."

I adored how storytelling was used in this book, I loved how many bibliophiles there were in it. It's very simply a story for those who love books. It's a story about connections and growth and the hopeful yet sorrowful echoes of what is yet to come. It's about finding a home and knowing that you'll have to leave it. It's about having the knowledge that leaving, that closing the book, doesn't mean that the story is over. Endings are not always the end. Your story goes on.

This was such a wholesome and sweet book. I was hooked all throughout, I never wanted to put it down. It's the type of story you simultaneously want to devour and want to make last forever. If I could be enveloped in this story for all my days, I would be! It's as simple as that.
Please let my praises stir you so that you go and pick up a copy in November when it's out! It's worth it a million times over.
Please never stop writing, Travis Baldree!

See you in the story past the story.

Thank you Pan Macmillan for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review.