A prequel to his bestselling Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy Bookshops & Bonedust seemed just like my brand of nerdy catnip. When warrior orc Viv is injured in battle, she must recuperate in a small town where she befriends the cantankerous owner of a bookshop. It’s got books, a gigantic cat-like creature, and some mild fantasy adventuring — all of which are elements I usually love.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really come together for me in this book. I do love how Viv resisted reading at first, until she discovered the joys of steamy sex scenes in action-packed adventure stories. I found that adorable, especially with how Viv’s reluctance to admit liking the books went head-to-head with her desire to read more titles.

But other than that, I found myself bored. Viv’s romance with a baker was sweet, but it’s hard to really feel invested in a relationship we know won’t really last till the next book. The subplot about the eager beaver adventurer who wants to prove her worth in joining Viv’s gang is mildly amusing, but honestly not all that compelling. The main conflict, so to speak, about a skeleton golem (the ‘bonedust’ in the title) longing for a quiet life but beholden to an evil mistress, definitely has promise. But it took so long for that plot to ramp up that by the time it did, I no longer really cared.

I get this is a cozy fantasy, so it really isn’t meant to be action-packed. And at first I thought maybe the genre just isn’t as much for me as I thought it would be.

But then I happened to find Travis’ first book, Legends & Lattes, at the library, and decided to give it a go. And I found it magical. I devoured that book within a week. I absolutely adored how Baldree turned things as ordinary as lattes and cinnamon rolls into things that are new and wondrous to behold. Cafe experiences are all new to Viv and crew, and Baldree did an excellent job at delivering them anew as well to us real-world readers.

Yet that magic didn’t quite translate into Bookshops. Perhaps it’s because experiencing books for the first time isn’t quite as sensory nor sensual as experiencing coffee and pastries? While Legends made me drool in imagining the deliciousness of cinnamon rolls, and made me crave for a steaming mug of coffee and (oat) milk, reading about Viv and other characters getting excited about reading just didn’t hit as hard.

Overall, Bookshops is…okay. And once the fantasy adventure element kicks into high gear, it becomes interesting. But it took me more than three months to finish this book, and if I hadn’t happened to read and love Legends & Lattes during that time, I may very well have marked this DNF.

Verdict: read Legends & Lattes instead.

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Thanks to Raincoast Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.