Legends & Lattes

“Legends & Lattes” is fantasy with the stakes deliberately lowered: an orc barbarian retires from bounty work and opens a coffee shop. The pleasure lies in watching the place and its circle of regulars grow, and the telling stays modest and kind throughout. Some readers find the prose plain and the plot close to a list of shop improvements, so it suits those wanting comfort far more than those wanting momentum.

Worth knowing Viv is an orc who has spent twenty years as a mercenary and has decided to stop; she takes her savings to the city of Thune, buys a livery stable and opens the town’s first coffee shop, in a world where nobody knows what coffee is. That is the whole plot of Legends & Lattes, and the stakes stay at the level of a rival, a protection racket, a cinnamon roll and a succubus named Tandri who comes to work the counter. Travis Baldree self-published it in 2022, Tor picked it up within months, and it became the book that defined cosy fantasy; it was a Hugo finalist in 2023, the year the prequel Bookshops & Bonedust appeared. Three hundred pages, and the point is that nothing terrible happens.

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