Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some hard truths: I expected/wanted some extremely low-stakes feel-good relax-time learning to get along with people and build relationships, all in a fantasy setting that seems suspiciously like our world. You know, like the first Legends and Lattes. That was its selling point and its emotional-satisfaction point.

This one, while continuing with at least one character from the original, the bookseller Fern, winds up being a series of misadventures and outright travel-adventure that is almost entirely a "standard" fantasy adventure. One, I might mention, could have been taken out of any cookie-cutter fantasy novel with a small group of adventurers from the last four decades of fantasy novels. D&D or otherwise.

Its selling point isn't the same as the original, alas. You have to be invested in the original character and have to want to see what running away from your emotions will get you. That's pretty much it.

Of course, that's not to say that the novel was bad. It isn't. But taken on its own merits, I have to say it's just average. Standard. And frankly, because I was wanting the cozy friendship-building mechanics of the first, I found myself sometimes getting downright annoyed by how much action and adventure was in THIS novel.

Isn't that odd? Downright strange?

Well, it is what it is. By losing the cozy edge, it moved into standard light fantasy fare, losing a bit of my trust in the series. I can only hope it comes back to the cozy-core later.

Wandering Inn, this is not.

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