Goblins & Greatcoats

Legends & Lattes #1.5

by Travis Baldree

A goblin with too many pockets and a disturbing affinity for cutlery, a rain-soaked night, four adventurers, a pair of corpses, a junk-drawer knife, some unfortunate taxidermy, and a beleaguered Gatewarden…

These are the primary ingredients in a locked-room mystery that can only be solved by the Territory's most unlikely detective.

Her name is Zyll.

Her eyes are keen, her teeth are sharp, and the chaos of her passing leaves no murder unsolved.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Mystery, Cozy, Fiction, Cozy Fantasy, Adult

25 pages, ebook

First published June 24, 2024

About the author

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Legends & Lattes, Bookshops & Bonedust, and Brigands & Breadknives. Audie-winning. Audiobook narrator. Erstwhile game developer. Made Fate, Torchlight & Rebel Galaxy.

Reviews

[Melanie (meltotheany)]

♡ download and read for free from subterranean press

fourteen pages of cozy fantasy murder mystery meets a d&d campaign perfection. we follow zyll (with her greatcoat of many pockets), and her pony (named round boy 🥺), come to an inn one rainy night and slowly solve the closed circle mystery. i really adored this and i really hope travis blesses us with more from within story in the future (please more zyll and round boy adventures).

trigger and content warnings: talk of murder / death + blood

blog | instagram | youtube | kofi | spotify | amazon

♡ Legends & Lattes ★★★★★
♡ Bookshops & Bonedust ★★★★★

[* A Reader Obsessed *]

4 Stars

A mystery and a mysterious goblin that caught my attention in a short 14 pages. My only hope is that Baldree gives us more of this character in the future!


Legends & Lattes Series
0.0. Bookshops & Bonedust - 4 Stars
0.5. Pages to Fill - 4 Stars
0.6. Goblins & Greatcoats - 4 Stars
1. Legends & Lattes - 4 Stars
2. Brigands & Breadknives - 4 Stars

[karen]

free here

which is fair enough, as i have (happily) spent way too much money on limited edition seanan mcguire books thru them.

[Steph]

a very short treat from the legends & lattes universe! this locked room mystery sets us down with an entirely new cast of characters in the wake of a dastardly murder at an inn.

this is my first time reading one of baldree's works in ebook form rather than audiobook, and it gave me a nice perspective on his writing. i typically adore the audio production, but this format allowed me to soak in more details of the language. there are some truly scrumptious turns of phrase here and there.

it's far too short to make a significant impression, but i still had fun with this. i love that zyll's pony is named round boy! so precious.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)]

This was a fun short story that's a fantasy version of a cozy mystery with a goblin investigating. Free from Subterranean Press.

[h o l l i s]

I had no clue how this fourteen page novella (short story?) was going to go or how I could be made to like something so short and that had no ties to anything else but.. somehow.. here we are! This was really cute and a little silly, in the best way!, and I hope it's going to be a series with more to come. Because this little vignette has so much potential.

If you are looking for a distraction from the world that makes no demands on your time, that's both fantasy and locked room mystery, you definitely need this. So if you haven't already, go ahead and make sure to snag yourself a copy of this -- and, ps, as of the time of writing this post, it's free!

3.5 stars

---

This review can also be found at A Take From Two Cities.

[Anastasia]

Cute little story - I just love Round Boy.

[Maëlys]

3.5 / 5

this was a very fun introduction to a character i hope we see more of in the future!

read for the Fantasy Book Bingo Challenge: Orcs, Trolls, and Goblins - Oh My! (Hard Mode)

[Danny_reads]

This was a super quick little mystery!

Personally, I thought the writing was a bit too descriptive and wordy in the beginning, but this was a a fun little story with an interesting main character. I want to know more about Zyll and would read a longer book following her.

[Mangrii]

Una fantasía acogedora con misterio de habitación cerrada al estilo de los casos de Judge Dee de Lavie Tidhar con mucha cercanía a DnD. Ojalá tengamos más Zyll en el futuro :)

[Silvana]

Cute but too short.

[Meredith]

This was a fun, quick read.

[Howard]

A free short story from Subterranean Press by Travis Baldree. Part of his Legends and Lattes universe, but with new characters. Ending is a bit abrupt.

[Matteo]

Racconto divertente ambientato (ma del tutto scollegato) nello stesso universo di Legends & Lattes. Prosa frizzante e irriverente che condisce un murder mystery risolto in poche pagine.

Il difetto principale risiede non tanto nell'aver schierato, in così poco spazio, molti personaggi, ma quanto nell'averli voluti identificare in maniera molto precisa con descrizioni accurate e, soprattutto, con nomi che difficilmente rimangono in testa. Sarebbe stato molto meglio limitarsi alla presentazione fisica, che già li distingueva bene (l'elfa, la nana, il folletto).

Vengono introdotti concetti che potrebbero (e visto il successo della serie, scommetto che sarà così) trovare futuri sviluppi nel mondo che l'autore sta costruendo.

[V. M. Brewster]

• "Look, I don’t know how they do things where you come from, but ’round here, we expect the spoon to stay in the building. That other inspector of yours had a mighty strange affection for cutlery." •

⛈️🪎🥄

Wenn der einzige Kritikpunkt die Länge der Geschichte ist - die mysteriöse und pragmatische Zyll hat mich in nur wenigen Seiten bereits für sich gewonnen. Hoffentlich kriegen wir in Zukunft ein vollständiges Buch mit ihr als Prota- oder Deuteragonisten, am liebsten ein weiteres Murder Mystery mir quirky Vibes!

3,5 Sterne.

[Sam Donovan]

ok now i'm off to binge Death to Divinity, Dungeons Dice a& Everything Nice, and everything Dimension 20 <3

[QuietlyKat]

Cute little freebie available through Subterranean Press. I’m thankful I did NOT read this before reading Brigands & Breadknives since it wouldn’t have made much sense to me and I definitely would not have appreciated or enjoyed it as much I did due to already knowing and loving Zyll. If you’re a Zyll fan, this is a quick, cute little backstory for her.

[Raquel Flockhart]

This fantasy short story is a cozy mystery in which a goblin arrives one night at an inn where a crime has taken place and tries to figure out which of the six suspects present there is the murderer. A cozy fantasy adventure with Baldree’s distinctive writing style, with a plot too rushed for its short length and that doesn’t leave much room to minimally develop the characters so that at least their voices can be distinguished, but which ending left me with a smile.

[Punk]

Currently (as of June 25, 2024) free at Subterranean Press as a DRM-free epub. You'll need to have an account, which includes providing a mailing address.

[Elentarri]

Rating: 3.5 stars

This is a charming little locked-room murder mystery solved with the aid of a "goblin with too many pockets and a disturbing affinity for cutlery". If you want to test drive Travis Baldree's writing style, this short story is available for free from Subterranean Press: https://subterraneanpress.com/goblins...

[Christine]

FYI - I have this shelved as a kindle freebie, but it is actually free from Subterranean Press.

I actually enjoyed this better than the novels, to be honest. Short, too the point, with good characterization.

[Ailin]

Silly fun little murder mystery short story, bite sized and ready off the shelf!
A treat.

[prag ♻]

should i get into dnd

[Tim&#x1f319;]

3.5 ⭐️

[Jemma Hope]

It’s always a good day when you’ve discovered something new from Travis Baldree. This was a delightful novella featuring Zyll our detective, set in the world of Legends & Lattes. A classic whodunnit murder mystery, with quirky characters and great humour. This really made me smile, I would love to see Zyll get her chance at a full novel, and Travis Baldree’s writing in this is no less spectacular than in his previous works.
5 stars

[Pippin Took, the Shire Hobbit]

This was a short, fun read. It is available for free here

I was sure I had it figured out and then bam 💥 there was a nice twist in the end. I really hope Travis writes more stories following Zyll in the future. Also what a nice cover!

[Sophia Wordworld]

Da mir "Legends & Lattes" von Travis Baldree sehr gut gefallen hat, habe ich beschlossen, auch die beiden Novellen des Autors zu lesen, die in diesem Erzähluniversum spielen. Mit 25 Seiten ist die Geschichten sehr kurz, aber ein wirklich lohnenswerter Ausflug in Vivs lebendige D&D-Welt. Einen etwas ausführlicheren Nachschlag werde ich in der Vorgeschichte "Bookshops & Bonedust" und der Fortsetzung "Brigands & Breadknives" der Reihe bekommen, welche ich mir auch schon beide gekauft habe.

"Goblins & Greatcoats" ist eine wunderbar schräge Cozy-Fantasy-Novelle aus dem Legends & Lattes-Universum, das keinen direkten Bezug zu Vivs Geschichte hat und stattdessen die Goblindame Zyll vorstellt. Die kleine Abenteurerin mit eindeutig zu vielen Taschen und einer beunruhigenden Vorliebe für Messer wird in "Brigands & Breadknives" nochmal eine Rolle spielen. Als Zyll in einer regnerischen Nacht in einem Gasthaus auf zwei Leichen, vier Abenteurer, einen versteckten Schatz und einen überforderten Gatewarden trifft, ist der Fall mit scharfem Blick, spitzen Zähnen und einer ordentlichen Portion Chaos schnell gelöst. Auf wenigen Seiten gelingt Travis Baldree ein schräges, charmantes und äußerst unterhaltsames Murder Mystery Häppchen. Die Kurzgeschichte gibt es übrigens kostenlos hier.

"A goblin with too many pockets and a disturbing affinity for cutlery, a rain-soaked night, four adventurers, a pair of corpses, a junk-drawer knife, some unfortunate taxidermy, and a beleaguered Gatewarden…"


Fazit
Die Novelle aus dem Legends & Lattes-Universum ist zwar sehr kurz, fängt aber perfekt das ein, was Travis Baldrees Geschichten so besonders macht: liebevolles Worldbuilding, warme Atmosphäre und clevere Ideen.

[Iona Sharma]

I'm not going to dunk on an author for doing the thing that's the thing they do. I liked Legends and Lattes, understood it was a riff on DnD (which I don't play) and that it was low-stakes because it was meant to be and no one was getting anything they didn't sign up for.

This, however, annoyed the shit out of me. For one thing, Subterranean seem to be trying to imply it's a novella rather than a 14-page novelette. And for the main thing, this is DnD. It's just DnD. The tavern, check; the huge number of characters of different species and funny names, check; the worldbuilding that's incomprehensible unless you already know what it is. This doesn't feel like a piece of work that's intended to be a work of freestanding narrative fiction. It's very annoying.

[José]

3.5 ⭐️

Un cuento bastante entretenido que transcurre en el universo de Legends & Lattes.

En pocas páginas Baldree establece un misterio bastante sencillo, pero cargado del humor que caracteriza a sus libros. Es un gran autor para leer si andas buscando historias divertidas y personajes entrañables. Si además juegas D&D, seguro sus libros te van a encantar.

[Sibil]

This is so cute! And it was fun, too!
I couldn't believe that such a short story could have been so good, especially if you have to solve a murder in it, but... I was wrong. This story is short, really really short, but it is also good, really really good!
Zyl is an amazing character and the Blade too! and I really hope to read more of her adventures, maybe even longer ones! This is a perfect blend of mystery and fantasy, with a good serving of cozy all around!