The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong
Pages: 322
Format: Hardback (Special Edition)
Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells “small” fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…
Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a “knead” for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.
Tao starts down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past close in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.
The first half of this book was the most interesting regarding character connections and plot. Meeting the characters and their mysteries and seeing the beginning threads of a found family almost always compels me to keep reading. I was excited for a heartfelt read during stressful midterms, especially with the promise of a cat companion at some point in the novel.
Before reading the book, the title implied a whimsical story of small fortunes that can influence lives in subtle but meaningful ways. It pointed to small interactions between people and what the fortunes mean for Tao and her customers, which is a good starting premise. However, the book quickly strays away from the advertised “cozy” genre and into something that is a mix of a D&D parody and a pseudo-litrpg. Having read other cozy novels like The Spellshop and Legends and Lattes, I think this is better categorized as cozy adjacent rather than true cozy. The scene in the forest with the phoenix is strangely adventure-ish but without appropriate tension, which could describe the second half of the book.
The setting wasn’t an issue – unlike high fantasy, cozy fantasy doesn’t require complex worlds to catch your interest. There were enough unique, interesting places, people, and creatures to make the world feel developed. And the characters themselves have a lot of heart, even if their arcs sometimes come across as rushed. Many of my gripes stem from the situation where it was almost as if the novel relied too heavily on standard fantasy obstacles without giving them much of a unique twist. As a consequence, the majority of the plot felt like a typical quest trying to hit the required hurdles before moving on.
The ending was too neat for my tastes, even for a cozy fantasy. You can still have tension in a cozy novel, but a good chunk of the conflict gets resolved much more easily than you’d expect for how high the stakes are supposed to be – at least, according to Tao. Again, this likely relates to the feeling that the novel is a quest fantasy trying to operate within the cozy conventions.
Teller was a perfectly fine read; there were just many places where it fell short of my expectations. If you want a quick book without high stakes, then I’d say this is a good choice. I’ll probably reread it sometime in the future, but I wouldn’t count it among my favorites.
AMBER BUDD - Author 