The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It was a two-fold joy to read this book. Julie Leong has written a delightful, cozy fantasy, road trip novel with great characters — human and animal. I dare you not to like the mule Laohu as much as Silt the almost ex-thief, Mash the fierce warrior/farmer, Kina the apprentice baker, and Tao the wandering fortune teller of the title. But it’s Tao, the main character, who holds the story together and makes this a memorable, insightful book.

Tao is a young woman born in Shinara who has been raised in Eshtera and feels like she fits in neither of those worlds. After running away from a less than happy home, Tao travels the countryside telling small fortunes (those that concern everyday life, never far-reaching, life-quaking predictions) while avoiding her deep loneliness, alienation, and her fear of the true scope of her magic power as a seer. The people she meets and helps, especially those who become her traveling companions, end up helping her face her fears and her troubling past. All through her journey, Tao shows the reader what it is like to feel that you are a stranger in your own land, how belonging is so often in the eye of the beholder and so very difficult when that beholder judges by appearance alone.

In The Teller of Small Fortunes, Julie Leong has given us not only a wonderful cozy fantasy (complete with the requisite yummy baked goods) but allowed us insight into living in a society where one’s worth is so often based on looks alone.