This book has restored my faith in cozy fantasy! After reading Water Moon, I soon received The Spellshop from the library, and I bounced right off of that one, DNFing it at around the 20% mark. I didn’t like the main character and I found the romance the author was setting up really tedious. So I started to wonder if Legends & Lattes was a fluke and maybe I didn’t actually like cozy books.
Then along came The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong. This book manages to be cozy, without being too boring or too whimsical for my tastes. It has some low-stakes adventure, hints of side-character romance, a real focus on found family, and those cozy stalwarts, cats and baked goods.
Tao is the titular teller of small fortunes. She is an immigrant from a country inspired by China, living in a pseudo-European fantasy country where she stands out far more often than she fits in. She travels the countryside in a wagon, staying for a day or two, and reading people’s fortunes in their palms and tea leaves. She stays away from big predictions, focusing instead on the short-term and small stakes, and she moves on before she can ever overstay her welcome. It’s just her and her mule on the road. And she’s fine with that, really.
Really.
A downed tree in the road serves as a fortuitous meeting between Tao and two adventurers. Mash and Silt are looking for Mash’s daughter, and decide they might as well tag along with Tao. Reluctantly, Tao agrees. Soon enough, the group has also picked up a baker with wanderlust and a cat with a nose for dried fish. As they go from town to town asking after Leah and the bandits who may have kidnapped her, they have to dodge magical and mundane obstacles and emotional hurdles.
Each character gets their moment to shine and to grow and change, as they all start to learn how much they mean to each other. But what happens when the adventure draws to a natural conclusion?
The Teller of Small Fortunes gave me exactly what I want in a cozy or otherwise low-stakes fantasy novel. The characters are fun to spend time with, have some dimension, and are generally trying to be good people. The world feels consistent and lived-in; it’s a fantasy setting with trolls and gnomes and magic, but it makes sense as a fantasy setting. There’s action, but you never feel worried that anything truly bad will happen to the characters.
The one thing this book is lacking to be perfect for me is that it’s not a queernorm setting. There are at least some lesbian characters, but same-sex relationships don’t seem to really be accepted in society. Tao did read as aromantic and/or asexual to me, but she doesn’t specifically use any label like that to describe herself.
This book isn’t doing anything particularly special or unique. It’s not breaking any ground. But that’s kind of what you want from a cozy book, isn’t it? You want it to be relatively predictable. Good people are going to try to do good things, and one way or another, everything will work out in the end. The writing is solid, especially for a debut, and there’s room for this author to grow. In poking around a bit, I see that the Leong’s next project is going to be a sapphic story in the same setting, so I’m definitely l looking forward to that.
CWs and TWs: Racism/xenophobia. Mild fantasy violence. Death of a parent. Mild homophobia.
Source and Format: I borrowed the ebook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Reading Challenge Prompts
World of Whimm: Found Family. This book is doubly about found family, because it’s about the friends coming together and being there for each other, but also the search for a literal missing family member, and since this is a cozy book, you know that kiddo is gonna be found.
Reading Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 4 of 25, no bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 6 of 25, no bingos.
Book Riot: 6 of 25.
Physical TBR: 1 of 12.
Brick & Mortar: 16 of 25, 1 bingo*.
*I’ve completed several of the non-reading prompts, hence the mismatch with the number of reviews!
World of Whimm: 8 of 24, no bingos.