The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

"The Teller of Small Fortunes" by Julie Leong was one of the 3 books I brought with me on my 2 week family trip. It is a pretty short read (or at least by my standards), and it stands at about 300-something pages. I found this book completely by chance when I went to the book store looking for silly casual fantasy stories and it seemed to fit the bill. Originally it seemed like a book I would love, but I had one single reservation about it; it was labelled as a "cozy fantasy" almost everywhere online. Now with my (not so great) experience with online book categorization (I'm looking at you Fourth Wing) I was a bit worried that this would be another slightly stereotypical simple story. However I ended up being pleasantly surprised with it! The story was nice and comforting, without too many unlike-able characters, with a pretty good diverse cast, but it was not overly "cozy" and still had some action and plot development, which I enjoyed a lot. 

Overall here are the things I enjoyed about this book:

Cast of characters: The traveling party of the book gets assembled pretty early in the story, with various characters of different origins and character archetypes. Overall I really liked how the characters fit together and the dynamic that gets created throughout the adventure. It made it into a really sweet "found family" type of group. :) 

Main character's story: I really liked the main characters origin story and her troubles. Her issues fitting in to a culture that isn't originally hers, or super inviting either, was pretty realistic and relatable to me. There were some really emotional scenes in the story that made me almost shed a tear as well. :')

The "quest": The main story is based on a traveling fortune teller, so already the setting leaves many opportunities for adventure, so when the additional companions get added to the party, and a main goal is defined, the whole story starts to feel like a D&D adventure! Very cool 

And here are the things I did not enjoy about this book:

Badly veiled "Asia" vs "Europe": The only thing I did not like about this book was the very clearly "Asian culture" vs "European culture" fantasy elements. In short, the place where the main story happens is a country with medieval villages and architectures, as well as classical "European fantasy" elements, like elves, gnomes, etc. Meanwhile, another far-away country is full of watersilks and believe in the "Chi". I wouldn't say that this was that big of a deal for me, I just found that part of the world building a bit uninspired. 

All in all, this was a really enjoyable read, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a short, very light-hearted fantasy novel!!