(courtesy Hachette Australia)
There is an inestimable joy to finding your people.
We all start out in life with a family into which we are born, which can either work for us or not, but along the way, if we’re lucky enough, we accumulate friends so close they become that most wondrous of things, a “found family”, people who love us, have our backs and with whom we have chosen closeness and intimacy.
Some people find their family of their choosing nice and early, but many of us, this reviewer included, don’t really manage it until later in adulthood when either your identity is sufficiently established that you know who you’re looking for, or you are on your way to becoming something more, even if you aren’t fully aware of what that is at the time.
Tao, protagonist of Julie Leong’s warm hug of a fantasy tale, The Teller of Small Fortunes, very much fits into the second camp, a lone soul who travels the sparsely inhabited western regions of the kingdom of Eshtera which is neither as rich nor as sophisticated as the country’s more popular eastern half.
It is clear very early on that Tao has genuine magical gifts and that the fortunes she dispenses from her small but cosy wagon, pulled by a mule called Laohu (“Tiger”), are the real deal, but what isn’t quite so plain is why she chooses to go small with her guidance when she clearly has the capacity to go big and wide.
The road had always been a place of quiet contemplation for Tao, alone with Laohu and her thoughts. But here with two unwanted escorts of dubious reputation, it had become something loud and unfamiliar. But not, thought Tao as their small party clanked on, entirely unpleasant.
What becomes apparent is that Tao is, while accepting of her small and well-demarcated existence, is lonely and laying low by design, having fled Eshtera’s capital Margrave to escape a fate she couldn’t embrace nor live with.
Hers is a life of chosen exile, and while it lacks companionship, it exists below any kind of radar that might draw her to the attention of the wrong people, including the powerful mages who guide the policy and rule of Eshtera which is currently facing off the empire across the sea, Shinarra from where Tao originally hailed.
It’s only when Tao meets a gruff but goodhearted mercenary named Mash and Silt, a garrulous, impulsively inclined reformed thief one day when a huge log has blocked her path out of the latest town in which she has plied her fortune-telling wares, that she begins to suspect that maybe all this under-the-radar aloneness isn’t good for her.
No one is intending at that point that they will become any sort of super-tight friendship group; Mash is hunting for his lost four-year-old daughter who he believes was taken by a raiding party from he and his wife’s family farm, and Silt is happy to keep him company while he does so, but somehow they bond, with a baker eager to expand her small town horizons and a sort-of magical cat (aren’t they all?), coming along for what turns out to be a gentle riot into the life-changing unknown.
(courtesy official author site)
The absolutely lovely thing about The Teller of Small Fortunes is that while it has a hugely engaging story, where Tao’s past comes rushing up to meet her and big decisions on everyone’s part must be made about who they are and what they will commit to doing next, its great and enduring strength is the premium it places on the power of friendship and love to carry the day.
And not just when great narrative moments are in play.
There are great passages in this wholly delightful book where Tao, who discovers its worth taking down your walls if you are letting the generously warmhearted likes of Mash, Silt and Kina in, and her new friends simply get on with the business of making coin and getting through each day.
As they do so, in a blizzard of small fortune telling and yummy pastry making and selling, with Mash and Silt taking odd jobs where they can, they naturally begin to share more and more of who they are with each other and it’s this slow but steady breaking down of barriers and growth of emotional vulnerability that gives rise to the wondrous “found family” that it turns out all of them, most especially Tao, needed.
If you have ever wondered what it feels like to be unconditionally loved and supported, to have people drop everything to help you just as you wouldn’t think twice about doing the same for them, then The Teller of Small Fortunes is the novel you must read, if only to be reminded of how good people, and life, can be.
Tao looked upon the famous terraced neighbourhoods of Margrave, and the spires of the White Palace gleaming in the moonlight, and felt the churning fear inside her harden into something cold and angry.
She had come home at last.
As the plot races, at mule-pulled wagon pace, and sometimes a little faster, to a the big and pointy end of things where was expected turns out to be a thousand times different, in a very good way, to what is given, The Teller of Small Fortunes affirms again and again the power of found family to reorient you to some very good places indeed.
In a world that seems increasingly determined to prioritise cruel and terrible things over those which nourish and sustain us, The Teller of Small Fortunes stands ready, and does it with muscular charm and delight and an impishly fun sense of humour to boot, to counter any and all sellers of life as a zero sum game where only the winners emerge singularly triumphant, community be damned.
This is a DELIGHT, a soul restorative kick of cosy, lovely love-filled adrenaline that asks a lot of those in its beguilingly wonderful narrative but which gives them back so much in return.
You will emerge from reading this gorgeous tale feeling better about the world, yourself and the power of found family to remake and reshape previously cold and cruel regions of your life, and you will sigh in blissful content at how good it can be when you not only sync with kindred souls but are also able to love, support and build them up and make your lives as a community sing with possibilities and realities once only dreamt of.