Tao, a native of Shinara and an immigrant to Eshtera, is a teller of small fortunes by reading tea leaves and palms and fortune stones. But strictly small fortunes, take note.

“Understand,” she said warningly to Cam, “I tell small fortunes only. No war, no politics, no harvest or famines, those are strictly for Seers with the greater vision, and I don’t deal in such things.”

Well…but that’s getting ahead of her story. Tao and her mule Laohu and their cart travel from town to village to hamlet to nunnery. She tells a boy he’ll get a new tunic and a housewife that if she lends her neighbor a good pan it’ll come back with a dent in it and a farmer that his neighbor is about to put a piece of land up for sale that the farmer wants. Nothing earthshaking or life changing, but it’s enough to pay their way.

Tao travels alone because she prefers it that way, and she never stays in one place too long.

“But they tell their friends, and they come back to my tent, and ask for another fortune. And that one comes true, too, and now thy’re quite impressed, but also a little wary, for they start to think, ‘What else has she seen in the lines of my palm? What does this strange Shinn woman know of my secrets? Which of my unworthiest thoughts or innermost fears has she read, and how might she expose them or hold them over me? What right has someone like her to know and to judge me?’
“And the suspicion turns to fear, and the fear, as it always does turns to anger.”

But then outside of Necker two men, a soldier and a thief, help her remove a tree that blocks her road. In Shellport apprentice baker Kina follows the fortune Tao reads her into a seat on Tao’s wagon. Outside Shellport stray cat Fidelitus joins the troupe. Suddenly Tao has friends, so that when the Mage Guild catches up with her she does not lack rescuers when she needs them. (Although they are much better at fighting and stealing and baking than they are at heists.)

There are encounters with a troll and a phoenix and a rogue mage. They are plagued with rumors of war between Eshtera and Shinara and driven by the search for Mash’s lost daughter Leah. In the end Tao must stop running and face her past so that she can get on with her future, and it is every bit as terrifying as she feared.

But, again, she has friends, and it turns out, family, too. Tao is not as alone as she thinks she is when we first meet her. A warm-hearted adventure through a low key fantasy setting with much to say about family, friendship, and tolerance.

Book Review Monday Chatter Julie Leong The Teller of Small Fortunes