altlovesbooks
Maybe I'm just not a cozy person? I drink tea, wear cardigans, have cats, but I felt like this book never went anywhere and was kinda boring besides. I guess I need stakes, a plot, something carrying me through to get me interested in a book. While I'm sure this will appeal to some people, because it is cute, and there's some good elements here, my attention wandered periodically.
We have a cast of four in this book. Tao, the Teller of Small Fortunes, has a cart and a mule and goes around to villages and towns telling people's fortunes for cash. She runs into Mash and Silt, two reformed(?) thieves on the road to find Mash's young daughter who went missing following a bandit raid. She reads Mash's fortune, and the three of them band together to hopefully find her. Along the way, they also absorb Kina, a baker who loves baking but isn't quite as good as her uncle and who wants to see the world, into their ranks. The four of them go on (very episodic) adventures while the issue of where Mash's daughter is hangs over them.
I guess what I didn't like was the episodic feel of the book. It felt like at every town they'd get another call to action in some form or fashion, they'd act on it/resolve it/run from it, and then on to the next town/call to action. The fate of Mash's daughter isn't brought up nearly as much as you might expect, nor does it seem very urgent since they're always off doing other things instead of tracking down this 4-year-old. I sort of felt like this would be more of an urgent task.
I liked how different the four characters felt, but at the same time, they felt shallow and undeveloped throughout the book. Only Tao really has any sort of character arc, and even that felt low stakes and not all that important to Tao/the larger story. The half-finished feel of the rest of the characters made them feel a bit flat and boring, despite how different they felt from each other.
It's a good book for some low stakes, cozy palm reading fun, but I finished the book wishing more had been done to develop literally anything more than what I got.
Maybe I'm just not a cozy person? I drink tea, wear cardigans, have cats, but I felt like this book never went anywhere and was kinda boring besides. I guess I need stakes, a plot, something carrying me through to get me interested in a book. While I'm sure this will appeal to some people, because it is cute, and there's some good elements here, my attention wandered periodically.
We have a cast of four in this book. Tao, the Teller of Small Fortunes, has a cart and a mule and goes around to villages and towns telling people's fortunes for cash. She runs into Mash and Silt, two reformed(?) thieves on the road to find Mash's young daughter who went missing following a bandit raid. She reads Mash's fortune, and the three of them band together to hopefully find her. Along the way, they also absorb Kina, a baker who loves baking but isn't quite as good as her uncle and who wants to see the world, into their ranks. The four of them go on (very episodic) adventures while the issue of where Mash's daughter is hangs over them.
I guess what I didn't like was the episodic feel of the book. It felt like at every town they'd get another call to action in some form or fashion, they'd act on it/resolve it/run from it, and then on to the next town/call to action. The fate of Mash's daughter isn't brought up nearly as much as you might expect, nor does it seem very urgent since they're always off doing other things instead of tracking down this 4-year-old. I sort of felt like this would be more of an urgent task.
I liked how different the four characters felt, but at the same time, they felt shallow and undeveloped throughout the book. Only Tao really has any sort of character arc, and even that felt low stakes and not all that important to Tao/the larger story. The half-finished feel of the rest of the characters made them feel a bit flat and boring, despite how different they felt from each other.
It's a good book for some low stakes, cozy palm reading fun, but I finished the book wishing more had been done to develop literally anything more than what I got.