The Constellation of Forgotten Things

This review is for the ARC version of this title provided to me as an ebook by the publisher and LibraryThing for the LT Early Reviewer's program. Thank you to both for the opportunity to read this title early; all opinions are my own.

First off, I want to preface that I really, really wanted to like this book. The concept was promising; stories about love and life, falling in and out of love, love through loss and death, and love in forms outside of romance. The premise was so very strong, but fell so very flat for me. The writing style also often felt like it didn't know if it wanted to be prose or poetry or a narrative. This was probably my biggest issue, paired with the fact that the plots had so little context they were nearly show more impossible to hold onto with how short they were. I found myself struggling to recognize the connections through the anthology that were there because it was so simple to forget who was a character previously introduced and who was new, since there was so little time to get to learn the characters. I understand this is hard with short stories/anthologies, but even still, it felt that the authors clearly know far more context and worldbuilding than we do in a way that hurts the reader's ability to connect the pieces and/or follow a story or stories, rather than in the usual sense of worldbuilding and writing. I say all this as a lover and writer of prose and poetry and short stories.

Most stories felt very similar and hard to follow. Unfortunately I have no clue if it lies in the editing or the writing itself, and since the co-author Renley Nicolas Chu had passed away, I'm not sure how it would best be fixed or addressed.

The connecting tales in Reveria were rough, outside of the stories near the end with Mira and Lethe. I could have read a whole novel about them. This is where the anthology really shone, in my opinion, outside of a few of the short stories at the end. The only stories I enjoyed enough to note here including the ones with Mira and Lethe were Unraveled Strings, Her Name is Beloved, Stardust in Your Veins, The World Dies First, The Ones Left Behind, and Equinox.

My biggest hurdle was how unsettled I was reading the introductory text when I remembered that the authors were an adopted parent-child duo and not romantic partners. I can gather from what was written that both went through a lot of trauma and likely bonded from it, and I know that familial or even platonic love can be described in grand ways but often isn't, but this did not feel like one of those moments. I'm a writer who loves grand and flowery prose myself, especially for writing emotions, but I think the introduction/foreword about how this anthology and the author duo came to be should be toned down or reworded to make it clearer about their familial relationship.

I'm well aware of ARCs being uncorrected proofs as someone who has read and owns many, but this had some very bizarre formatting and editing issues even as an ARC. What I felt were unnecessary paragraph separations, an inconsistent use of commas/em-dashes/semicolons, etc. There was also a whole chapter in the ebook that was just a blank page with "Memory and Shadow" as a header in the ebook's chapter header (but not on the page itself).

I honestly think this is the kind of book that is better as a gift between authors or transformed into a proper novel with the help of a seasoned editor instead of its current form. I don't say this lightly knowing what it was borne out of. show less

I love reading short story collections and there are so rarely good ones around anymore -- appreciation for the ability to tell a tale in few words is not lacking here.

I was very moved by the foreward/intro where we learn the story behind this collection. I feel as though Tiffany Chu has shared a slice of her heart with us, and a slice of Renley's heart as well. The imagery is gorgeous, and the writing very good, but knowing the story beneath the story, here, was incredibly poignant.

When I requested the ARC on LibraryThing, I saw it was a collection of short stories/essays and was thrilled. I write in fractured essays as well and there aren’t enough out there! I really enjoyed this one. I don’t want to spoil but the imagery was thorough and the concepts were intriguing. Thanks!