Genre: short story
Age: ya and up
Series/Standalone: part of a series by many authors, read as standalone
Content: Nothing

Beginning: fantastic
Middle: didn’t make sense
End: even better than the beginning

Rating: 3/5 Stars ( )

Winter 2021 (January);

This was probably the most compelling concept I found in the Faraway Collection, but it's so drug out and family entrenched and I found myself nearly bored before the endings finally pulled everything together sadly. ( )

This was a very fascinating story about memory - the importance of remembering both the good and bad stuff, and how sometimes we forget some of them but being reminded of them later might give joy again. And how unfortunate it is for those who don’t have a lot of memories. ( )

This is perhaps my favorite short story in the Faraway collection, but it's also the one that has the least to do with fairy tales. I think it's a great, thought-provoking story... but it doesn't belong in a collection of "fairy tales for the here and now"—it would do better in a SFF collection discussing memory or history or even personal agency.

Basically, this story is set in an alternate world that is just like this one *except* that we leave "memory deposits" on everything, and people can revisit those memories by touching the memory deposits. Some people get a general impression of the memory, some get a vivid picture of exactly what was happening, and some are "memory blind" and can't access the memories at all. Naturally, this story follows one of each of these kinds of people as Liu takes a look at what it might mean to be able to revisit memories—or scrub items completely clean of memories for a fresh start. ( )

Pandemic and Staycation read. ( )