Forest of Memory

A short, thoughtful volume that balances amazing worldbuilding, characterization, and plotting. Ms. Kowal is an excellent writing instructor, and you could easily use this as a textbook.SPOILER:The use of typos is intentional, and may offend more sensitive readers.

In a stream-of-consciousness, poorly edited manuscript, Kowal tells of an Artifact Searcher 's encounter with a mysterious man. Who he is, what he’s doing, and why … are all questions that go unanswered in this curious telling that goes into the question of memory.…

A short story set in a science fiction setting of a future world where everything is attached to a network. The main character is a kidnapping victim who collects antiques and authentic things and resells them, she was taken for 3 days, or off the network for 3 days. She’s typing out her experience on an old typewriter for a client and trying to explain the disappearance of deer in the area. It was odd, I don’t know the end game but I enjoyed it.

I have loved Kowal's work in the past, especially her short story Midnight Hour, but this one didn't quite work for me. The things we learned about the future world were interesting, as well as how memory was discussed, but the story keeps plot-related things so open-ended and mysterious that in the end I wasn't left with much.

The narrator lives in a future world in which people rely heavily on personal computers to do their remembering for them. In this future world copies of objects are easy to manufacture but there is a market for old goods made in the old fashioned way. She had bought a manual typewriter expecting to sell it to a wealthy person but encounters an enigmatic hunter who disables her memory device. She eventually escapes and tells her story on the typewriter she had purchased.Readers who are annoyed by typo's might complain about this book because it is supposedly an exact transcript of what she wrote on the typewriter, errors and all.The narrator is well portrayed and the ending is certainly surprising. But there is enough there. I never got to know the woman or the hunter very well.It is only a one hour read so it isn't very cost effective.It was somewhat interesting to view her world and the dilemma she faced but it was all a bit thin.

Interesting commentary on what makes memory real and how social media documentation as affected this. Not overly exciting but pretty well written and a good short read.

I enjoyed this well enough. It's not my favorite thing I've read from Tor.com, but it's certainly a solid novella with very interesting worldbuilding.

Very excellent story line ! It left itself open to more ,sure hope the author decides to elaborate on it! Will look forward to more of her work.