MixedAsymptote... the novel’s ambition is its greatest weakness as well as one of its strengths ... Oloixarac writes with total authority on complex scientific concepts and excels at vividly capturing the mood of a particular time and place, but the intricacy of her world-building often comes at the expense of character development. The wide lens required to encompass multiple lifetimes and continents also has the effect of flattening characters out, preventing the reader from becoming fully invested in them ... The problem, yet again, lies in the book’s ambition: keeping track of a relentless stream of characters, high-level scientific concepts, and the relationships between them proved nearly impossible, and I often found myself looping back to previous chapters to double-check names or reread dense technical passages ... While the individual sections of Dark Constellations don’t necessarily come together to form a successful whole, the book is still an enjoyable and enlightening read ... While the plotlines aren’t entirely resolved, there is no shortage of impressive passages in this novel, and readers are bound to close the book with an appreciation for Oloixarac’s erudition and skill.
