The Actual Star

A Novel

hardcover, 624 pages

Published Sept. 13, 2021 by Harper Voyager.

ISBN:
978-0-06-300289-0
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4 stars (26 reviews)

The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents —telling three powerful tales a thousand years apart, all of them converging in the same cave in the Belizean jungle.

Braided together are the stories of a pair of teenage twins who ascend the throne ofa Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion and racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

In each era, a reincarnated trinity of souls navigates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, and love and hate—until all of their age-old questions about the nature of existence converge deep underground, where only in complete darkness can they truly see.

The Actual Star is a feast of ideas about where …

6 editions

Science fiction as I've always wanted it

5 stars

(em português → sol2070.in/2023/09/Fic%C3%A7%C3%A3o-cient%C3%ADfica-como-sempre-quis )

"The Actual Star" (2022), by Monica Byrne, is the kind of book I'm always looking for in science fiction, but rarely find. It combines several of the topics that interest me most today: post-apocalyptic utopia, anarchism, psychedelics, climate emergency, regenerative technologies, cosmo-spiritual questions, etc.

The summary doesn't look like much: three interconnected stories set a thousand years apart - in 1012, 2012 and 3012 - that use Maya mythology to talk about reincarnation, collapse and regeneration. In fact, as soon as I read the synopsis, I wished distance, imagining something new age, with "age of Aquarius", Maya calendar, or "conspirituality". At the very least, it sounded like a hackneyed story, like that average movie "Cloud Atlas" (2012), by the Wachowski, or the great "The Fountain" (2006), by Darren Aronofsky.

But I saw a lot of effusive praise, even from people I admire like Kim Stanley …

The Actual Star

4 stars

This one gave me Cloud Atlas vibes.

It's set across three timelines: ancient Maya, contemporary, and 1000 years in the future - I enjoyed the future segments and worldbuilding the most.

I feel like one needs to have a solid grounding in latine culture to get the most out of this.

A real achievement

5 stars

This novel alternates between three connected timelines, each separated by 1000 years from the next, each on the cusp of social (and environmental) change.

The future timeline is set in a utopian (though by no means perfect) global nomadic society, organised around principles of mutual aid. It's refreshing to see a vision of how humankind might adapt positively to the challenges facing us, even as some of the fault lines in that vision are exposed over the course of the story.

The other timelines are just as vividly drawn, and feel researched and sensitively written. All three are deftly woven into the greater whole, and I found reading the chapters in blocks (one for each timeline) helped me appreciate the connections being drawn across all three.

This will definitely be going onto my to-reread pile, as I'm sure there's a whole lot that I've missed on my first pass through. …

Review of 'The Actual Star' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is a cleverly constructed tripartite novel with three parallel plots occurring 1000 years apart - all based on the culture of the Mayan civilization. It is well-written with extensive direct and indirect relationships among the characters in the storylines.

I did think that the changes described in the society of the year 3012 were conceivable, but the biological changes described were not.

thought provoking, definitely worth reading, ending a bit too tidy.

4 stars

Content warning meta discussion of ending

Review of 'The Actual Star' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I really enjoyed this book for variety of reasons: Firstly, what a wonderful puzzle of a book, a book written by an intelligent author for intelligent readers. You constantly try to piece together the solution to the riddle, and it makes it a very fun read. Secondly, the treatment of sex and gender was incredible. It was queer in a brilliant, unapologetic, illuminating, kind of way (I have rarely read anything like it). Thirdly, I felt like the narrative was captivating and super emotion-driven. It wasn't bland in any kind of it. The style reminded me a lot of early Salman Rushdie or canonical Ursula Le Guin. Lastly, there are some brand new ideas in this book - ideas about life, love, ecology, religion.
Anyway, I'd definitely want to read whatever Byrne writes next.

Review of 'The Actual Star' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This future-Hugo-award-winning novel is a queer sci-fi fairy tale that is both intimate and epic, leaving the reader dazzled with visions and questions. I couldn't put it down and couldn't sleep after reading it, immediately wanting to go back and check different points in the book to reaffirm different theories (I read it on Kindle but now I need to have it in print).

The novel weaves three time periods and casts of characters that are interlocked in questions of fate, future and devotion. Like Octavia Butler, Bryne's characters are serious, sensual and convinced that they must shape the outcome of events. Also like Butler, the books themes deal with questions of inequality, inter-generational trauma and colonialism.

The book is challenging in that it does not give easy answers or obvious villains, and requires you to piece things together, whether it be drawing conclusions about connections between past and future, …

Review of 'The Actual Star' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Whew. This is the sort of saga that demands a deep exhalation upon completion.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it. So much of it was annoying: the reincarnation gimmick; the need to Suffuse Everything With Meaning, to believe that the Universe cares about individual humans (or is even aware of us), that there are Deep Connections that we could see if only we had a broad enough view. The presence (in the 3012 sections) of astonishing technology with no acknowledgment of the infrastructure needed to create it. The expectation—counter to all human history—that, a thousand years from now, the remaining humans can share common language and beliefs. Recurring mentions of psilocybin but only in its vision-inducing aspects, never in its sublime ones. And, in a book so concerned with the Actual, so much more talking-about cunnilingus than actual cunnilingus.

And yet, I couldn’t stop reading. Byrne is …

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