The Actual Star

by Monica Byrne, Carolina Hoyos (Narrator), Gisella Chipe (Narrator)

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas meets Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series, as acclaimed author Monica Byrne (The Girl in the Road) spins a brilliant multigenerational saga spanning two thousand years, from the collapse of the ancient Maya to a far-future utopia on the brink of civil war.

"A stone-cold masterpiece" -- New Scientist

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, 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 humanity came from, where we are now, and where we’re going—and how, in every age, the same forces that drive us apart also bind us together.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Audiobook, Speculative Fiction

Audiobook

First published September 14, 2021

About the author

Monica Byrne is a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. You can support her work at patreon.com/monicabyrne.

Reviews

[Marcus · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot is good, it could have even been great but the book is ruined by SO MUCH cringe.

There are so many contemporary social agendas scattered throughout the text it's really hard to stay engaged with the plot at all.

Among them:
* whiteness, the great evil ("four great evils: capitalism, whiteness, patriarchy, nationalism.")
* lotssss of starry-eyed anti-colonialism
* the tourist gaze (lol)
* fetishization of "other ways of knowing"
* lots of anti/post capitalism represented as some type of very late stage Marxian utopia (ie. incompatible with human nature)
* lots of fat studies influence. "Noticing how her potbelly hung over the hem of her spandex" is said with a straight face and supposed to be sexy...
* lots of pro-prostitution in the most naive way imaginable. “I remember what you said in the van,” he said, “that you have many boyfriends.” “Oh sí, soy una puta también,” she said. He was surprised that she referred to herself as such—not as a joke, but with pride"
* lots of "fun" new pronouns and not in the cool Le Guin way.
* and a genderless future utopia that's basically Brave New World, but glorified instead of cautionary
* x endings for Latinos a thousand years in the future (hermanix lol)
* over-emphasis on consent in "romantic" scenes. "She reviewed how many she’d made love to before her ai warned her she was unable to consent. Four!"
* hyper sex positivity. The main focus of the book is sex. Consensual sex is always good and nobody every gets hurt or jealous no matter what. On top of it all, the sex scenes are... embarrassingly bad. I was going to quote some but I can't bring myself to do it.
* strange obsession with justifying and explaining self-cutting
* weird incest that almost felt glorified in a Game of Thrones type way.

It's not even that I necessarily even oppose most of those agendas. I expected to be "challenged" by it and was hoping to learn from something different from my standard fare. The problem is that they're so overt, so omnipresent, and so distracting. For a book with no aliens, the characters all seem to be human adjacent, but not quite human. I was unable to finish it. It was a 19 hour audiobook and I bailed at 17 hours.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up because the economy of presentation packs the punch of Dune into the space of Cloud Atlas.

Burgoine Review

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

Three timelines, three souls, three moments in Humanity's journey. Author Byrne has made all of them into one beautiful braid, glossy and dark and heavy...crackling with energy...predicting a path that We-the-People must walk to fulfill our personal and communal purpose. I've seen the comparisons to Cloud Atlas but to be frank, a better comparison is, to my own mind anyway, what would happen if one gave A Canticle for Leibowitz to David Lynch and said, "...but make everyone queer."

There is a Glossary; use it. Xibalbá will no longer just be a weird-looking word to you when you're done with this read, and you'll be much the richer for it. I salute you, Monica Byrne, for risking so much in showing us this beautiful tale and not telling us every last thing. Trusting your readers pays off as they morph into fans, the way I have.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gird your loins for September because I can't recommend this book highly enough. It spans two millennia from 1012 and the decline of the Maya, to 2012 where a woman visits a cave in Belize, to 3012 with a religion based on some of the previous stories and humanity in an evolved state. Everything intertwines and the ending is glorious.

I got a chance to read it early because I've long been a Patreon supporter of the author, and I will be sending this copy on to the next patron and ordering myself a hardcover. If you're intrigued, check out her debut novel while you wait, The Girl in the Road.

[Allison Hurd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hm. I think this largely failed for me. And I think it failed in part because the expectations set in the blurb and the comps were just not right, and that there is so much sex in this book just to describe all the ways that all the different people can have sex, with a strong focus on oral. I've said it now approaching 500 times, I don't like romance, and I really don't care for unerotic erotica.

CONTENT WARNINGS: self harm/mutilation, loss of parents, incest, religion, white gaze, adult children of alcoholics, drug use, harm to children, terminal illness, spiders. And I think harm to eyes? but now I can't remember. But I remember noting that, so heads up I guess

Things that could have been great:

-3012 timeline. If we had only followed this, it could have been really neat. All the big ideas were here, but we spent very little time exploring them.

-The epic nature. If we'd focused less on gonads and more on goings on in the world, these three stories could have been very interesting to compare.

What we got instead:

-Slapdash world building. I understood how essentially none of it worked, with the exception of the modern day component which felt like a sort of meta "I really found my trip outside of white space transformational but I don't want to appropriate culture so I'll write a transformational experience for a white-passing girl who talks about how appropriative it is that white people come to places like this to have transformational explorations." As a white girl myself, I got this, though I found the framing...awkward.

-Unerotic erotica. Ball sweat. Incest. Laughing during anal. Sleeping with people even though you know it will cause a rift between them. Just basically all the parts of sex that sound raunchiest, and not to kinkshame, are almost entirely libido depressants.

-Pacing issues. I knew the ending at about the halfway point, but apparently we really needed to drive home how entirely ordinary and dull the characters were before we got to end the book.

-Boring characters. They all felt very flat and capricious to me.


I just don't think this worked for me. There were lots of neat breadcrumbs, but for a book this hefty I wanted a meal, and didn't even find a snack.

[Renee Godding · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel very conflicted on how to rate The Actual Star. On the one hand I want to praise it for being “objectively” a very ambitious, well-structured and well-researched novel. On the other hand, there were too many aspects to the execution that didn’t work for me, to say that my personal reading experience was a positive one. I have many thoughts on this one, so be prepared for a long rant...

The Actual Star has the kind of set up that is absolute catnip to me; think Cloud Atlas, spanning milenia, but more neatly connected. At its core is the theme of reincarnation, as we follow a set of three souls, interacting and repeating a pattern over three time periods. In 1012, three royal sibilings prepare for their ascend to the throne, as their Mayan society starts its decline into obscurity. In 2012, American tourist Leah takes a journey of selfdiscovery to Belize, to explore her astranged fathers roots. She feels an almost spiritual connection to Actun Tunichil Muknal, the holy cave of her Mayan ancestors, as well as the two tour-guides who take her there. In 3012, Viajera Niloux finds herself deemed a heretic for posing criticism against the utopian society that has formed based on the history that took place on these ancient Belizian grounds.

What I Loved:
The way the three timelines were interwoven, the parallels, the intricacies and the connections between them *chefskiss*: brilliant. It was everything I wanted from Cloud Atlas and more. Its fascinating to see the ripple-effect of small actions in one timeline, affecting the one after that. Especially when it comes to Leah, who in her own timeline was just a 19-year-old tourist, but whom legacy has been elevated sainthood a thousand years later.
It becomes evident from page one how well-researched and fleshed out all three timelines are. With stories like this, there’s usually one timeline that received a little less attention than the others, but Monica Byrne absolutely balanced these three worlds perfectly. It’s astonishing to see the amount of cultural research and attention to detail that went into this book, and it contributed greatly to me wanting to love this novel more than I did.

What I didn’t love:
Had the novel stayed within this already ambitious scope, and executed it brilliantly: it would’ve been an easy 5-star read. Instead, it becomes almost “greedy” in its ambition, and tosses in a big helping of contemporary (dare I say “trendy”) socio-political takes, regarding sexuality, gender, identity, capitalism, whiteness, and more. It’s not the presence of these topics that bothered me, but the deeply clumsy execution and integration into the story. I’m sorry for saying this, but the amount of social-justice-warrior topics, as well as the complete shallowness with which they’re discussed felt more at home on the twitterfeed of a 14-year-old white girl than on the pages of an otherwise accomplished novel. The overt and “safe”way in which they were presented, lacking any actual discussion felt so superficial and out of place to the point of feeling disingenuous, and “only there for the sake of being socially relevant”. As someone who usually agrees with most of these agenda’s, I don’t think I’ve ever cringed as hard over them being present in a story, as I did here. I can honestly say it ruined the book for me.
Below, I’ll go into my 4 major gripes, so beware minor spoilers from here.


- Genderfluidity in the future time-line.
In 3012’s utopian society, gender differences are no more. How do we know this? Because all people now have pluripotent bodies; meaning many have both a penis and a vagina, and use both equally in their sexlives. Also, we now use the suffix -x for everybody, instead of gendered words and pronouns… Seriously!?! That’s what you boil a discussion on gender and society down to down to!?! That feels almost insulting to the entire concept of genderstudies to me.

- “Sexpositivity”
The previous point may have already given you an idea of how obsessed this novel is with sex, and “being sex-positive”. Its message being: all consentual sex is great sex (yes, that includes an incestuous relationship between siblings), and the more sex the better. Every “empowered female” in this book loves sex and has a lot of it, and it’s never bad or mediocre. It’s such a onedimensional view that borders on toxic feminism that I honestly can’t get on board with.

- “Body-positivity”
And by body positivity, I mean fat-activism by constantly describing fat bodies as “fertile and sexy”, yet also using wording like “potbelly” to describe those same bodies…? It all feels weirdly forces and disingenuous to me. Also: I cannot get on board with a message of “body-positivity in a novel that fetishizes rituals of self-cutting in past, present and future. I do not care if you put a trigger-warning in your introduction, rationalizing and glorifying cutting on page is not something I want to read.

- Discussion of “Touristgaze” in Belize
Overlooking the fact that this phraze is thrown in randomly, it could’ve been the start of an interesting debat. Yet it’s hard to take this debat seriously when our protagonist, an American tourist who’s never been to Belize, is presented as being so different, because she feels like she has a Mayan soul and blood”. The fact that she’s the one that is worshiped as a Saint on Mayan land 1000 years down the line, rather than an actual Belizian, feels like the hight of appropriation to me, and rather out of place alongside this message…


If you’d like a more complete list of slightly problematic/cringy things, another Goodreads-user named Marcus did a pretty great job of summing them all up in his review, which I will link to.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Henk]

Continuous trend: Cloud Atlas as comparison for a new book.
Me: add to read
:-P

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure this was my kind of book. I don't read a lot of the kind of historical fiction or speculative fiction that has this level of deep worldbuilding. And with three separate plots and timelines, each with their own full set of characters, at first I struggled to get my feet under me. I actually spent a few weeks reading this, going back to it for a dose of three chapters inbetween my other books. This can make for a disjointed reading experience, but over time I found myself more invested, more comfortable, and able to comfortably move between these three stories all 1,000 years apart.

What drew me in was the religious connection across the three stories. All of them are rooted in Maya tradition, but all of them have been changed over time. Our protagonists are in drastically different circumstances, but at their center they are all motivated by a search for truth and a deep sense of faith. I am not sure if this actually deserves to be called "fantasy," there are certainly science-fiction elements in the future timeline, but the only fantastical elements are all part of Maya religion. It is immediately clear that this is a book that takes it's characters' beliefs utterly seriously, and I always enjoy books like that.

If possible, I would recommend reading this in print. I read an e-book and didn't realize until I was done that there was an extensive glossary which would have been very useful, but also would have been a pain to flip back and forth to in an e-book version. (And you wouldn't have access at all in audio.) That said, I eventually was just fine, I didn't always remember everything about the future society that the glossary is for, but I was okay just relaxing and letting myself go with it, I got everything I needed even if I didn't get every term. But seriously, the future worldbuilding here is extensive and impressive, even without every little detail, I was able to get swept up in it. Because of the way I spread out my reading of it I honestly didn't even realize how long it was. I knew it was long but I was way off in my guess!

In 1012 we have Ixul and Ajul, twin rulers of a Maya empire, and their younger sister Ket. In 2012 we have Leah, brought up in small town Minnesota by her white Catholic mother knowing she is the child of a Maya man from her mother's work teaching in Belize when she was young. Leah is determined to go to Belize for reasons she doesn't fully understand. And in 3012 we have Niloux and Tanaaj, both part of a new nomadic society without homes, without social or family structures, where everything is temporary. Our two protagonists are in conflict about their society's beliefs, with Tanaaj clinging to the past and Niloux trying to push into the future. In this time, the entire social order is based on a religion that combines Maya tradition with Leah's 2012 storyline, as Leah is now considered a saint and her trip to Belize is now the stuff of scripture. The three stories have these common threads, but at first feel far apart. But they all come together for a great conclusion that really satisfies. It's a ridiculously ambitious book that clearly involves extensive research and treats the Maya and people of Belize with deep respect.

Part of the worldbuilding of the future storyline is all the potential body modifications characters can undergo. Some of this is your usual quick healing but one of the new social norms is that all people use she/her pronouns and that nearly everyone has both sets of reproductive organs. It was a fascinatingly queer and nonmonogamous version of the future, and also felt like a natural outcome of the idea that the climate has so impacted the earth that these types of measures are necessary to keep humanity going. The gender fluidity also works well for the idea of past lives that's incorporated into the religion.

It's particularly impressive the way these storylines all run into each other without ruining what will happen next. We know Ixul and Ajul's empire falls, we know Leah disappears in a cave, and yet this never manages to spoil either story, there are so many questions left, so much left to discover.

Content warnings here mostly around self-harm (cutting specifically), which is a regular part of the plot. Also (consensual) incest, ritual sacrifice, and a good amount of violence that is often described in detail. There is graphic sex here, though I found it delightful, this is not a book that is coy about bodies or sex.

[Sage Agee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the horniest sci-fi I’ve read five stars

[YouKneeK · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemed promising in the beginning, but I lost interest the more I read. I never became invested in the characters or the story.

The story alternates between three different timelines set in the years 1012, 2012, and 3012. There are story threads that tie the three timelines together, and at first it was interesting to me to watch for the links and speculate about exactly how it would all come together. Although the story visits other places, its main focus is on Belize and Mayan mythology. Since I know very little about that culture, that was another aspect that interested me in the beginning.

So… a promising start, but it just seemed to kind of go on and on without offering anything truly substantial and I started to lose interest. I was initially interested in the characters, but I never came to care about them. I kind of understood the motivations of the characters in the 1012 and 2012 timelines, even though I didn’t relate to them, but I never felt like I had a good understanding of the characters in the 3012 timeline at all. And the story just didn’t do much for me.

I felt like the story was more set dressing than substance. It seemed to be a blend of various ideas the author wanted to explore, without much actual exploration. As one example, humans in the 3012 setting have both male and female reproductive organs and everybody is referred to by the gender pronoun “she”. This never had any real impact on the plot. It just seemed like something the author threw in there to try to make it seem “edgy”. A similar concept was explored with much more depth and relevance in The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, which I read for the first time last year. I had some complaints about that book too, and I don’t always properly appreciate the classics as much as somebody who read them back when they were new, but the way it presented and handled the gender-related aspects of the story was something I thought was done well and it has stuck in my memory. The Actual Star sort of felt like cotton candy to me -- something that looks substantial until you try to sink your teeth into it and realize there’s not much to it.

This book seems to be primarily categorized as science fiction, but I disagree. Yes, there’s some futuristic technology in the 3012 timeline, but none of the science or technology drives the plot. The actual plot is driven by Mayan mythology.

There are several sentences and even full paragraphs in this book that are written in either Spanish or Kriol. The surrounding text hinted at their contents, especially for the more important passages, but they were not translated directly and I thought the surrounding text failed to convey some nuances that a reader would want to catch. The Spanish wasn’t a problem for me because I was reading it on my Kindle. If I couldn’t figure out what it said, I used the translation feature. The Kriol was a much bigger problem for me since there was no translation. It’s very similar to English and if you focus on it and think through how it would sound when spoken out loud, you can usually figure out what it says, but it takes some effort. My problem was that I’m in a phase where work is busy and I don’t have a lot of time or energy for reading. I’m mostly reading at the end of the day before bed when I’m tired and mentally worn out from my day job. There were multiple nights where I got to a Kriol passage, could not figure out what it said, and closed the book in frustration and went to sleep instead. The next morning, if I remembered to take the time to read that passage again before starting work for the day, I could usually figure it out better. Maybe I would have had fun puzzling it out during a less busy phase of life when I was more mentally alert and had more reading time.

I started to get interested in the story again toward the end, wanting to see how the author would tie everything together, but I wasn’t satisfied with it. The answers are vague and I’m not even 100% sure I understood the final chapters. So Ket and Leah apparently met up in Xibalba. And I guess the “woman in the split of the tree” who was waiting for them must have been Tanaaj’s daughter Messe. If they’re all the same reincarnated individual, I’m not sure it makes sense for them to be 3 people in Xibalba, but ok fine. If Messe was the third person, then I guess this means she disappeared in the 3012 timeline when Tanaaj and Niloux let blood, becoming the first disappearance in a long time? Does this mean that the disappearances had stopped because people stopped letting blood? Also, we’re told that the twins’ “very separation had become a third person, binding them together”. That… didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Obviously that’s Ket/Leah/Messe, but are we supposed to believe that in 1012 and 2012, because Ket and Leah disappeared, that’s the real reason one of the twins died in both timelines? And in 3012 Messe apparently disappears, but Niloux and Tanaaj are in the process of reconciling, so they will survive without her since they’re no longer separated? Or is there some other reason she disappears in every timeline? I don’t know, I guess sense can be made out of it all, but it’s one of those ambiguous endings that tend to annoy me. It offers things to think about, but leaves me wondering if even the author understood her story.

[Nadine in California · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored the imagination in her first book, The Girl in the Road, so I happily waited 8 years for this next one. It was well worth the wait and also well worth the length! Books that weave different time periods into a single narrative are my thing, especially when the periods are divided by long stretches, and the stretches in this case are really long - exactly 1,000 years. The weaving together of these time periods involves cultural, philosophical, psychological, and theological threads, and made for rich reading without getting too explain-y, or sacrificing pacing or plot. I especially loved the world of 3012, and the slow reveal of its roots in 1012 and 2012. This future world is complex enough to need a long and detailed glossary - which I read with as much pleasure as the book itself. Like most complex science fictional futures, holes can be poked, but there was so much richness in this world that I didn't feel the need to go there. I agree with the publisher's comparison of this book with those of David Mitchell and Octavia Butler, and to them I'd add Ursula LeGuin (my top 3 trifecta!). In the Acknowledgments Byrne lists the fiction that has influenced her writing, and I will definitely be picking up all the titles she mentioned that are new to me.The one uncomfortable thing I've found in both these books is the inclusion of brief but icky sex scenes that don't seem necessary to the plot, but also don't seem gratuitous. I don't remember Girl in the Road well enough to know if its scene (well debated elsewhere) is plot critical, but the anal sex scene with Leah and Xander left me confused. Was it to show a certain twistedness in Xander's personality? He's certainly a bitter and complicated guy, but I don't know how this scene served that. Maybe I'm missing something?

[Gabi · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. I guess I will read several of the flaming reviews to get a hint what is supposed to be good about this novel. Apparently it didn't work for me, though.

This is neither in a league with Cloud Atlas nor with Octavia Butler, as was claimed in the blurb here on GR. I wish folks would stop making such comparisons, because the expectations are too high this way.

In the end I found myself bored over longer parts and didn't connect with any of the characters.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's so much to love about this novel that I hardly know where to start. It's speculative fiction, yet thoroughly researched, with a thoughtful and detailed note at the beginning reviewing the care with which author Monica Byrne has approached this project as well as where she's taken the liberty of educated guesses to fill in gaps in the scholarly consensus. She even cites particular experts by name, including historical linguist Lyle Campbell, whose work I was already familiar with beforehand.

As for the book itself, this is of course not the first tale spanning over multiple millennia, but I have seldom seen the process handled so well, effortlessly balancing the vastly different period settings: one group of characters in the Mayan civilization of 1012 CE, one in US and Belize of 2012, and one in a new utopian society of 3012. I wouldn't call it nonlinear -- each timeline progresses steadily on -- but they amplify one another nicely, with clear impacts that nevertheless keep the resolution of each subplot a mystery for readers as we alternate among them. The casual dropping of clues across time is just superbly done too, creating a patchwork constellation of connections backwards and forwards to illuminate the text throughout.

The earliest protagonists are heirs to a waning Mesoamerican kingdom, ritualistically preparing to secure their power as their calendar foretells the dawning of a new epoch. Later they have passed into legend with their true fates unknown, and a young woman of our day travels to her father's homeland, her mind churning with inchoate thoughts of a new world order and methods of accessing a state of spiritual transcendence. Further still, a unified nomadic culture spans the globe, its guiding principles apparently based on the teachings that same figure left behind when she vanished without a trace in our era of intensifying climate disasters so long ago. Yet even for the dwellers of that latest point, there are dogmatic tensions brewing that threaten to fundamentally rupture and collapse their familiar way of life.

Thematic parallels link these three storylines, along with repeating motifs, like a pair of estranged twins on a collision course to square off against one another. It's even suggested that perhaps we are looking at literal reincarnation -- although I think the writer is wise to maintain that ambiguous uncertainty, as she does with the existence of the divine realm of Xibalba and Maya cosmology more generally. There are competing tenets of faith across this narrative, and they are honored as shaping a genuine reality for their respective practitioners without need of any explicit objective verification. The genre is neither fantasy nor that variety of science-fiction that insists on applying cold rationality to every phenomenon on display. Experiences of the holy (however that's personally defined) don't need to be shunted into a category of Real or Not, and the book is made stronger by embracing that.

And the worldbuilding! The ancient moment is clearly the one that's been most heavily-investigated, and it breathes with plausible authenticity to bring that distinctive perspective to life. The future is fascinating too, a queer socialist community that has survived via genetic engineering so that all members are born as what I suppose we'd label intersex, with individuals able to readily change their sex organs surgically (among other body modifications for disability accommodation) as they see fit -- though they almost all use she/her pronouns in honor of their blessed saint. And the present, situated neatly between the two, is recognizable as today while underscoring the liminal threshold of something radically different percolating just beyond our horizons.

My one small and admittedly tangential critique, which should really be taken with a grain of salt as part of a much broader conversation about the sci-fi universe at large, is that whenever I hear a story say that every human in the future shares one common religion (or no religion at all, a la Star Trek), I start hearing alarm bells as a Jew. My people have sacred customs we've maintained over untold generations, and if your imagined utopia doesn't have Judaism in it, it's not because we would have suddenly changed our minds about that. You've written our extermination, and tacitly suggested that our current existence is an obstacle of backwardness for our betters to overcome on their way to perfection. Byrne at least is committed to picking at the flaws of that future society, casting it as just another temporary alignment giving way to its successor, but I feel like there are eugenicist implications for marginalized groups that she perhaps hasn't fully realized and grappled with.

Regardless, this title is a tremendous achievement that grows in pathos as each separate element nears a joint and mindbending climax, an ambitiously dense yet approachable enterprise with an engaging cast and big ideas I can tell I'll still be thinking about long from now. It's only January, but this is an easy early contender for the best book I'll read all year.

[Content warning for self-harm, gore, live human sacrifice, and incest.]

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[Kathy Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclosures and content notes:
First, I read this as an electronic ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions my own.
Second, I am a patron of Monica Byrne and have been financially supporting her work for at least five years, and part of that has meant that I have known about this book, her writing process, and the journey to publication more deeply than any other book I’ve ever read. (I really value this, and her transparence with her patrons, but I know it has influenced how I approached the book.)
Third, for content warnings, there are descriptions of self-cutting, human sacrifice, and other contemplated violence.
…
So, now that’s out of the way…
…
The Actual Star is an interwoven single story about three different timelines each separated by a millennia. Taking place across the world and specifically in Belize, we weave through 1012, 2012, and 3012, each moment at the end of an age and on the precipice of a new one.
There are 3 central characters in each of the timelines, each distinct and individually voiced. I always was able to find my way in the story, and even when we picked up after a cliffhanger (basically the experience of the second half of the book) I was able to follow directly into the timeline with the writing.
Often, in stories where there are multiple narrators or sections of the world to follow (cough The Two Towers cough Song of Ice and Fire cough) I’ll find myself wanting to skip ahead to my favorite characters. I’ll have a story I’m more invested in even as the tale continues elsewhere. This is not the case here.
With these interweaving stories, and the way they are related, and the lore that Byrne has built into this world which is so deeply textured it engages all my senses and whole body, I always wanted to know what was next in each of the timelines.
I am in awe of how Byrne has created a new religion, with streams of orthodoxy, heresy, and ideals, and so she can speak to how we make foes out of people who are so closely aligned with our own values, but off, only by a margin.
Our disputes for life are about the degree of that margin.
This book reads like a soft blanket. It reads like an invitation into a new world. It feels nostalgic while also being innovative. Clearly, Byrne has been influenced by writers like JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, NK Jemisin, Octavia Butler, and Kim Stanley Robinson, but this influence is more about scope and the way one is immersed into a story, than narrative directives.
Byrne’s writing is clear, beautiful, elegant, and evocative. I frequently found myself reading a description, and thinking, well, I’ve never heard it that way, but now I have a very clear picture in my head. She writes phrases that should become cliches because of how perfect they are. Her writing is clear and consistent throughout. My only space for wonder about style is whether each of the primary characters could have been differentiated by varied voicing, but I don’t think the story needs it. Byrne’s prose is graceful and poetic, deeply detailed, layered, and textured.
This is a book the world needs right now. It’s about our imagination for our future, how our past can impact our present in surprising ways, and how perfection isn’t the same as community.
This is a story I’ve never heard before, but it felt like coming home.

[Hank · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I am definitely a fan but this did not turn out as 5 star-ish as I was hoping in the beginning. Byrne's brain is weird (at least the part of it she puts on paper) and her endings are way out there. This concept of stories spanning millenia has been done frequently recently. Cloud Atlas, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and most recently for me and most similar, Salvation by Hamilton. The three time periods 1012AD, 2012 and 3012 all inter-relate and are chosen based on the Mayan calendar.

I am losing the thread of this review, there is so, so much going on in this book. Heavy hints of The Dispossesed in regards to utopias and how they might work. Constant thoughts of how a highly technical society functions with a world full of nomads. Thoughts on how religions are formed and distorted, it was consistantly mind boggling.

The characters were fascinating and nuanced and all the three time periods completely separate yet not.

The book was (still is) long and there were parts that were dull. The ending was also not my favorite although Byrne's (the two that I have read) endings are always a touch unfathomable.

I think I liked Girl in the Road better but I liked this one enough that I will go search out more to read.

[Lata · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not good at DNFing, which is what I wanted to do a few times as I progressed through this book. I think the author's inventiveness and writing were worth 5 stars because of
-the three complex storylines, set 1000 years apart
-the complicated characters
-the beliefs and attitudes of each set of characters in each storyline were well developed
-the writing was really good

My enjoyment, however, of this long book was in the 2.5-3 star range.

[Bonnie McDaniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is incredibly ambitious and entertaining right up till the end, when it trips and falls flat on its face. There are three separate timelines, a thousand years apart (A.D. 1012, 2012, and 3012, based on the Mayan calendar) and the way it was hyped throughout the book that S*O*M*E*T*H*I*N*G B*I*G was going to happen at the end when those timelines collided? I expected one or more characters to travel from one timeline to another, maybe Saint Leah from the 2012 timeline going forward to rejuvenate the future that in many ways was based on her existence.

Instead, we got....God only knows what. Something I didn't understand and didn't make a lick of sense. If this ambiguous mystical mumbo-jumbo ending, where Leah rides the black jaguar of the gods to the afterlife/underworld/true world of Xibalba had been something the book had more obviously pointed towards, possibly it could have worked. As it was, I reached the final page and thought, "What the hell? Really? Are you fucking kidding me?" (And the way it's revealed that Leah came to Belize because she had a brain tumor and was dying anyway, and the penultimate scene is of her trying to find higher ground in a flooding cave, this entire sequence could be chalked up to the final firing of her neurons in her dying, drowning brain. Which serves to render the preceding 575 pages completely useless.) This ending also leaves the two other timelines dangling in the air, with maybe Niloux from 3012 falling through the cracks clear back to 1012 and meeting her Mayan ancestress and....then what? We never know. I hate endings like this.

Not that there isn't a lot to like along the way. The 1012 timeline is obviously exhaustively researched and has a real lived-in feel: this is the way those people lived, and loved, and died. The 3012 timeline, with its post-climate-change and refugee-derived radical restructuring of human society, is sure to spawn a lot of discussion, particularly when it becomes clear (and thank goodness for the glossary in the back, with it detailed explanation of terms; most readers, including me, would be lost without it) that the new society imagined by the author is nomadic and anarchist. Capitalism, any tech built for profit, and the concept of individual property owning is scorned and forbidden. The human species itself has been changed, as everyone refers to themselves as "she" and all babies are born with both biological sexes (a penis/testicles/uterus/ovaries), which rather nicely serves to destroy the patriarchy as well. (There's also been a massive population crash since our time, as there are only eight million inhabitants of Earth a thousand years from now--and almost all of those seem to be brown and black, as "whiteness" is spoken of as another aspect of the old world that has been eliminated.) The only thing that bugged me about this is the level of technology. There are things mentioned as existing in 3012--implanted assistant AI's, hoverdishes, hoverchairs, various solar-powered things including medical items and "solar paint"--which would require manufacturing and a manufacturing base. That does not mesh with the idea of the future society structuring itself as bands of traveling, intermingling, foraging anarchists, because you gotta stay put for a while to manufacture something. Every time I read that, it threw me out of the story.

So, like I said, this book is ambitious--and at the end, unfortunately, it doesn't work. I don't mind the author reaching as high as she did. But you need the payoff for all the threads you throw down, and in this book the payoff just isn't there. I can admire the effort, and all the imagination put into it, but I would rather have had a proper ending.

[Julianne Vantland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was WONDERFUL. My only minor complaint is that it would have been helpful to know there was a glossary in the back of the book, she jumps right into her world from page one and while I pieced most of it together along the way the terms help clarify. But that aside, what a marvelous world she has imagined, three times over. I particularly loved the 3012 reality - the futurism nerd in me relished all the fascinating solutions and inventions for climate and cultural challenges. The three stories were beautifully woven together and the ending was surprising and poetic and I hate that it’s over.

[Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only fifteen days into the year and we've got our first five-star read, folks. That ending was delicious, chef's kiss, full-circle perfect, and it's got me wondering what everyone's "best chord change, that unbearable twinge of bliss" is - for this point in my life I'm usually going to go with the C#m into the chorus in Shearwater's "Quiet Americans."

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 (not actual) stars!

There is virtually nothing which which to compare this book. When I describe it to people, it takes me 20 minutes minimum, and then I walk away feeling that I only gave them the icing on the cake and they’re missing all the cake itself— that’s how layered and deep and moving and also surface-level-straight-up-interesting-and-smart-and-creative this book is.

The thing I loved most about this book was the 3012 world. I was so incredibly moved, in really extraordinarily powerful ways, by the nomadic, global-democratic, ethico-theo-ecological future envisioned in La Viaja. It was almost tear-jerking to know that there is an author out there— a human out there— who can think so radically about a future for our world, a future that outlives the climate crises and migration crises and capitalist crises we find ourselves currently facing, and might actually be good, better. If there is a sequel somewhere in this author, I hope it explores the 3012 world even more ♥️♥️♥️

The other thing I loved most about this book was the lack of binaries, especially ethical ones: there is no outright good and evil. No one is perfectly good or bad— not Ixul and Ajul, not Niloux and Tanaaj, not Xander and Javier, not even Ket and Leah. Everyone is a unique and complex mix of motives, desires, backgrounds, complications, and feelings. This is not a story of good vs bad, nor is it a story of tradition vs innovation or mysticism vs orthodoxy or even, really (I think), about indigeneity vs colonial means of knowledge production (though all of these are at play). What it’s about, maybe (I think), is allowing oneself to be acted upon— by the land, by the Other, by the gods… whatever those may be. It is so much better not to be so wholly self-contained…

The other thing (and after this I’ll stop, I promise) I loved most about this book is the way it works upon its reader so relentlessly to change her perspective. In the 1012 world, the movements between Xiabalba, vision, and reality are like an augmented reality, dizzying in their shifts— by design, I presume. The 2012 world slaps you in the face every time, jolting you from a mystic past or a technologically utopian future into a world of fast food, car horns, and flip phones. The 3012 world’s possibility of the future is, as I mentioned above, awe-inspiring in its scope of vision, leading the reader careening around wildly like a kid at a carnival, savoring the sights and smells: gender neutrality, a fascinating global democracy, the technological ethics involved with things like blotting, the complex interweaving of mythic/ancient past (the Tzoyna and the ballcourt) with speculative future (the Panoptica and the aug).

If I were going to compare this book with any other, I think it would be The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Both have similar themes— the complex interweaving of mystic religion and technology, commitments to centering non-white and non-cis characters, and most importantly: that they teach their readers a new way to read. They treat their readers as dialogical partners who are competent and imaginative, who can receive complex and layered and sometimes told-at-a-slant information and move through it with the author, from the light zone, into the dark zone, into the place of fear and powerful imaginative potential.

I can only thank Monica Byrne for this book, which, in addition to teaching me a new way to read, has also taught me a new vision for the future, one which I had lost hope of even dreaming of.

[Rachel van der Merwe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most magical, captivating, and intellectually stimulating novels that I have read. I stayed up past my bedtime just so that I could get to the end.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I struggled through much of this I enjoyed the ending more than the rest of the book, so three stars. That being said, if you're not enjoying this I don't necessarily know that the ending is worth pushing through for, because even that I felt was poorly executed.

This book follows three distinct timelines for characters that are supposed to be reincarnations of each other, one pair in 1012, one in 2012, and another in 3012. For me, there just wasn't enough tension to drive the overall plot arc forward. I didn't really know what the book was getting at until the last 100 pages or so. Searching for Xibalba just wasn't something I cared about.

And unfortunately neither were the characters. Ket is easily the most interesting of all of them, and she disappears early on in the book. We spend so much time bouncing around from ball game to ritual to sexcapade, the internal and interpersonal conflicts between these characters aren't explored in sufficient enough depth to make me care.

It's a shame because there are some interesting ideas here, some neat little tidbits of worldbuilding. In 3012 the world has mostly returned to a nomadic lifestyle. They are connected to a network that disperses various jobs to the people closest by based on their skill sets and ability level. They live off the land and live in a wider world of family.

But there were also many things that required quite a bit of suspension of disbelief and ultimately failed in doing so for me. One example is the war that's mentioned in the blurb- I never, for one second, thought that's where the 3012 plot line was headed and so the tension and stakes, were yet again lost.

Anyway, I'm relieved to be done with it and eager to move on to the next.

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

//May 10th//
Finally, sitting down to write a real review from my 20 pages of notes and quotes. Wish me luck? I'm sure it will all be coherent! (After attending a signing today at my local SFF bookshop and chatting with Monica Byrne, well, I love this book even more).

This is a chonky book that is rife with topics of discussion: I've attended a book club book walk on this, I've also had a two-hour separate chat with a friend about it, and I've talked about it today with one of the shop owners and it still feels like I have a lot more to discuss? Somehow? This kind of book is rare, and I'm loving that about it.

It is extremely dense: a historical fiction with a sprinkling of fantasy taking place in 1012, a contemporary drama in 2012 (December, right at the 'end of the world') and a utopia/ dystopia in 3012, built like a religion. All the three threads feed into each other perfectly.

I think the future timeline is probably the most fascinating for me (loving me some weird future imagining). I saw a lot of people complaining about it and all the 'social justice' stuff that is supposedly wedged in. But for me it was clear immediately that Laviaja is a world built specifically to be an opposite of our contemporary world, because we're killing the planet and not caring about it, and so the general idea of 3012 is to go exactly in the other extreme. We're too attached to objects (and accumulating intergenerational wealth)? The future is a world where you only own the things you can put in a backpack. We're completely possessive about relationships, calling people in our life 'my partner', 'my mother', 'my best friend'? The future is a world where nobody has long lasting relationships (and having attachments to people is super stigmatized). We're dividing things by the gender binary and also discriminating on various issues? In the future, all people have all genitalia and they don't really have sexual orientations, more like a sexual preference that is a top/ bottom sort of thing. We have a preference for default pronoun 'he'? Well, in the future, the only pronoun is 'she'. And nobody is saying that is the way to go or that it's a perfect utopia - a lot of people are challenging this 'stability' by the end of the book. This is just really good worldbuilding and it makes a lot of sense!

Niloux sneered. “Maybe we’re not so equal in Laviaja after all.”
“I guess not,” said Pute.
“But don’t you see that’s the point?” said Niloux. “Any system will fragment. That’s entropy. Stratifications always form in any social system, no matter how hard we try to prevent them.”
“So you’re saying we should give up trying,” said Pute.
“No. I’m saying that all systems change, but we can choose to direct that change for the good. Utopia is dynamic.”
“That’s the opposite of what utopia means. Utopia is an ideal. Our world is a communist—”
“Communist? Who told you that?” Niloux laughed. She couldn’t help herself, even though she knew the argument was getting ugly, and was aware of children watching. She put her finger down on the table to emphasize each word. “Our world is a pacifist, nomadic, subsidiarist, anarchist gift economy that evolved in response to rapid, catastrophic climate change.”

And it's rather brilliant thematically, because a lot of traditions and religions are built on dichotomies and contradictions, two twins who create the world: order & chaos, night & day, aggressive versus passive aggressive lol. The whole point is that we're obsessed with categorizing things and simplifying things - a film is a masterpiece or trash and thus fruitful discussion and exploration is suffocated, and most of us just take sides. And that's the thematic layer of the book and it's done in a pretty fucking great way.

The people squaring off in the future timeline are also diametrically opposed: one of them wants for things to stay the same, the other says there's room for change. The funny mindfucky thing about this is that the conservative position is that things should remain progressive in the extreme, for everybody. The political axis is turned on its head.

Most of the characters are just about unlikable, except for the Divinatrix, who is perfect and whom I imagine as a Dominatrix also doing divination. But ofc, since it's me, when I talk about characters being unlikable - I freaking hate that term! And I continue to state that we should call these characters uncomfortable, because that way the person doing the labeling would have to at least engage with the material a little, instead of rejecting it outright, and asking themselves: why is this character making me feel uncomfortable?

Ajul and Ixul, the Mayan twins in the 1012 timeline, have a very uncomfortable perspective: they're privileged, think they're better than anyone and they're also cruel when steeped in their own religion and traditions and rituals, but they don't see it like that! They're also quite co-dependent and negligent with their baby sister.

How about Leah, the contemporary-ish American teenager who feels like the cave in Belize belongs to her? Or she belongs there or both. She doesn't deserve to be the centerpiece of a postapocalyptic utopian religious system, she is just a normal teenager! Yeah, she totally doesn't deserve to be dehumanized, put on a pedestal and have every detail of her life used in the purposes of that religion! This is what happens. This is what people do. This is how myths are made (especially re: the Cloud Atlas comp, which features the same mechanism of mundane becomes story, becomes myth, becomes religion).

The future world is also fascinating to me because it is a world where people live in a relationship with the environment, trying not to hurt it, and everyone is cared for: no currency, but everyone has their needs met (except for the emotional ones, the forming of durable attachments) and they all also do little jobs of service, and that feels extremely enticing for me. At the same time, people don't know how to have long term relationships anymore and then... there's the Panopticon aspect. As progressive as this society seems to be, there is very little in the way of privacy. Everyone kinda constantly watches everyone and the non-attachment rules of the society are policed among the citizens and also self-policed. That is truly something dystopian. But I loved the push-pull I felt regarding the future - usually, I dismiss dystopias outright.

This book is also full of explicit sex scenes (some with dubious consent and also there's some incest, fyi), but they're not used for titillation, it's not exploitative. Like in real life, in this world sex means knowledge, sex means being fully present, sex means play, sex means power dynamics, sex means characterization. Our sexual beings are just layers of ours. And I loved how it's presented here, in all of the timelines. (btw, in this future religion, the prayer position is laying back and opening your legs, which I found funny and poignant. Also, having explicit sex scenes in a book that revolves around a system of caves... that's very thematically relevant!!)

And since the characters are basically reincarnations of the Mayan twins, the characterization here and the dynamics between them are just sneakily affecting. Seriously, I thought I wasn't into the Mayan twins that much until a certain moment - and knowing what that moment will bring in their future lives - that emotionally broke me in the best way.

Ahhh, I didn't even talk about the tourist gaze, the discussions on how climate influences the movement and life of humans (and everything else), the enema (!!!), and so on. But yeah, I will probably be thinking about this for a long time!

//April 16th//
That was a lot. And also amazing. And intense. I need time to process. (Thankfully, the Book Walk got postponed by two weeks because of bad weather so I have time to process alllll of it. Also, Monica Byrne is doing a signing in Berlin soon and I'm on the list and excited to maybe talk to her a bit.)

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read The Actual Star in less than 24 hours, although it's over 600 pages long. I haven't felt so immersed in a long novel for a while and absolutely loved it. There are three plot threads, set in the years 1012, 2012, and 3012. Parallels and linkages bring them together, including repeating character archetypes, historical confluences, locations, and existential discussions about humanity. I found the characters, relationships, settings, world-building, and magical elements fascinating. In fact, the appeal is akin to that of Bold as Love and sequels, although the structure and style are quite different.

The triple thread structure is handled really adeptly, with several striking plot twists and a sustained building up of tension. I found the whole narrative utterly compelling and beguiling. Byrne's writing is vivid and sensual; if you don't love caves at the beginning of the novel then you certainly will by the end. I also enjoyed the afterword detailing influences and references. Her first novel The Girl in the Road is great too, but I found The Actual Star more ambitious, immersive, and thought-provoking. It's a wonderful combination of unusual elements that work together brilliantly. I highly recommend it.

[Dr. K · Rating 1 out of 5]

I literally made a YouTube video predicting this would be a five star book.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Why I considered giving this book five stars: the concept is really neat. Clifi has really grown on me in recent years, and I love watching the past echo in the present. I was charmed by the descriptive and detailed writing that depicted some really cool and memorable images of Jaguars and caves.

Why I considered giving this book four stars: the above, but I started noticing things that felt off to me and took me out of the story. I stopped being able to tell certain characters apart, only realizing later that there was "the character with an X in their name" and "the character with a J in their name" and that's how I was meant to keep track of which soul was which...but....

Why I considered giving it three stars: all the characters felt interchangeable past a certain point in the book and my investment in them nosedived completely. Things were getting somewhat repetitive. And, as many low reviews have said, the focus instead was on very bizarre sex and conversations about sex that were surprisingly boring. That and the futuristic social structure that was presented as utopian but read like a posthumanist nightmare. Which got me thinking...

Why I considered giving it two stars: the entire futuristic plotline turned incoherent quickly, and the social structures made very little sense. In fact, the more I thought about anything in this book, the less sense it made. The future world is centered around a religion that promotes isolation (don't spend more than 9 consecutive days with the same people), a focus on panopticism, where everyone has all sets of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, and uses spanish-derived words for relating to each other...but with "x" endings (hermanix, ninx, carnalix). Whether you agree or disagree with the modern use of "Latinx" in the current discourse is beside the point, as these linguistic choices made me think I was reading Asterix the Gaul. It was also inconsistent with the fact that everyone used she/her pronouns (this was explicitly stated in text multiple times) in honour of "st Leah", our main character from the present day timeline. Speaking of...

Why I'm giving this book one star: one actual star for this book. One star. Because everything just fell apart at the end. The more I thought about the coherence of the plot, the less sense it made. The entire plot presumes reincarnated twin souls are interested in a 19 year old Belizean/mayan-american who disappears in a cave. A whole religion is founded around this idea and the late night scribbles of her tourguide, a religion that persists throughout the following millenniums climate crisis, post humanistic nomadic but futuristic world... Why?
The more I think about the coherence of anything in this novel, the more things fall apart. And that's setting aside the copious amounts of glorified self harm and twincest present. I'm left with frustration.

And so here I am, giving this book one actual star. I stuck it out so you don't have to.

I somehow expressed even more thoughts here: https://youtu.be/Wj9tTFqo-BM

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't... know... This is a weird book, and it's hard to classify. It's a big swing, and I think it was clearly pulled off, but it's definitely not for everyone. Really gory violence and scenes of self-cutting right from the get-go (literally the first scene) will prevent a lot of people from giving it a shot. It's really well written, and the work that had to go into writing this must have been incredible. But there are a lot of reasons it's hard to recommend. For instance, it would be better to read the future parts as an ebook, because there are SO MANY WORDS you have to look up in the glossary. A lot of time you can sort of glean from context but it's so much easier if you can just pause and take a peek, and that's not as easy to do with audio. But then the present day has characters who speak in a Creole dialect very similar to the Belter language in The Expanse. The audiobook narrator does a SUPERB job at making it sound natural and authentic. But trying to read it, I felt like I was back in kindergarten sounding out syllables.

I went for five stars because of the writing quality, the fact it never really felt overlong or draggy. The research required for this had to be next-level. It's an amazing accomplishment, but definitely not for everyone.

[Chad Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley to read and review.

The most common description I've seen of this book is that it's akin to Cloud Atlas and the works of Octavia Butler. I think that's a pretty cool comparison. I would add that there are some elements that Grant Morrison would be comfortable with and that David Lynch might nod his head at.

The book takes place in three time periods and explores themes related to change, the impact of environment on human nature, and the power of belief. The stories intertwine and inform one another and all are seen through the lens of Mayan culture and history. The worldbuilding is solid- especially the culture of 3012- and the writing is descriptive without being too heavy.

I really loved this book. I spent hours each day reading it over the course of a weekend and it was time well spent. At some point in the future I look forward to re-reading it!

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed following the three time lines and thinking about the groups of people in each setting, their connections to each other and in time. Byrne put a lot of thought into her future society and its culture (I'm going to spend some time reading the entire glossary).

[Carlex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A magnificent epic in three tempos. A hymn to the alternative: to Western civilization, to science, to patriarchy... An unusual science fiction reading - among other things - that I recommend.

[hawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I REALLY enjoyed this novel 😁

I really got into it, despite the initial challenge of holding the three threads in my head.

it is a pretty huge undertaking - a novel that spans two millennia, and is historical, contemporary and speculative fiction.

each era is well imagined and written, initially distinct and discrete-seeming, but gradually drawing together.

the characters are full, flawed, and easy to have a complex relationship with - not simply like/dislike.

patterns, repetitions, traditions, trauma... trying to right a wrong on practical, societal, social, spiritual and interpersonal levels.

feels like too much to try to write about it... except to repeat that I really liked it 😁

accessed as an audiobook from local library. the three threads read by three readers.

[Pinko Scare · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm currently 42% through this book, and I am having a great time! I'm going to write my thoughts so far, and then follow up when I'm finished.

At this point, I am mainly thinking about the reviews I've seen of this book, and how they compare to my experience with it. There are quite a few negative reviews! To be honest, the bad reviews intrigued me and are a part of why I wanted to read this in the first place. They seem to have a few complaints in common: there is too much sex in the book, the book has an ideological stance that readers don't care for, or conversely, readers agree with the ideological stance but feel the relevant themes are badly handled. A few are saying there is too much going on and the story is hard to follow. I also saw a review complaining about the frequency of untranslated Spanish.

Regarding sexual content
I'm very confused about the complaints that the book is too sexualized. Sex comes up, yes. And the scenes don't "fade to black." But considering what others were saying, I went in expecting this to have the tone of a breathless, horny, bodice-ripping work of erotica. Instead I have found realistic, thoughtful, and relatable depictions of sex. We're in the characters' heads during the act, seeing all the ways they're distracted, hearing their thoughts while they try (and sometimes fail) to stay in the moment and find pleasure. The focus is often on characters trying to take comfort in physical connection with other people. There are frank discussions between characters about what type of sex they do or don't like. One scene describes a character experiencing pain and disappointment. All of this is so very human to me, and tracks with my own experiences.

It's also relevant to the themes of the story. I'll admit I'm less familiar with Ancient Mayan religion/Mesoamerican archaeology, but I studied pre-Columbian Andean archaeology in college. Sex was a very important theme in South American religious practice (if you want an example, check out Museo Larco's erotic pottery collection. Sexuality is a theme in Mayan iconography as well). From what I've learned about ancient Mesoamerican religious belief, it was similar in that regard (and indeed these civilizations were connected via extensive trade networks. An obvious example being that the practice of cultivating maize made its way all the way to North America), with lots of focus on fluids moving between people (semen, breast milk, blood), between the sky and the earth (rain), and between worlds (with the Earth personified as a female deity who is impregnated to create life/allow the growth of crops).

Indeed, this is a very common theme throughout the ancient world, not just in Central and South America. It's particularly common in agricultural societies, and really does make logical sense. The earth is fertilized and planted with seeds, thus creating life and sustaining civilization. For another example, see the Ancient Mesopotamian story of the marriage of the goddess Inanna to the shepherd Dumuzi. The phrase "Who will plough my vulva?" is repeated ad nauseam (the Sumerians were big fans of repetition in their poetry).

I think I saw a review from one reader saying they were excited for the theme of rebirth, but disappointed in depiction of sex. I am baffled as to how one achieves rebirth without sex.

Regardless, the negative reviews make it sound like the plot is interrupted every few pages with a heavy sex scene (I think someone said it came up 500 times?). Maybe the second half of this book is a lot more raunchy, but thus far I have found the topic to be handled tastefully and in ways that are relevant to the plot.

Regarding ideology
It's hard not to read the complaints about the ideological themes as a general complaint about the fact that there are queer characters in this story. Frankly, the instant I see someone describe a piece of media as "woke," I stop taking their review seriously.

Part of the book is set in a futuristic society that has an anarchist structure, and where most people are intersex and have some degree of gender fluidity. The comparisons to The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are obvious, and at first I was a little apprehensive about reading a book that, on its face, sounded like it would be overly similar to Le Guin's work. I am sure Byrne is taking some inspiration from Le Guin, but this is how art works. It exists in conversation with other artists. That's a good thing. That said, Byrne's imagining of a genderfluid, anarchist world feels very different from Le Guin's. The biology of the people is intentionally designed through technology, as a response to a specific problem faced by that society. The structures this society set up to accomplish their non-hierarchical ideals are not the same as the structures set up in The Dispossessed. But, like in Le Guin's work, the society is facing problems that result from too much complacency, too much faith in those systems, and not enough room for criticism. I love this.

Perhaps it is due to my own ideological leanings, and my own experience in anarchist spaces, but this feels very realistic to me. It's the question every good anarchist must ask: How can we create a world without hierarchy, that still allows for individual autonomy? How can we preserve individual autonomy, without allowing hierarchies to develop? This is one of my favorite thought experiments, and I've come to believe it's a question that is best explored through fiction, rather than through debates or academic papers (or at the very least alongside them. Simple academic debate seems to fall short when it's not paired with wild imaginings).

There were a couple of reviews claiming the politics of this book are too heavy-handed. I would like to suggest that they only seem that way because we are currently living in the world where these political questions are being discussed. George Orwell's contemporaries complained about the politics in his work. Ray Bradbury (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 1953, Astounding Science Fiction 1953), Joseph Heller (New York Times), and Upton Sinclair (National Archives) were also criticized for their political themes. (I also can't help commenting that one of the reviewers who complained about Byrne's treatment of political ideas in The Actual Star gave four and five star ratings to works by Joseph Conrad and Ayn Rand, which makes me wonder if their feelings have more to do with their personal views than with Byrne's handling of political topics. I doubt that anyone has ever called Ayn Rand's work "subtle.")

I don't know why there are so many people who believe that art and literature should (or even could) be fully divorced from ideology. It's a ridiculous expectation, particularly when we are talking about science fiction. I find it even more ridiculous for people to insist that scifi and fantasy should be "realistic," and that political commentary detracts from immersion in the story. To quote Le Guin:

The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don’t recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It’s none of their business. All they’re trying to do is tell you what they’re like, and what you’re like—what’s going on—what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don’t tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.

All work is ideological. All people have ideologies. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying, to you or to themselves.

Regarding Readability
Thus far, I have found The Actual Star engaging and easy to follow. While I agree that some of the Spanish and Kriol can be a bit difficult to parse, I don't find this problematic at all. Plenty of fantasy incorporates completely made up languages. Spanish, at least, can be quickly translated (and thankfully my high school and college Spanish classes taught me enough that I can muddle through most of it without a translator). The Kriol is legible, but may require more than one try. In any case, the point doesn't seem to be for the reader to fully understand it. We're getting the experience of eavesdropping on a group of people speaking in a different dialect. When it's crucial for us to understand it fully, it's made clear. At other times, I've been able to get the gist.

I don't know why people are finding this plot hard to follow. Some are complaining that it's too long. Others that it's too heavy on fantasy. Personally, I'm delighted to see that there are still long-ass works of fiction getting published. It's disappointed me greatly to see things trending toward tight, quick-paced, 90k words or less novels. I like to have time to really get to know a story, explore it, sit with it awhile. And I hate spending $15 - $30 on a book that I'll be done reading within a day.


I have now spent far too long writing this review. So I am going to leave it for now, and come back with my final thoughts (and rating) once I've finished the book. But so far, I would recommend it. It's a fun read, and I'm excited to find out what happens.

Update
I finished it. The ending is just. Wow!
This book is fantastic and I'm a little sad that it's over.