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pyurk's review
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
concretefem's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
The ambitiousness of this book is matched (unfortunately) by the tedium of its storytelling and the modestness of its actual story arch.
I would be hesitant to recommend it to sci-fi or speculative fiction lovers because it feels like a genre apart.
Perhaps the best way to describe it is a family drama, dressed up like sci-fi action, similar to EEEAO (my favorite film in years) though far less emotionally resonant.
And that’s ultimately my criticism: 19 hours. 600 pages. 3000 years traversed. But did I feel anything?
I’m afraid not.
I would be hesitant to recommend it to sci-fi or speculative fiction lovers because it feels like a genre apart.
Perhaps the best way to describe it is a family drama, dressed up like sci-fi action, similar to EEEAO (my favorite film in years) though far less emotionally resonant.
And that’s ultimately my criticism: 19 hours. 600 pages. 3000 years traversed. But did I feel anything?
I’m afraid not.
gumboeditor's review
5.0
Three sets of intertwined protagonists--one each in 1012, 2012, and 3012--have their stories converge through the ATM cave in Belize. Covering topics from climate change to gender identity to self-discovery, The Actual Star gives the reader a lot to think about as each topic is viewed through the lens of each millennium. It speaks to the skill of the author that the storylines work in a call and response manner and come to a satisfying conclusion. I truly just got lost in the world of the book and let it wash over me. I tend to read shorter books but I am so glad that I read The Actual Star. This is a massive book; both physically and mentally. When I was reading it, I was lost in its world, thinking and experiencing the same things the protagonists did. When I wasn't reading the book, I was still lost in its world, thinking about what I had just read and anticipating what would come next. Phenomenal book. So hard to summarize. If you like NK Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ann Leckie, or Neal Stephenson, you should read this book.
mattchristensen's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm
Moderate: Violence and Sexual content
c_morning's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
samwreads's review
3.0
3.5 stars. It's big, it's ambitious, it's well-written and readable. Also, a pretty cool and unique take on a vision of the future. However, the connections between characters from different millenia didn't do too much for me, nor did the ultimate ending of the book. I definitely appreciate what the author is going for, and I'm glad that a lot of people seem to love it. If you really love Cloud Atlas and the like, I think this is an easy recommendation, and is in many ways a better book.
ruxandra_grr's review against another edition
5.0
//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.)
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.)
lizshayne's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This book is a LOT. I mean, I was in as soon as I got to “cloud atlas meets earthseed” but still.
And I can’t stop thinking about religion in this book - who it serves, who serves it, how they happen, what makes them feel plausible, and the failure of dogmatism in every age. It is both integral to the plot of the book and also somehow completely irrelevant to the story. But it’s woven into the story of do/not change in a way that leaves it very firmly located on one side in a story that is about twos.
What I appreciate about this book is that it needed to be this massive novel to say the things about sameness and difference and the pain of desire in other ways it was trying to say. Even if that does make it hard to talk about.
The other thing I find fascinating, again in the future bits, is the way that Byrne imagines future religion evolving out of current situations (the echoes of the Christ story are very palpable in a way I find fascinating) both in terms of what makes a myth and in terms of what kind of religion would the world need. There are ways in which the religion is shaped by the needs of the story and its tensions, but I also think that the religious aspects throughout are handled far less reductively than the tensions between hold and change would have suggested. There’s something very strange about imagining how ordinary life becomes the template for ritual and god, but I suspect that’s ALSO part of the point.
And I can’t stop thinking about religion in this book - who it serves, who serves it, how they happen, what makes them feel plausible, and the failure of dogmatism in every age. It is both integral to the plot of the book and also somehow completely irrelevant to the story. But it’s woven into the story of do/not change in a way that leaves it very firmly located on one side in a story that is about twos.
What I appreciate about this book is that it needed to be this massive novel to say the things about sameness and difference and the pain of desire in other ways it was trying to say. Even if that does make it hard to talk about.
The other thing I find fascinating, again in the future bits, is the way that Byrne imagines future religion evolving out of current situations (the echoes of the Christ story are very palpable in a way I find fascinating) both in terms of what makes a myth and in terms of what kind of religion would the world need. There are ways in which the religion is shaped by the needs of the story and its tensions, but I also think that the religious aspects throughout are handled far less reductively than the tensions between hold and change would have suggested. There’s something very strange about imagining how ordinary life becomes the template for ritual and god, but I suspect that’s ALSO part of the point.
anelith's review
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0