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A review by lizshayne
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne
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.