The Actual Star

Whew. This is the sort of saga that demands a deep exhalation upon completion.I'm still not sure how I feel about it. So much of it was annoying: the reincarnation gimmick; the need to Suffuse Everything With Meaning, to believe that the Universe cares about individual humans (or is even aware of us), that there are Deep Connections that we could see if only we had a broad enough view. The presence (in the 3012 sections) of astonishing technology with no acknowledgment of the infrastructure needed to create it. The expectation—counter to all human history—that, a thousand years from now, the remaining humans can share common language and beliefs. Recurring mentions of psilocybin but only in its vision-inducing aspects, never in its sublime ones. And, in a book so concerned with the Actual, so much more talking-about cunnilingus than actual cunnilingus.And yet, I couldn't stop reading. Byrne is a helluva storyteller, gifted with language (although not Spanish: I wish the editors had sprung for a Spanish-language proofreader) and imagination and a pretty serious understanding of human foibles. She explores how religions are invented, how they grow or stagnate; how cultures progress and transform; the impossible yet impossible-to-deny quest for utopia; attachment, non-attachment; the difficulty of communication; and she does an exquisite job of envisioning future gender roles (including using the everyone-is-She device, which I so loved in [b:Ancillary Justice 17333324 Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) Ann Leckie https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597476110l/17333324.SY75.jpg 24064628] and hope more writers will adopt.So, yes, I exhaled deeply at the end. And sat and thunk a while. And am writing so much more here than I usually do, yet not even close to what I think the book deserves. It's a story I'm going to be thinking about for a while, imperfect as it may be. Recommended. (I can't believe I'm giving it five stars. I was aiming for four... but no, it's four-plus, and rounding up seems fair).

The structure of this book is both its cleverest thing and its weakest thing. We follow three parallel timelines, one 1000 years in the past, one in the present and one 1000 years in the future. The way this allows myth to be developed and shown how mundane things can be mythologized into the future is clever but the problem with multiple timelines is keeping them all engaging and relevant and this book falls down big time on that.

The first timeline takes place in the ancient Mayan world following the destiny of a brother and sister (‘the hero twins') trying to defend their kingdom. This is an interesting story to follow with its delving into Mayan mythology and culture. The second timeline follows a young adult in the modern world who decides to go on a vacation to Belize and falls in love with a cave important to the ancient Mayan culture in the area. Again, this is an interesting and well balanced story that kept me engaged - probably my favourite of the three timelines. Its main weakness was a tendency to dive into creole at times, which for a non speaker is painful to read. The third timeline is where the book fell completely flat for me. Here we end up in the future where humans have become nomadic relationships have completely changed meaning and the disappearance of someone into a cave has become mythologized into a new religion. This story was so out, so completely detached from any grounding to common motifs that I struggled hugely with it. The characters were irritating, the random spanish words thrown in were irritating. It was all a huge mess.

I see this has been referenced with Cloud Atlas a few times - this is no where near on the same level. The structure is less clever and the stories less engaging. This novel struck me as over ambitious with the execution falling short of the intent. If it had worked, it could been a very clever novel. It just didn't work for me.