(I really value this, and her transparence with her patrons, but I know it has influenced how I approached the book.) 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. It was a 19 hour audiobook and I bailed at 17 hours.įirst, I read this as an electronic ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. For a book with no aliens, the characters all seem to be human adjacent, but not quite human. The problem is that they're so overt, so omnipresent, and so distracting. I expected to be "challenged" by it and was hoping to learn from something different from my standard fare. It's not even that I necessarily even oppose most of those agendas. * weird incest that almost felt glorified in a Game of Thrones type way. * strange obsession with justifying and explaining self-cutting I was going to quote some but I can't bring myself to do it. Consensual sex is always good and nobody every gets hurt or jealous no matter what. "She reviewed how many she’d made love to before her ai warned her she was unable to consent. * over-emphasis on consent in "romantic" scenes. * x endings for Latinos a thousand years in the future (hermanix lol) * and a genderless future utopia that's basically Brave New World, but glorified instead of cautionary
* lots of "fun" new pronouns and not in the cool Le Guin way. He was surprised that she referred to herself as such-not as a joke, but with pride" “I remember what you said in the van,” he said, “that you have many boyfriends.” “Oh sí, soy una puta también,” she said. * lots of pro-prostitution in the most naive way imaginable. "Noticing how her potbelly hung over the hem of her spandex" is said with a straight face and supposed to be sexy. * lots of anti/post capitalism represented as some type of very late stage Marxian utopia (ie. * fetishization of "other ways of knowing" * lotssss of starry-eyed anti-colonialism * whiteness, the great evil ("four great evils: capitalism, whiteness, patriarchy, nationalism.")
There are so many contemporary social agendas scattered throughout the text it's really hard to stay engaged with the plot at all. The plot is good, it could have even been great but the book is ruined by SO MUCH cringe. Trusting your readers pays off as they morph into fans, the way I have. I salute you, Monica Byrne, for risking so much in showing us this beautiful tale and not telling us every last thing. 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'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." 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. Three timelines, three souls, three moments in Humanity's journey. I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up because the economy of presentation packs the punch of Dune into the space of Cloud Atlas. Because only in complete darkness can one truly see the stars. In each era, age-old questions about existence and belonging and identity converge deep underground.
The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change. The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over thousands of years and six continents -collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle.Īn epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. 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.
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