The Actual Star (2021, HarperLuxe)
paperback, 736 pages
Published Sept. 14, 2021 by HarperLuxe.
Three successive stories, told in interwoven chapters. Three visions of what Maya culture was, is and could be. One tale could be read like mesoamerican fantasy, one like contemporary magical realism and one like the best kind of utopian science fiction.
This novel alternates between three connected timelines, each separated by 1000 years from the next, each on the cusp of social (and environmental) change.
The future timeline is set in a utopian (though by no means perfect) global nomadic society, organised around principles of mutual aid. It's refreshing to see a vision of how humankind might adapt positively to the challenges facing us, even as some of the fault lines in that vision are exposed over the course of the story.
The other timelines are just as vividly drawn, and feel researched and sensitively written. All three are deftly woven into the greater whole, and I found reading the chapters in blocks (one for each timeline) helped me appreciate the connections being drawn across all three.
This will definitely be going onto my to-reread pile, as I'm sure there's a whole lot that I've missed on my first pass through. …
This novel alternates between three connected timelines, each separated by 1000 years from the next, each on the cusp of social (and environmental) change.
The future timeline is set in a utopian (though by no means perfect) global nomadic society, organised around principles of mutual aid. It's refreshing to see a vision of how humankind might adapt positively to the challenges facing us, even as some of the fault lines in that vision are exposed over the course of the story.
The other timelines are just as vividly drawn, and feel researched and sensitively written. All three are deftly woven into the greater whole, and I found reading the chapters in blocks (one for each timeline) helped me appreciate the connections being drawn across all three.
This will definitely be going onto my to-reread pile, as I'm sure there's a whole lot that I've missed on my first pass through.
Things to be aware of: this book is pretty bloody in some places, and horny as hell in others.
I inhaled this book, and I loved it, and I'm not entirely sure how to process it.
