The Actual Star, Monica Byrne
The Actual Star, Monica Byrne
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

The Actual Star
A Novel

Author: Monica Byrne

Narrator: Carolina Hoyos, Kareem Ferguson, Gisela Chipe

Unabridged: 19 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 09/14/2021

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas meets Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series, as acclaimed author Monica Byrne (The Girl in the Road) crafts an unforgettable piece of speculative fiction about where humanity came from, where we are now, and where we’re going—and how, in every age, the same forces that drive us apart also bind us together.""A stone-cold masterpiece.""—New ScientistThe Actual Star takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents—telling three powerful tales a thousand years apart, all of them converging in the same cave in the Belizean jungle.Braided together are the stories of a pair of teenage twins who ascend the throne of a Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion, racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.In each era, a reincarnated trinity of souls navigates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, and love and hate—until all of their age-old questions about the nature of existence converge deep underground, where only in complete darkness can they truly see.

About Monica Byrne

Monica Byrne studied biochemistry at Wellesley, NASA, and MIT before pivoting to fiction and theater. She is the author of the novel The Girl in the Road, winner of the 2014 Otherwise Award, and loves a good thunderstorm.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Marcus on October 08, 2021

The plot is good, it could have even been great but the book is ruined by SO MUCH cringe. There are so many contemporary social agendas scattered throughout the text it's really hard to stay engaged with the plot at all. Among them: * whiteness, the great evil ("four great evils: capitalism, whiteness......more

Goodreads review by Allison on March 16, 2022

Hm. I think this largely failed for me. And I think it failed in part because the expectations set in the blurb and the comps were just not right, and that there is so much sex in this book just to describe all the ways that all the different people can have sex, with a strong focus on oral. I've sa......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on August 11, 2021

I wasn't sure this was my kind of book. I don't read a lot of the kind of historical fiction or speculative fiction that has this level of deep worldbuilding. And with three separate plots and timelines, each with their own full set of characters, at first I struggled to get my feet under me. I actu......more

Goodreads review by Sage on November 07, 2021

Some of the horniest sci-fi I’ve read five stars......more

Goodreads review by YouKneeK on March 21, 2022

This book seemed promising in the beginning, but I lost interest the more I read. I never became invested in the characters or the story. The story alternates between three different timelines set in the years 1012, 2012, and 3012. There are story threads that tie the three timelines together, and at......more