The Actual Star
Book Feature - The Actual Star by Monica Byrne
HBL Note: THE ACTUAL STAR by Monica Byrne is Harper Voyager‘s “Spotlight Title” this fall. Described as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas meets Octavia Butler’s Earthseed series, this book is sure to grip you with its deep emotion. There aren’t a lot of science fiction novels that draw me in based on the description alone, but the final sentence in the synopsis was so intriguing. This page-turning story spans two millennia from ancient Maya to the far future. Scroll down to read more.
From the publisher:
The 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 ofa 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 and 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.
The Actual Star is a feast of ideas 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.