Monica Byrne: The Actual Star (2021, HarperLuxe)
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.
Content warning meta discussion of ending
This is an ambitious, genre bending book. It combines elements of magical realism with post apocalyptic science fiction. Probably the most important social contribution is implicit; it imagines a world after climate change, and makes that seem very real and very immediate. It is also full of interesting ideas about utopia and the nature of religion, and includes some thoughtful critiques of some of those ideas. For me the ending was too neat, and if I'm honest, a bit too mystical. That's a matter of taste of course, but I felt like it lost the important tension between the emotional and the intellectual that was the backbone of the rest of the book,
Deeply satisfyingly layered and interwoven, imagined Mayan/Belizean past and future solarpunk Earths, central struggles with violence and disagreement and revolt without compromising voluntary consent, paced like a jaguar moving through ruins.
