Review: The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne

The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne

a review by Rich Horton

The Actual Star is Monica Byrne's second novel, appearing in 2021, 7 years after her first, the Otherwise Award winning The Girl in the Road. And the seven years of work shows -- in a good way! This book is wildly ambitious and mostly successful. It depicts Mayan society of a thousand years ago convincingly, and depicts an utterly fascinating post-climate catastrophe future a millennium from now intriguingly. There's a present day thread as well -- and it's well done too but to be fair in some ways that's easier.

The novel's structure, as I hinted above, revolves around three threads -- one a millennium ago as Mayan society is collapsing -- or, at least, its traditional structure is changing. Another is set in the present day, as Leah Oliveri, a 19 year old girl from Minnesota decides to visit her (dead, and never part of her life) father's home, Belize. And the third is set a thousand years in the future, with a radically different future social organization under threat due to conflict between a free thinking "sophist" and a conservative "scroop" about what people should be allowed to think, and about what change might be possible to a society founded on principles aimed at living lightly on the land in the wake of climate disaster. 

There is another, not quite as obvious, structural aspect. The novel features no fewer than four sets of twins. And in each case those twins represent paired qualities, not necessarily the same pairs. The Mayan section, set in 1012, focuses on Ajul, the King to be, and Ixul, his fierce and ambitious sister. Their parents have disappeared, presumably capture and/or killed by enemies; and their coronation approaches. Their kingdom is declining (this is the period when the Mayan civilization collapsed, or at least radically altered in structure.) It is an open and scandalous secret that they are incestuous lovers. The action is set primarily on the day of their coronation, and concerns their younger sister Ket's initiation into bloodletting, which is said to facilitate access to Xibalba, an Underworld or perhaps parallel realm; and her interactions with a strange black jaguar; and also the preparation for the coronation, which will include traditional human sacrifice; and then the shocking events at the ceremony.

In the year 2012, Leah Oliveri decides to travel to Belize. Once there she visits a famous cave; guided at first by Xander. The cave itself has a number of well-preserved skeletal remains, some of which we soon gather may be those of Ajul or Ixul or perhaps their victims. Leah is fascinated by the cave, and immediately determines to visit the cave as often as possible, and to find a way to stay in Belize. She meets Xander again, and his estranged twin Javier, who is also a guide; and some other locals. She is attracted to both Xander and Javier, who have radically different personalities -- she sleeps with both, and hears Xander's goal to study abroad (he is a brilliant autodidact) ... all the while plotting to travel deep into the cave despite the rules against that.

And in 3012, Niloux de Cayo makes an assertion that violates some of her future societies core beliefs: she is skeptical about the "disappearances" that have been witnessed over the past millennium, beginning with the disappearance of St. Leah Oliveri from a cave in Belize. Leah's lovers, the Consort Twins, Xander and Javier, then found Laviaja -- something of a religion, something of a political, social and economic way; and this way of living has come to dominate life after the climate catastrophes of the early third millennium. As an SF reader, this was the most fascinating part of the book to me: people live nomadic lives, staying no more than 9 days in any place. They do not accumulate possessions. They do not form long term relationships. They do not raise their blood children. All this is buttressed by some impressive technology, and by radical body modifications (for one thing, everyone is a hermaphrodite.) As a reaction to the depredations humans made to the natural world, they live extremely lightly on the Earth -- though the fact that there are only some 8,000,000 living humans certainly helps that lightness! Niloux's assertion prompts two reactions -- a group who see in her an inspiration for more openness, more flexibility, in their society; and a group who (paradoxically violently) oppose any change, any risk of change, to a society that seems to have served people -- and the Earth -- very well for centuries. This second group is led by Tanaaj de Cayo -- as her name indicates, born in the same area as Niloux -- and it becomes clear that Niloux and Tanaaj are bound for a confrontation at the Jubilee that will be held in Belize, 1000 years after St. Leah's disappearance. 

The book moves nimbly between the three threads. Ajul and Ixul's story is historical fiction, with an overlay of fantasy (in the sense that what we now regard is magical things are truly believed -- and perceived -- by people of that time.) Leah's story is contemporary realistic fiction, about an American tourist becoming entranced with a different culture -- very well and honest depicted. And Niloux and Tanaaj inhabit a truly intriguing future, with neat technology, and a wonderfully thought out future society, with radically different economics, gender organization, social organization, habits of work and entertainment. These ideas are fascinating -- and also invite argument, in the way the best speculative fiction does. (For example -- how did a society of 8,000,000 people who do not stay in any one place for any period of time create the remarkable technology they rely on?)

The novel is long, but reads compellingly. It is very well written -- one of very few recent SF novels that did not have me reaching for my blue pencil. It is not perfect -- I think the climactic events are perhaps a tad convenient -- one character in particular is let off rather easily, to my mind. The ending is ambiguous, but I ended up sold on it. The structure is well-maintained but at times there is a bit of strain, a sense that one section may have dithered a bit to maintain pace with the others, perhaps -- but never in a truly harmful way. I was reminded a bit of Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home, and of John Crowley's Engine Summer, and the author (in conversation) acknowledges the influence of Le Guin (especially The Dispossessed) and of Kim Stanley Robinson (pervasively, I suspect, but especially the Mars Trilogy.) 

This is a tremendously ambitious novel, that reaches for the (actual!) stars and achieves most of its goals. It has not been ignored, but it surely deserves more notice. This is the kind of SF we need now, I think -- SF that does not by any means abandon the goal of entertainment, SF that shows real attention to craft, to prose and structure; and most of all, SF that excitingly thinks about the future, and about the past, and about how we live, how we should live, how we might live.