The Actual Star

The structure of this book is both its cleverest thing and its weakest thing. We follow three parallel timelines, one 1000 years in the past, one in the present and one 1000 years in the future. The way this allows myth to be developed and shown how mundane things can be mythologized into the future is clever but the problem with multiple timelines is keeping them all engaging and relevant and this book falls down big time on that.

The first timeline takes place in the ancient Mayan world following the destiny of a brother and sister (‘the hero twins') trying to defend their kingdom. This is an interesting story to follow with its delving into Mayan mythology and culture. The second timeline follows a young adult in the modern world who decides to go on a vacation to Belize and falls in love with a cave important to the ancient Mayan culture in the area. Again, this is an interesting and well balanced story that kept me engaged - probably my favourite of the three timelines. Its main weakness was a tendency to dive into creole at times, which for a non speaker is painful to read. The third timeline is where the book fell completely flat for me. Here we end up in the future where humans have become nomadic relationships have completely changed meaning and the disappearance of someone into a cave has become mythologized into a new religion. This story was so out, so completely detached from any grounding to common motifs that I struggled hugely with it. The characters were irritating, the random spanish words thrown in were irritating. It was all a huge mess.

I see this has been referenced with Cloud Atlas a few times - this is no where near on the same level. The structure is less clever and the stories less engaging. This novel struck me as over ambitious with the execution falling short of the intent. If it had worked, it could been a very clever novel. It just didn't work for me.