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jenthebest's review against another edition
1.0
DNF at page 203... just not enjoying this experience. Mildly curious to see where it's going but not enough to keep going. This is another one from the SFF Club Bookshelf that I'm not in the mood for right now but might come back to sometime.
carokfulf's review against another edition
4.0
ambitious, beautiful, rigorous
A bit overlong and scattered between the three timelines, but an admirable work nonetheless, from the language to the political thought to the sex scenes. Characterization isn’t terribly deep, but this is mostly a novel of ideas and metaphysics, to be savored alongside the more libidinal pleasures.
A bit overlong and scattered between the three timelines, but an admirable work nonetheless, from the language to the political thought to the sex scenes. Characterization isn’t terribly deep, but this is mostly a novel of ideas and metaphysics, to be savored alongside the more libidinal pleasures.
amethystofblackrose's review against another edition
1.0
Not for me. Read trigger warnings. Includes descriptive incest and descriptive self harm. I did not find the characters likable and while the plot was interesting, the execution fell flat. I read other reviews before ultimately deciding to DNF the book partway through.
omnipresent_photon's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
kayacrosby's review against another edition
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
kirajoy's review
4.0
weird but interesting
The book kind of lagged and was a little longer than it maybe needed to be, but it was conceptually interesting and ambitious and imaginative.
The book kind of lagged and was a little longer than it maybe needed to be, but it was conceptually interesting and ambitious and imaginative.
lesserjoke's review against another edition
5.0
There's so much to love about this novel that I hardly know where to start. It's speculative fiction, yet thoroughly researched, with a thoughtful and detailed note at the beginning reviewing the care with which author Monica Byrne has approached this project as well as where she's taken the liberty of educated guesses to fill in gaps in the scholarly consensus. She even cites particular experts by name, including historical linguist Lyle Campbell, whose work I was already familiar with beforehand.
As for the book itself, this is of course not the first tale spanning over multiple millennia, but I have seldom seen the process handled so well, effortlessly balancing the vastly different period settings: one group of characters in the Mayan civilization of 1012 CE, one in US and Belize of 2012, and one in a new utopian society of 3012. I wouldn't call it nonlinear -- each timeline progresses steadily on -- but they amplify one another nicely, with clear impacts that nevertheless keep the resolution of each subplot a mystery for readers as we alternate among them. The casual dropping of clues across time is just superbly done too, creating a patchwork constellation of connections backwards and forwards to illuminate the text throughout.
The earliest protagonists are heirs to a waning Mesoamerican kingdom, ritualistically preparing to secure their power as their calendar foretells the dawning of a new epoch. Later they have passed into legend with their true fates unknown, and a young woman of our day travels to her father's homeland, her mind churning with inchoate thoughts of a new world order and methods of accessing a state of spiritual transcendence. Further still, a unified nomadic culture spans the globe, its guiding principles apparently based on the teachings that same figure left behind when she vanished without a trace in our era of intensifying climate disasters so long ago. Yet even for the dwellers of that latest point, there are dogmatic tensions brewing that threaten to fundamentally rupture and collapse their familiar way of life.
Thematic parallels link these three storylines, along with repeating motifs, like a pair of estranged twins on a collision course to square off against one another. It's even suggested that perhaps we are looking at literal reincarnation -- although I think the writer is wise to maintain that ambiguous uncertainty, as she does with the existence of the divine realm of Xibalba and Maya cosmology more generally. There are competing tenets of faith across this narrative, and they are honored as shaping a genuine reality for their respective practitioners without need of any explicit objective verification. The genre is neither fantasy nor that variety of science-fiction that insists on applying cold rationality to every phenomenon on display. Experiences of the holy (however that's personally defined) don't need to be shunted into a category of Real or Not, and the book is made stronger by embracing that.
And the worldbuilding! The ancient moment is clearly the one that's been most heavily-investigated, and it breathes with plausible authenticity to bring that distinctive perspective to life. The future is fascinating too, a queer socialist community that has survived via genetic engineering so that all members are born as what I suppose we'd label intersex, with individuals able to readily change their sex organs surgically (among other body modifications for disability accommodation) as they see fit -- though they almost all use she/her pronouns in honor of their blessed saint. And the present, situated neatly between the two, is recognizable as today while underscoring the liminal threshold of something radically different percolating just beyond our horizons.
My one small and admittedly tangential critique, which should really be taken with a grain of salt as part of a much broader conversation about the sci-fi universe at large, is that whenever I hear a story say that every human in the future shares one common religion (or no religion at all, a la Star Trek), I start hearing alarm bells as a Jew. My people have sacred customs we've maintained over untold generations, and if your imagined utopia doesn't have Judaism in it, it's not because we would have suddenly changed our minds about that. You've written our extermination, and tacitly suggested that our current existence is an obstacle of backwardness for our betters to overcome on their way to perfection. Byrne at least is committed to picking at the flaws of that future society, casting it as just another temporary alignment giving way to its successor, but I feel like there are eugenicist implications for marginalized groups that she perhaps hasn't fully realized and grappled with.
Regardless, this title is a tremendous achievement that grows in pathos as each separate element nears a joint and mindbending climax, an ambitiously dense yet approachable enterprise with an engaging cast and big ideas I can tell I'll still be thinking about long from now. It's only January, but this is an easy early contender for the best book I'll read all year.
[Content warning for self-harm, gore, live human sacrifice, and incest.]
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As for the book itself, this is of course not the first tale spanning over multiple millennia, but I have seldom seen the process handled so well, effortlessly balancing the vastly different period settings: one group of characters in the Mayan civilization of 1012 CE, one in US and Belize of 2012, and one in a new utopian society of 3012. I wouldn't call it nonlinear -- each timeline progresses steadily on -- but they amplify one another nicely, with clear impacts that nevertheless keep the resolution of each subplot a mystery for readers as we alternate among them. The casual dropping of clues across time is just superbly done too, creating a patchwork constellation of connections backwards and forwards to illuminate the text throughout.
The earliest protagonists are heirs to a waning Mesoamerican kingdom, ritualistically preparing to secure their power as their calendar foretells the dawning of a new epoch. Later they have passed into legend with their true fates unknown, and a young woman of our day travels to her father's homeland, her mind churning with inchoate thoughts of a new world order and methods of accessing a state of spiritual transcendence. Further still, a unified nomadic culture spans the globe, its guiding principles apparently based on the teachings that same figure left behind when she vanished without a trace in our era of intensifying climate disasters so long ago. Yet even for the dwellers of that latest point, there are dogmatic tensions brewing that threaten to fundamentally rupture and collapse their familiar way of life.
Thematic parallels link these three storylines, along with repeating motifs, like a pair of estranged twins on a collision course to square off against one another. It's even suggested that perhaps we are looking at literal reincarnation -- although I think the writer is wise to maintain that ambiguous uncertainty, as she does with the existence of the divine realm of Xibalba and Maya cosmology more generally. There are competing tenets of faith across this narrative, and they are honored as shaping a genuine reality for their respective practitioners without need of any explicit objective verification. The genre is neither fantasy nor that variety of science-fiction that insists on applying cold rationality to every phenomenon on display. Experiences of the holy (however that's personally defined) don't need to be shunted into a category of Real or Not, and the book is made stronger by embracing that.
And the worldbuilding! The ancient moment is clearly the one that's been most heavily-investigated, and it breathes with plausible authenticity to bring that distinctive perspective to life. The future is fascinating too, a queer socialist community that has survived via genetic engineering so that all members are born as what I suppose we'd label intersex, with individuals able to readily change their sex organs surgically (among other body modifications for disability accommodation) as they see fit -- though they almost all use she/her pronouns in honor of their blessed saint. And the present, situated neatly between the two, is recognizable as today while underscoring the liminal threshold of something radically different percolating just beyond our horizons.
My one small and admittedly tangential critique, which should really be taken with a grain of salt as part of a much broader conversation about the sci-fi universe at large, is that whenever I hear a story say that every human in the future shares one common religion (or no religion at all, a la Star Trek), I start hearing alarm bells as a Jew. My people have sacred customs we've maintained over untold generations, and if your imagined utopia doesn't have Judaism in it, it's not because we would have suddenly changed our minds about that. You've written our extermination, and tacitly suggested that our current existence is an obstacle of backwardness for our betters to overcome on their way to perfection. Byrne at least is committed to picking at the flaws of that future society, casting it as just another temporary alignment giving way to its successor, but I feel like there are eugenicist implications for marginalized groups that she perhaps hasn't fully realized and grappled with.
Regardless, this title is a tremendous achievement that grows in pathos as each separate element nears a joint and mindbending climax, an ambitiously dense yet approachable enterprise with an engaging cast and big ideas I can tell I'll still be thinking about long from now. It's only January, but this is an easy early contender for the best book I'll read all year.
[Content warning for self-harm, gore, live human sacrifice, and incest.]
Like this review?
--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
--Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
--Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
writeplayrepeat's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
januaryecologist's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
4.25