"Breathtaking in scope and ambition. With Byrne as your assured guide, The Actual Star offers so much to discover from the first read, and invites returning to over and over." -- John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of the Interdependency Trilogy

"When a book is this ambitious, either it is a thumping success or it falls on its face. Happily, The Actual Star is a stone-cold masterpiece. It is one of the most moving novels I have read and surely a contender for major awards." -- New Scientist

"An indescribable epic saga of three reincarnated souls from the author of The Girl in the Road. . . The Actual Star is for those who love complexities and questions that transcend single lives." -- The Millions

"A fascinating and intricately woven piece of speculative fiction...Byrne's work delves into themes about entropy, destiny, how place affects us as we change the world, and the search for meaning. But it is also a thoroughly human work where ambition, loneliness, love, and the need to belong resonate, no matter the year. Complex and captivating." -- Booklist

"The Actual Star is a book about sacrifice, about the long view and deep time, about the universality of human experience and the particularity of any given moment. It's a first-rate work of sf, and a hopeful and fearful book about the climate. It's just great."
-- Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Walkaway

"Contained in this book is a vivid historical novel, a heartfelt contemporary narrative, and a mind-boggling science fiction story, all tightly braided together into a single experience that is bold, wild, profound. It's a novel you won't forget." -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future

"Sweeping, mesmerizing, The Actual Star is a t