One of the keys to understanding Harvest of Stars is recognizing that it is a double narrative with two different plot structures (called movements). The first portion of the novel has a pursuit or chase structure, something very common in popular fiction and other media such as television dramas and motion pictures (the archetype would probably be The Fugitive of both television and motion picture fame). The second portion— much shorter than the first—of the novel is structured like a Homeric epic, replete with gods and goddesses working their wills among people and heroic figures such as Rinndalir, whose choice to die so that his people may live echoes the choice Achilles makes in the Iliad, when he can choose to live to great age with much honor or die and save many who would otherwise perish.

Another literary technique that is handled in an...