The Years of Rice and Salt: A Novel
WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD • The bestselling author of the Mars trilogy boldly reimagines the past seven hundred years in this “exceptional and engrossing” (New York Post) saga, constructing a world vastly different from the one we know. . .
“A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review
It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? The Years of Rice and Salt is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation.
Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, inventors and exiles, renowned storyteller Kim Stanley Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is a mere historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power—and even love—in this bold new world.
“A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review
It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? The Years of Rice and Salt is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation.
Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, inventors and exiles, renowned storyteller Kim Stanley Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is a mere historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power—and even love—in this bold new world.
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Community Reviews
A very interesting concept that fell for the two classic blunders: 1) a sci-fi writer who is so desperate to prove that they're smart that they'll let the plot grind to a halt to tell you everything they know about like light speed or whatever, 2) an alternate history where the author couldn't think of a new way for history to go so the same things happen again but with a surface-level makeover to make it seem like a change had been made.
The individual “books” were fine on their own, but together they were unnecessary. There were too many characters and the concept of reincarnation was fine on its own but blended into alternative history added too much complexity. The timeline itself was lazy, where major changes lead to minor consequences.
There were two main threads that ran through this book. Either of them might have been ok on its own, but together they just didn’t work for me. The reincarnation hocus-pocus could have been made to work as straightforward fantasy if not saddled with the alternate take on the age of invention. But it was really the re-attributing of all the same science and technology that actually was discovered by Edward Jenner, Newton, Leibnitz and many others, that made the book unpleasant to slog through. Fictitious inventions that deviated from the real world might have made the book interesting enough, but pasting on a series of actual historical discoveries feels like a lack of imagination.
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