The Years of Rice and Salt

Rating:
Summary: unimaginative - self absorbed drivel
Review: the premise of the book is intriguing ...
but its execution is unimaginative at best - and naively condescending at worst.
if his point was that history would proceed similarly with or without europeans ... fine - but do that in 1/2 the number of pages -- or if that is the depth and extent of the thought ... don't write a book about it at all.
His description of Newtonian inventions are sickeningly naive -
on a par only with his description of "brilliant" philosophy.
World War One could happen in an alternate history...
yeah yeah - we get it.
The book ends in Davis California - the hometown of the author -
but under a different name ... with other names partly disguised.
--- that's the way of the entire book...

Rating:
Summary: I am not sure
Review: It was interesting; it was thought provoking and innovative. For all this something was missing. The concept of reincarnation is not new and the concept of alternate history is also not new. What is new is a combining the two in an analysis of human progress. I picked up this book both based on the buzz surrounding it and the concept of a world bereft of Europeans due to a far more serious plague.

It was the plague aspect that caught my attention and I was interested in the authors take on how the world would have developed without European influences. These are dealt with to some extent although in a very narrow way. The novel is a compilation of stories of the events encountered by a few reincarnated souls. Once again I don't want to be any more specific so as not to ruin the novel.

It was an interesting novel but I kept waiting for something to happen. Nothing Earth shattering ever happened. It was interesting but not a great in my humble opinion. The novel seemed to end with a whimper rather then a bang. Adequete but nothing I plan on re-reading.

Rating:
Summary: Succeeds Beautifully Despite the Lectures
Review: The title of Kim Stanley Robinson's current work, recently released in mass market paperback, refers to an old Chinese list of the stages of a woman's life. The years of rice and salt are that period between childbearing and old age when one's knowledge and wisdom mature, preparing one to guide succeeding generations.

Mr. Robinson's characters, however, pursue their wisdom not across one life but many. They are members of a "jati," a sort of family of souls who reincarnate together as they travel the rugged road to enlightenment. He places them in an alternate historical context in which Christian civilization has been wiped out by the Black Death, to be replaced by the world of Islam. However, the Muslims still have a major rival to total world domination-the Chinese empire, and it is the teetering balance of power between these two that serves as the backdrop for his story.

The book focuses on two main souls. The first arrives as Bold, a captain of Temur the Lame who is banished from his people for having entered a plague-decimated city. Wandering westward, he is eventually captured by Muslim sailors, who sell him into slavery to the Chinese. One of his fellow travelers is a 12-year-old African boy, Kyu, who is brutally castrated by his new masters.

The pair then journeys across time, space and dimensions as Mr. Robinson explores the nature of the concept of inevitability. Reincarnation is, in most of its variations, subject to strict, immutable rules the essence of which is that one's actions in one life determine one's situation in the next. Yet what if, he ponders, a soul were to rebel against those strictures-and against the other belief of afterlife existence that the gods will punish those who disobey divine dictates?

Woven around this esoteric question is a more mundane one. Much of the knowledge that brought Europe out of the Dark Ages came from the Islamic world, including writings from antiquity that were suppressed as pagan and heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. If that knowledge had been readily available to inquiring minds, might modern technology have arisen sooner?

Finally, the inevitable discussion of the relationship between religion and science adds a third layer to this complex story that spans centuries and cultures.

This is a rich and richly written epic that raises more than a few important issues for discussion. The detailed development of this alternate world is firmly and delightfully extrapolated, and there is a wicked iron in having the culture of medieval Europe come to be the focus of speculation by archaeologists who have no real means of grasping the underlying motivations for many of its elements.

What this reader could have lived without were the more than a little mind-numbing lectures on the forces of history and historical imperatives that grew longer and more frequent as the end of the book approached. The action of the plot is sufficient to bring these issues to mind, and giving characters summations didn't enhance that. Those intelligent enough to get the point don't need them, and those who miss the point will likely just skim over them.

Nevertheless, THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT is a complex and masterfully constructed speculation on what might have been, populated with characters whose gradual spiritual growth is as important and element as the development of their world. For those whose taste runs to something a bit more substantial than SF Lite, it's a definite must-have.

Rating:
Summary: Ponderous, Pretentious, and Pedantic
Review: Kim Stanley Robinson's "Years of Rice and Salt," the author's endless alt. historic epic in which the black plague of the 14th century wipes out nearly all of European civilization but leaves everyone else intact, starts off well but eventually wears out its welcome.

Told as a series of episodes with reincarnated characters, and with different writing styles for each episodes, the author attempts to re-create medieval and modern history if the so NOT "PC" dead white males were out of the picture.

Some of the segments, especially the early ones, intrigue; but after a while you realize that Mr. Robinson's point seems to be that the Alt World develops pretty much in the same way, with the same scientific discoveries happening about the same time they actually did, and pretty much in the same order, as they have in our real one.

The discoveries of Newton-era England are, instead, made by an Islamic alchemist in Samarquand, and the Chinese discover the New World (they land in San Francisco Bay), and there's a long war fought in trenches.

While highly unlikely, this could be forgivable and redeemable, if Mr. Robinson had simply let the tale develop logically. But no. The author instead is determined to hit us over the head with his naive and sentimental political screeds and his increasingly interminable prose. The book would have been twice as effective at half the length. The author bombards us pretty much the way the Islamic foces bombard mountains in the bizarre and thoroughly (needlessly) confusing trench warfare segment. But for what purpose? Is he trying to warn us that the world could have gone on very nicely without "Western Civilization"? Quite possibly, but there are better ways for an author to make his point than trying to erase his own culture. Is he perhaps trying to erase himself?

Rating:
Summary: Neither fish nor fowl
Review: I've been meaning to read this book for some time and I wound up with a general opinion of "eh."

As alternate history I just have a problem with the premise in that Robinson's plague is just too destructive, even granting that Robinson's thought experiment was to illustrate a world without Western culture. Also, considering that the Islamic and Confucian worlds generally failed to take advantage of Western science before they were mostly defeated, why should I believe they're going to stumble on to sufficent scientific base to make possible the advances we do see in the book?

While some people are put off by the plot device of reincarnation in the process of giving a tour de horizon of this world, I really don't mind. However, I might have prefered this book then being written more as a fantasy, as that would have still allowed Robinson to induldge in his metaphysical speculations. It might also have been helpful if I could have cared more about the characters, as they seldom rise above being avatars for Robinson's arguements.

I also don't mind talking about the nature of history as a topic, but by being a historian and an archivist it's a "been there/got the t-shirt" sort of feeling for me.

Rating:
Summary: Staggering, poignant, immense, personal
Review: Let me start by saying that I'm not generally a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson's work. I loved Red Mars, then stumbled through Green Mars and gave up in disgust at Blue Mars. I found they were filled with exposition and endless descriptions of landscapes, and I really didn't like the fact that the main characters stuck it out through three novels instead of allowing more interesting characters to take their place.

I felt drawn to The Years of Rice and Salt, even though the same annoyances seemed present. That being said, if like me you were burnt by Blue Mars but are intrigued by the premise of this book - do yourself a favor and pick it up. It's a work of staggering immensity, yet such a personal and touching novel that one wonders how historical scope and intimate drama could ever be weaved together so finely. The "immortality" of the main characters, while a mere plot device in the Mars trilogy, is at the core of the theme of Years of Rice and Salt : it speaks of the role of individuals in History, of how individual actions and lives weave the tapestry of History, and how the dramas of daily lives influence and are influenced by the unfolding twists and turns of Humanity. The individual lives it depicts are poignant, and play superbly against the backdrop of this alternate history where China and Islam are the two major powers of the world. More than a plot device, reincarnation is used here to paint deeply personal portraits of each period of history. Of particular interest is the role that Native Americans play in this alternate history : the way their culture grows and envelops other nations is, I felt, the true tragedy at the heart of Rice and Salt, speaking of squandered opportunities when the West conquered the New World.

The novel builds like a puzzle through 11 stages of human history, and what finally emerges is a humanist, ecologist and even feminist tale of compassion, tolerance and hope, something that transcends its alternate history roots to speak of the Heart of Mankind. If it were just for its historical scope, The Years of Rice and Salt would have been an interesting anecdote in the alternate history genre. Instead, this novel is a major achievement that transcends science-fiction, and should stand at the very top of the alternate history genre for years to come, and as Robinson's crowning achievement.

Rating:
Summary: Huge, clever, fun, flawed
Review: Subject-wise, _The Years of Rice and Salt_ pushed all the right buttons for me - opening with a Journey to the West pastiche was always going to score it points, then there was a section set in Samarkand, quotations from Ibn Khaldun, and some deftly-drawn portraits of medieval China. I'm a sucker for a) cleverness, and b) well-crafted settings outside the pseudo-medieval fantasy norm, and this book hits both markers. So I wanted desperately to like it. In some ways, I did.

But there are two fundamental flaws, in my opinion. Firstly, the device of reincarnating the same set of characters fails; none of said characters are distinctive or memorable enough from life to life, and so end up being effectively 'new' in every section/time period. There's little chance for the reader to develop any emotional investment before the section ends and the whole thing starts again, and it becomes difficult to truly care.

Its second problem is, curiously, its lack of scope and vision. While the novel's stage is an entire world over six or so centuries, the device of keeping the characters together in each incarnation means that each section concentrates on one small area, robbing the narrative of the benefits of multiple, varied viewpoints. The scale is narrow rather than epic, and the action tends to get bogged down in details. This would be fine if the details were used to build character or illuminate the larger picture - the themes of this alternate, Europe-less world - but a lot of it reads like navel-gazing.

Many of the truly interesting implications are skipped over in favour of scientists ahead of their time discovering exactly the same things at almost exactly the same time their counterparts did in the non-fictional world, as if Robinson feels that certain universal boxes must be checked along the road to 'development', whatever the structure or imperatives of a society. (Meanwhile, literature, drama and art get short shrift). Often even the same words are used - I know little about the history of scientific thought, but would a world whose development was shaped by Arabs and Chinese still have used so many Greek and Latinate constructions to label their deeds? (okay, so he can get away with Greek, Islamic scholars were big on Greek. but still).

While there are glimpses of greater things - Buddhist attitudes and beliefs are used very well, and the different trajectory of American history is intriguing, but frustratingly underexplored - Robinson seems to be more interested in following a pretty conventional path. Perhaps dictated by his reincarnation device, he surrenders to the temptation to work towards a conclusion, as if human history could have ultimate purposes or goals. (I imagine one could argue that this reflects the world-view of those he writes about, but intentional or not it doesn't work!). Ultimately, this is too big a topic for one novel, and in trying to cover everything the author spreads himself too thinly, and ends up short-changing a fascinating world.

Despite these caveats, this remains a hugely enjoyable and memorable read, a rich tapestry of cultures and ideas rarely explored in genre fiction. Worth a look.

Rating:
Summary: A Staggering, Thought Provoking Work
Review: Until this book, I'd never really delved into the alternate history genre, but a review on Salon.Com was enough to get me intrigued, and once the paperback became available I knew immediately that I'd want to read it.

I was not disappointed. But I recognize that this is not a book for everyone. The storytelling is not exactly linear, as characters are followed from one reincarnation to another, but the cyclical mode of storytelling here is in keeping with Buddhism as one of the major forces in the world-without-Europe that Robinson envisions. The only reason this might be seen as a flaw is because Robinson's novel is approached by readers who inevitably have a distinctly Western (linear) view of time and storytelling; the expect a beginning, a middle and an end, whereas Robinson offers a long walk through a never-ending story in which the names of the characters (at least) change from one part of the book to the next.

I was left not just wanting more, but wanting to visit the world Robinson created in his novel.

Rating:
Summary: I love alternative histories!
Review: The premise is so simple--"What if all the white people died out?"--but it would have had such a complex effect on the world, as Robinson ably illustrates. Robinson's book, like all good alternative histories, reminds us that history is a tapestry. Pull one little thread out, and everything changes. As a white person of Hungarian heritage, I shuddered at the opening scene of a Hungary completely deserted on account of the plague. I felt written out of existence!

But the rest of the world seems to limp along just fine without us. Robinson superimposes events and inventions from our world--the discovery of a "New World", a devastating World War, telephones, immunizations, hot air balloons, trains--onto cultures that are very different from those in what is commonly known as "The West." He demonstrates that all people are capable of tremendous tolerance, tremendous innovation, and tremendous cruelty. I was continually amazed by Robinson's ability to create an almost entirely different, but strangely familiar world seemingly without effort. I also realized anew exactly how much Europeans and their descendants dominated my history books by seeing a version of the world without us.

Many reviewers disliked the "reincarnation" device, but I found that it allowed me to keep what could have been an unmanageable amount of characters--the book spans 700 years, after all--straight in my mind. I knew that the "K" character was going to be aggressive, the "B" was going to be optimistic, the "I" was going to be an intellectual, et cetera. It tickled me to see that in the modern eras, characters referred to the works and deeds of their previous incarnations!

This isn't an easy read. Many ideas are introduced that will be new to the majority of readers. However, it is entertaining in its own way. Be patient with Rice and Salt, and your patience will be rewarded.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting alternate history book
Review: Robinson tackles the question, "What if Europe had been wiped out by a plague in the Middle Ages?" The answer: a world dominated by Islam and China, with their own versions of the Renaissance, the World Wars, and so forth. I found his storytelling to be outstanding; each section has it's own little flavor of the culture being portrayed. One down point: while I greatly enjoyed the alternate history aspects, I did find some of the writing a little heavy on mysticism, in a manner that felt forced to me.