The Years of Rice and Salt

Rating:
Summary: Great for those with INSOMIA
Review: Book was a disappointment though I read the book from beginning to end. The early chapter was interesting then the author started drifting with too much fluff and pratically put me to sleep. It was't near the tail end of the book did it get interesting again. Its a good book if you have insomia...


Rating:
Summary: Best alternate history book ever
Review: Has its (minor) flaws, but Wow! What a ride! This book is extraodinarily well-written, with great dialogue, prose and structure, provocative and intellectually challenging. A delight to read. Made me run out to buy his other works.

Rating:
Summary: Where Have All the Europeans Gone?
Review: Here is an excellent alternate history that delves into a world where European civilization is destroyed by the Plague. It spans the time period from the Middle Ages to modern times.

This world is all in all pretty plausible. The Islamic world essentially fills the vaccuum left by the destruction of Europe and competes with China, India, and to a lesser extent those we call American Indians. To tie events together over such a long time, Robinson uses an interesting tool. He assumes reincarnation exists and has a group of souls come back to Earth over time as various key players. While this mechanism is not perfect, it is more often than not useful in binding together what a somewhat unrelated short stories.

That all said, I agree with Michael Clawson's critique. My understanding is that the loss of population from the Plague was a key spark in causing the social and technological advances in Europe. Mr. Robinson has this alternate world advance at nearly the same pace technologically and only moderately slower socially. Doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me. Where is the incentive for China to make more efficient tools when theres a huge surplus of people? And why would India become a relatively free society when the status quo hasnt been changed much? I think there could be decent explanations for this. Unfortunately, Robinson doesnt really delve into them much.

One of the nice things about alternate history is that you can see the importance of a given factor if it is removed. This book doesnt take advantage of that very well. This alternate world seems to follow our timeline too closely. There are major technological advances in the Middle Ages in Afghanistan simmilar to those in our Europe of the same time. The Chinese and Arabs colonize the Americas at about the same time period as Europe did in our world. There is an epic Moslem/China war set at about the time of our World War I. It even has trench warfare! So Mr. Robinson seems to be telling us (I believe unintentionally) that Europe doesnt really matter! Im not buying that. Not at all.

One final (and minor) critique. The author hints at there having been a residual European culture. I think it would have been helpful if Robinson threw his reincarnating characters into Plague ridden Europe. Perhaps they could have been in a nomadic grouping in France searching for safety or a small village in Northern Scotland that managed to survive. As best as I can tell the only Europeans Robinson identifies are what appears to be a caveman in Hungary in the very beginning and references to a "nature preserve" on an English island in the 20th Century. Showing what happened in Europe could have added depth to this story. Not a big problem though. I just would have like to have seen it.

This is pretty good alternate history. Not good enough that I would likely reread the book. But I'll certainly come back and skim certain portions!

Rating:
Summary: Very engaging and ambitious
Review: I enjoyed this book a whole lot. The idea of how history would have turned out had Europe been wiped out is such a massive undertaking that I just had to read it to see what KSR came up with. The result is very ambitious and delightful in places. It reminded me so much of the Mowgli stories by Kipling at times. I think the fundamental drawback with this book is NOT the book itself but us the readers. I just didn't know enough history to be able to make a judgment on how clever the book was!

Rating:
Summary: Very well done.
Review: I really liked this book. The way in which Robinson builds the chain of events after the Fall of Europe may seem a little forced, but, since we don't really know exactly why it was that Western Europe acquired its technological edge over the rest of the world, we don't know exactly how accurate Robinson's scenario really is. Also, the highly localized nature of the plague that annihilates Europe but leaves the Middle East undamaged is pretty far fetched. But readers that are bothered by this should remember that they're not reading an article by a historian speculating on what probably would have happened if Europe had been wiped out in the late 14th century, they're reading a NOVEL, a work of fiction. In this case the historical development of his hypothetical world depends on the plot, not the other way around.

Nevertheless, if we put aside that fact, this is truly a great novel. The characters are great, and the use of reincarnation provides a wonderful way to interconnect all the different time periods.

I agree with other reviewers who say that the first stories in the book are the best, but that doesn't necessarily means that the others are bad. I admit they do get a little preachy, but anyone who has read Robinson's Mars novels will recognize what I'm talking about. If it didn't bother you there, then you should have no problem with this one.

Rating:
Summary: More Than Just Another Alternate History
Review: I think those who rate this book low missed its point. It his not an alternate history in the usual sense. It is about human nature, and the life of the soul, rather than about a specific cultural or historical imperative. While it does help to have some historical knowledge to follow the book, it shows, on the one hand, how the patchy knowledge we have of the past colors our views of history; and on the other, reveals the progress of our development as a species as circumstances, both natural and man-made, evolve.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully ambitious but deeply flawed
Review: Many alternate history stories tend to begin with a relatively simple "what if" premise and move from there: What if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated at the end of the Civil War? What if the Allies had lost World War II? What if the Cuban Missile Crisis had actually turned into World War III? In The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson proposes what may be one of the greatest "what ifs" of the genre: What if the Black Plague had wiped out virtually the entire population of Europe at the end of the 14th century and, as a result, modern Western civilization never arose? In the space of more than seven hundred pages Robinson tries to show how the following seven centuries of history would have evolved differently in such a world. Reading the novel, it's difficult to not admire the scope of the author's ambition, and I must say that he succeeded in maintaining my attention and interest over the course of such a long story. People who aren't as engaged by history or other cultures would probably not enjoy this book as much as I did, though. I must also say that The Years of Rice and Salt suffers from one overriding problem, and this is Robinson's questionable historical logic. He seems to take it as a given that despite the absence of the West, the world would basically still go down the road towards modernity and globalization; the pioneering technological, economic, and cultural achievements of Western civilization would simply happen elsewhere, done by other people. This is a huge assumption that Robinson doesn't justify very well. I personally believe that events like the Renaissance or the Industrial Revolution occurred in the West due to a very unique confluence of circumstances, none of which existed in Central Asia or southern India, where Robinson places them instead. Perhaps the fact the author had to cover so much ground so quickly accounts for this problem; if he had developed this world over the course of a trilogy likes his Mars series, for instance, it might be a little more clear how Travancore became the center of this industrial revolution, or even how the Indians of North America survived their contact with the Muslims in the East and the Chinese/Japanese in the West. Despite the fact that the brilliance of its ideas are not quite matched by the actual execution of the story, The Years of Rice and Salt is still a fascinating thought experiment that deserves at least a look.

Rating:
Summary: A Book to Savor
Review: Robinson has given us a marvelous, engrosing, make-you-think book -- my favorite kind. Highly recomended.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best alternate histories I've ever read
Review: The premise of the story is as basic as it is original: what if 99% of Europe had been wiped out in the plague, not just 30%? What would the world be like without Christianity, European imperialism, the Industrial Revolution? The answer is, both jarringly different and surprisingly similar.

Covering 700 years of history in a single novel could present huge headaches in terms of continuity and characterization. First, as with any alternate history novel, is the obvious: the further away you get from the point of departure, the more things will have changed. YORAS is masterful in its historical believability; events build upon each other naturally, with even the maps at the start of each chapter growing in increments as the face of the world slowly changes. Thus, in the first chapter, only one difference from actual history is apparent, while 700 years later, almost every aspect of life has been completely altered - except, of course, human nature.

Robinson also solves the problem of characterization across centuries by having the main characters reincarnate in each chapter. I, B, and K carry over the same personalities, under different circumstances and with different relationships, which in some ways makes them even more complex and fascinating than characters we would get to know over a single lifetime. Robinson deserves a lot of credit for this approach, and I hope other historical fiction writers start stealing this idea.

YORAS requires an open mind, a desire to ask complex questions about history and our role in it. I would highly recommend it to anyone with the willingness to seek answers to those questions.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT by Kim Stanley Robinson
December 8, 2004

This was probably the most complex book I've read in quite some time. THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT by Kim Stanley Robinson is the retelling of history, based on the fact that instead of only 33% of Europe succumbing to the plague, it's now 99%. The book starts from the days of the Black Plague, but because history has been changed, this novel is from the viewpoint of mostly Chinese or Muslim peoples. Reincarnation is an accepted fact, and throughout the book, characters that are telling the tale of this revised history are all reincarnated beings from previous chapters.

I felt that Robinson's theories were pretty good, and made a lot of sense. Since most of the white population has been killed off, the main world powers are now the world of Islam and China, with the Indians a close second. There is an interesting mix between the two cultures, with most people of course speaking Arabic languages as well as Chinese dialects. Great historic figures are either Muslim or Chinese. And of course all of them were reincarnated, some of them even remembering their past lives and recognizing each other in their future lives.

I won't get into the details of the characters and who they were, since there were so many through the centuries. What is important to know is that Robinson followed the progression of history from the Muslim point of view, so the world he created was very Muslim-centered or Chinese-centered, with of course place-names changed to reflect this. There is no such thing as the Americas, since Amerigo Vespucci never existed, plus he's white. (Caucasians for the most part do not exist, except in a few pockets around the world). It was the Chinese that sought out the new worlds, not knowing that these huge "islands" existed out there in the ocean. South America becomes "Inka", and North America is now Yingshou, with mostly Chinese and Muslim influence. San Francisco is probably the most celebrated city (but it's not San Francisco anymore, but the "Gold Gate" exists as it does in the real world). Japanese Snow Monkeys live freely in the trees of what should have been this California city, due to the influence of the nomadic Japanese peoples (China conquered them ages ago and took over the islands of Japan).

And so it goes.

I found that parts of the book were bogged down with too many details, but I think history fans will get a kick out of this book. I enjoyed the extrapolation that was done in general and thoroughly loved the immersion of Muslim culture of this book. And the most interesting part of all, while the Christians do not even exist, religion does play a big part in world culture, with the Muslims trying to dominate the world, just as the Christians have done in our own. It's food for thought.

I gave this book a 4 star rating, only because I personally did not enjoy the last two sections of the book. For me, the war details were not as interesting as the rest of the history that the author went into, but for anyone reading this book, it is necessary to read it all. I really loved the comedy that took place in the bardo, where one goes before they are reincarnated into the next life. Characters arguing about why they keep getting killed off, and one character constantly telling the other about not "getting it". There is a pattern here, with the reincarnated characters, that I didn't' get until it was pointed out at the very end of the book. But I'm sure it may be obvious to others. Overall, it was an enjoyable read, although a bit too long for me, but I am glad I read it.