The Years of Rice and Salt

by Kim Stanley Robinson

book data

1,043 ratings, 3.67 average rating, 189 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		29%
4		29%
3		24%
2		10%
1		5%

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published

June 3rd 2003 by Spectra (first published 2002)

details

Kindle Edition, 784 pages

setting

France

literary awards

Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (2003), Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2003), Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee (2003)

asin

B000FBFNPG

description

With the incomparable vision and breathtaking detail that brought his now-classic Mars trilogy to vivid life, bestselling author KIM STANLEY ROBINSON …more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1,801)

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Jul 27, 2007

Zab rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: otherworlds

Read in May, 2007

In retrospect, it's surprising that there aren't MORE fantasy novels about a group of people being reincarnated multiple times, with lives sprawling through a centuries-long alternate history. But, if there were, most all of them would not be as good as this.

The reincarnation plot (complete with matter-of-fact scenes set in the "bardo" between lives) is an excellent way of tempering what would otherwise be a sometimes depressing plot. Basically, the novel starts shortly aft...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

2 comments

May 08, 2008

Jack rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

Read in December, 2005

A classic of speculative fiction. This one has really stuck with me, and continues to inform my thinking on any number of topics, not least the clash of civilizations, the impermanence of human culture, the non-inevitability of European historical domination, how indigenous American societies might have survived and thrived, and more.

The book starts somewhat slowly, but is worth sticking with. Terrific circular structure to the storytelling becomes more and more powerful as the vario...more

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May 27, 2008

Travis Johns rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

Read in June, 2008

lesson to be learned: just because you like one book (or in this case, three) by a particular author doesn't necessarily have to imply that you will have to like all books. This, my darlings, is a blatant case in point.

Thy premise: The black plague knocks out 99 percent of Western Europe - so far, so good. However, instead of focusing on the immediate after effects of such an event, as is the case with the first chapter, albeit in somewhat of a too stylistically poetic fashion, the...more lesson to be learned: just because you like one book (or in this case, three) by a particular author doesn't necessarily have to imply that you will have to like all books. This, my darlings, is a blatant case in point.

Thy premise: The black plague knocks out 99 percent of Western Europe - so far, so good. However, instead of focusing on the immediate after effects of such an event, as is the case with the first chapter, albeit in somewhat of a too stylistically poetic fashion, the novel instead embarks on a parallel (note, parallel, not alternative) history of the world as the rest of the world matures in the void of the white man's burden... which is also an interesting notion, except for one small snatch - each and every single story focuses on the reincarnated souls of approximately 4 individuals, all with similar names who are somehow or another responsible for, oh, basically EVERY major invention and innovation in the history of mankind, and somehow in the thick of it all, nearly always end up being massacred at the end of their respective chapters... by about the third chapter, oh my children, the proverbial jig was, oh, just kindasorta up and I was officially bored... and only reading the novel for a.) hope of improvement and b.) lack of any idea as to what i wanted to read next.... ho hum.

Back to the parallel history aspect - just slightly weak. especially with regard to temporal events. somehow, nearly every major invention in the novel coincided with its temporal occurrence in our respective tomes - the telescope and gravity in the 17th century, an industrial revolution with trains and steam ships in the 18th, a world war in the mid-20th, etc. Many apologies, but being a history buff, I know how it all happened - if i want to read about alternatives, I'd hope that it would be something other than just a word scramble of proper nouns as to the wheres and whats that form the specifics of said alternication... not to mention that one single Sufi alchemist somehow manages to claim the merits of Newton, Gallileo and Kepler all in one... erm, mildly suspect, ja?

eh, just thought I'd share... (less)

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

1 comment

Apr 15, 2008

Saadiq Wolford rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

Read in April, 2008

Dear Kim Stanley Robinson,

I think your Mars trilogy is one of the greatest pieces of science fiction every written. I've read it twice in the past ten years and will probably read it three more times before I grow old. I even read the first book in your eco-thriller trilogy and, though there's not much plot to speak of, thought it was interesting. In short, I love you, man, you're mi hermano.

But, damn, how did you manage to screw The Years of Rice and Salt up? The con...more

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Jun 20, 2007

Koshin rated it:

(review of isbn 0553109200)

Read in July, 2007

I really enjoyed this book. I wanted to read the book on its premise alone: What if Europe had been wiped out by the plague, how would world history have been shaped without a European influence?

The book is a series of different short stories that catalogue the lives of people at different points in the alternate history, from the time after the plagues in Europe until the modern era. Each story is an alternate history different important points that coincide with history :- The Isla...more

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Mar 28, 2008

Jeremy Wineberg rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in May, 2002

this is an intriguing book about a group of characters that keep getting reincarnated together, who end up fleshing out an alternative world history beginning from a "what if" that has most of christian europe dying out from a much more virile form of the black plague in the middle ages. while this may sound overly complex, and it could be, robinson's style and solid characters hold the book together, which almost, but not quite, ends up functioning more like an inter-related set of s...more

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Sep 21, 2008

Joe rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

Read in September, 2008

I really like Kim Stanley Robinson. His fiction focuses on relationships primarily, both among people to each other, and between people and the world they live in. He's definitely among the most "literary" of the science fiction A-listers, but does not use his writing to create a sense of detachment (unlike, say, David Foster Wallace, who's literary in the "oh, I'm so above everything" school, which I fucking hate). It's always a pleasure to take in the words that Robinson...more

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Jul 18, 2008

Cleverusername2 Rawlings rated it:

(review of isbn 0553109200)

Read in January, 2004

This novel wasn't what I thought it would be, but that's a compliment in my book. I thought it would be a sort of medieval version of The Stand, with hoary images of Black Death ravaged cities all over Europe. Instead Robinson uses the big "What If" gimmick (what if the Black Death was 99% fatal all over Europe, causing white Christian European civilization to become a mere historical footnote) as a jumping board to write a wholly different narrative.

It is rare to read a n...more

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Jul 14, 2008

Chadwick rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: best-books-ever-man, sf, utopian-anarchist

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

An alternate history, in which the what-if is, what if European culture had been totally eradicated by the Black Plague. Using the conceit of a group of repeatedly reincarnated souls returning again and again as the thousand-odd year saga unfolds, Robinson hits yet again with a thoroughly brilliant work that asks all of the important questions that face us concerning life on earth, most crucially: how do we get it right?

In The Years of Rice and Salt, the world ends up being divid...more An alternate history, in which the what-if is, what if European culture had been totally eradicated by the Black Plague. Using the conceit of a group of repeatedly reincarnated souls returning again and again as the thousand-odd year saga unfolds, Robinson hits yet again with a thoroughly brilliant work that asks all of the important questions that face us concerning life on earth, most crucially: how do we get it right?

In The Years of Rice and Salt, the world ends up being divided between Islam and China for most of what we consider to be the years 622-2002 C.E. All of the great scientific advances, all of the discoveries of the renaissance are undertaken by these two civilizations. Much of the ensuing history parallels very closely what we consider to have actually happened.

A notable difference that Robinson proposes lies in the failure of either China or any of the Muslim powers to completely colonize the New World (due, perhaps to the lack of Europeans as an enemy on the Eurasian continent, leading to constant strife between the two powers), allowing the Iroquois League to expand into a major world power, with the help of the members of the Japanese diaspora. Their matrilineal succession and league-based structure becomes an inspiration for various progressive and revolutionary groups in both China and the Dar-al-Islam.

Like much of Robinson's work, this is emphatically a utopian novel, but with the author's characteristic intellectual rigor. One of the functions of the reincarnation device is to emphasize that utopia is something that is built incrementally, taking lifetimes of failure and imperceptible, minuscule progress before any possibility of change can be enacted. This is further driven home by the conversations between the principal characters during their brief spells in the bardo, as they await their next incarnations, momentarily reminded of all of their previous lives.

I think that this work is notable for a number of reasons. What sticks with me upon this first reading is Robinson's focus upon gender equality as crucial for social progress. That is, of course, obvious to most educated readers alive today, but his imagining of the rise of feminism in the monolithic cultures of Islam and imperial China is quite sharp. One character goes so far, in attempting to explain Islam's loss in the novel's analogue of WWI, as to say that Islam's greatest weakness lies within its conversion of fully half of its society to illiterate beasts of burden.

Robinson may be preaching to the choir, but this novel is a great example of the unique potency of speculative fiction to ask questions about how we fix the fucking mess we're in.(less)

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Jul 08, 2007

Cpd rated it:

(review of isbn 0553109200)

bookshelves: whativeread

Read in January, 2005

We had people over for the Fourth for the fireworks and, of course, the house had to be cleaned and by that, I mean all the books sprawled about the floor in lazy, often surly piles, crowding every available planed surface had to be reined in and brought to order. Rice & Salt got rammed into a corner atop the largest bookshelf in the living room and I'm looking at it now -- it balefully staring back at me.

I do not like this book. In fact, I've been trying to dump it for the last...more

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Aug 13, 2007

S.A. Parham rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: sci-fi

Read in June, 2005

I'd seen this heavily recommended by others with similar reading tastes, so I had high expectations for it. The premise - what if the Black Plague killed 99% of Europe's population - was intriguing. For the first two or three sections, the reincarnation system of recycling the main characters even worked for me. But after a while, I started to feel like I was reading a textbook. "This happened in this era. This happened in the next era." Half the time, I didn't see the characters long ...more

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Sep 09, 2007

joyce rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

Read in June, 2007

Hmm. I liked the Mars trilogy and had high hopes for this one but couldn't get more than 3/4 of the way through. Premise - excellent. Execution - awkward. "What if the Black Death had wiped out 99% of Europe's population instead of only 30-40%?" Whole course of history altered, etc etc. Unfortunately, it was too ambitious and might have worked better at half the scope, with the rest left to the reader's imagination.

Robinson doesn't give you enough time to really get a...more

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Sep 24, 2008

Terrill rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

Read in September, 2008

Continuing my thematic reading (books about America during the 15th century), this is a fiction book describing an alternate history in which 99% of Europe is killed by the plague. Consequently, there is no Columbus, and most of the world is Buddhist or Muslim.

It's an interesting concept, which Robinson follows for over 1000 years. Every hundred pages or so he would jump ahead a few hundred years to another era and new protagonists--I find that in books like that, it's always hard...more

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Feb 07, 2009

Art rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: fantasy, science-fiction

In an alternative history, the Black Death destroys Europe and the world is divided between China and the nations of Islam, with India and the New World asserting themselves in lesser ways. It is seen through the eyes of the same group of people, reincarnated time after time, striving to make the world a better place. It's a neat premise, and it starts out fairly strong... but I honestly wish the author resisted the temptation to include page after page after page of various character musing a...more

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Jan 13, 2009

Scott rated it:

(review of isbn 0002246791)

Read in February, 2007

One of the most creative ideas as a plot device I have ever read. This book tells an alternate history of the world from the dark ages to present day. The story starts with the black plague decimating almost the entirety of the European population, with the result of an eastward expansion into the new world, instead of the west. The confrontation between the Chinese and the Native Americans unfolds in an entirely different manner, to name just one of countless ways in which the world heads in...more

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Sep 20, 2009

Chad rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

One of the few books I couldn't force myself to finish. I usually enjoy alternate histories and post-apocalpyse fiction, so I thought I would enjoy this, but....no.

First, there didn't seem to be any overarching storyline. Characters are introduced, some contrived/random events happen, some dialog occurs, then they die. A brief interlude where the characters meet in some sort of afterlife happens, then another story starts.

I spent most of the next "story" tryin...more

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Jul 14, 2009

Katie rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in January, 2007

1.) I've never read his Mars Trilogy, so I had no preconceptions.
2.) This book is long.
3.) If you aren't into Chinese or Persian cultures, there's a chance you'll never make it through this book.

The book is the story of a group of people bound together as they re-incarnate through 700 years of alternate history, starting shortly after the black plague wipes out 99% of the European population. The first third of the book covers a period of history I'm interested in. The s...more

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Sep 29, 2009

The other John rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: alternate-history

Read in June, 2009

This is an interesting tale on two levels. The basic milieu is an alternate reality--a world in which the Black Death killed off three times the number of Europeans than it did in our world, 99% of the total population. The role that European nations played in world history is now taken by other nations, other cultures. Mr. Robinson postulates the rise of Chinese and Islamic empires that create a history that only vaguely reflects our own. The other premise that makes this novel worth reading (a...more

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Feb 05, 2010

Genevieve rated it:

(review of isbn 0553580078)

bookshelves: fiction, sff

Read in January, 2010

I enjoyed reading this, and sped through it. Seeing what things Robinson would come up with was interesting, and I liked the way the structure of following the same souls through reincarnations gets the reader into different cultures and places, so that no one comes out on top as the clear 'side' the book is on. The alternate, sometimes conflicting, perspectives of religious belief and rationalism are also handled gracefully. When I paused while reading, I had the eerie feeling that the even...more I enjoyed reading this, and sped through it. Seeing what things Robinson would come up with was interesting, and I liked the way the structure of following the same souls through reincarnations gets the reader into different cultures and places, so that no one comes out on top as the clear 'side' the book is on. The alternate, sometimes conflicting, perspectives of religious belief and rationalism are also handled gracefully. When I paused while reading, I had the eerie feeling that the events I had been reading were the real history, while the true history and present shape of the world felt ephemeral--a sure sign of effective fiction.

However, I had a hard time buying some elements of the book. (I don't consider these particularly spoilery myself, but some people may.)

First, would the history of the world with Europe eliminated really parallel the history of the world that we are familiar with so closely? For instance, I'll try not to get too spoilery, but Robinson has a scientist-innovator figure who is very similar to Galileo (and pulls in bits of other Scientific Revolution-era figures); there's also a long and devastating war that echoes WWI/II; and a political-artistic cafe culture in one city that seems remarkably Parisian. I suppose that these parallels may express a view that certain historical forces will produce the same results in different situations. And no doubt there's a balance to be struck: if Robinson had written the world that resulted from his initial departure as either vastly 'better' or vastly 'worse' than our current one, it would, rightly or not, come off as a politicized statement about the relative worth of different civilizations. Having developments similar to those in the actual historical record crop up avoids that.

The other element that I found frustrating about The Years of Rice and Salt was the way that the loose group of characters were, in each rebirth, always working toward 'improving' the world, and seemed to always organically discover a set of principles--basically coming down to the equal rights of all people--that seem to me to be, historically, not nearly as obvious and easy to agree upon as the book made them out to be.

So: an enjoyable book with plenty of ideas to chew over, and some flaws.(less)

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