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Dec 17, 2009

Zab rated it:

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...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

May 08, 2008

Jack rated it:

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...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 21, 2008

Travis rated it:

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...

3 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 13, 2008

Saadiq rated it:

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...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2007

Koshin rated it:

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...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Mar 28, 2008

Jeremy rated it:

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 16, 2011

procrastin8or rated it:

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of those rare breeds in SciFi today, he writes what is traditionally called “hard” science fiction but he differs from the likes of Alastair Reynolds, Greg Bear and Peter F. Hamilton in that there is a great deal of focus on the fundamental changes in society that new technological advances bring. In this way, he is very much like Ray Bradbury.

This is a departure from Robinson’s hard scifi though as he branches out to explore the realms of alternative hist More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2011

Nikki rated it:

Rather than a novel, this is more like a series of short stories/novellas. It follows the same characters through various incarnations. In some of them the connections are easy to make, in others it's not so easy. The alternate history aspect is interesting, and couldn't have been fully explored without this device, I suppose, but I found it jarring to be jerked from time period to time period, culture to culture, and I never really fell in love with the characters as continuations of the previo More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 24, 2008

Joe rated it:

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2008

Cleverusername2 rated it:

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...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2008

Chadwick rated it:

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...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2007

Cpd rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 13, 2007

S.A. rated it:

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...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

joyce rated it:

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 24, 2008

Terrill rated it:

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2009

Art rated it:

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...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2009

Scott rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 08, 2011

John rated it:

KSR is one of my favorite modern fiction writers. I was only introduced to him 3 years ago, but fell in love quickly. I have read the Mars trilogy and the Science in the Capitol trilogy, which really needs a better name. This book lived up to my high expectations.

I wish I could pinpoint what makes KSR so believable to me. He says something happens in his stories and I believe them. Sometimes they are big sweeping things and often he gives no details, but I believe him and accept More...

0 comments like

May 17, 2011

Mary added it

Obviously this is a smart and talented writer who brings lots of research and imagination to his work. The jacket blurb says that this is an alternate history of the last seven hundred years, starting with the plague killing off most of the world's population. The Chinese colonize the New World, the Industrial Revolution is set off by the world's greatest scientific minds, in india, and Buddhism and Islam are the most influential religions. The story is told through individuals -- soldiers, kin More...

0 comments like

May 03, 2011

Daniel rated it:

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 pre More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 27, 2011

Jared rated it:

Amazing book! The novel is really ten novellas set in an alternate history where the black plague wiped out 99% of Europe's population (instead of simply two-thirds as it did in our world). You go through 700 years of history as you follow three souls who are reincarnated into ten different lifetimes. As nerdy as that premise might sound, this is a book that will appeal to non-geeks as well as lovers of sci-fi and alternate history.

The author Kim Stanley Robinson shows a breadth More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 17, 2010

Jeff rated it:

I picked this up from the library after reading good things on the AVClub in a section about alternate histories. I found the premise of The Black Plague wiping out almost the entire population of Europe and how that would affect the socio-political development of the rest of the world to be very promising. Unfortunately, this premise is mere backdrop for an extremely boring story. (Someone really should re-visit this idea in the future because it holds so much potential).
I appreciate t More...

0 comments like

Jul 11, 2010

Ninja Sock Puppet rated it:

In 2000 Ceridwen and I and her mother visited Kathmandu on our way to Tibet. We happened stumble upon a courtyard where a girl's face appeared three floors up in the open window of a darkened room. This, our guide informed us, was the living incarnation of the goddess Kali. Kali is the four-armed deity of eternal energy, action; the lord of death. Weird to see the lord of death's ten year old girly eyes peering out of a third-story window of a dusty courtyard. She is cared for after she is More...

11 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 09, 2010

Jesse rated it:

One day in the street, rattling off some story or other, she stopped and looked up at him, surprised, and said “I want to know everything!”

I respect very much the intentions of this book: to re-invent a wide range of historical readings, to activate the historical imagination, to envision a world where Islam might not seem attached at the hip to violence, intolerance and authoritarianism, and to argue for the human experience as a slow, blundering evolution towards higher moral and e More...

0 comments like

Sep 20, 2009

Chad rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 14, 2009

Katie rated it:

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...

0 comments like

Jun 30, 2010

Leigh-ann rated it:

This was a beautiful book... I wish I'd been able to read it in a classroom or "reading group" setting to have had a bit more insight into everything that was happening, because it's definitely a book that I'll need to read twice to fully appreciate. As the chapters progressed and I realized how the characters were being reincarnated (and realized how the planet's history was being subtly changed by Robinson's hypothetical tweaks), I wished I could back and reread from the beginning. More...

0 comments like

Oct 19, 2011

Kam rated it:

Alternate history is one of the most fascinating and, when done right, enjoyable fiction genres available today. Writers who pose themselves a "what if?", and then proceed to answer that question, seem to be rather few and far between, so whenever I come across a novel that claims to be alternate history, I often pick it up - more so if it deals with a particular period of history, or the history of a particular nation, that I am especially fond of.

This is how I came to pic More...

0 comments like

Feb 06, 2011

Lisa rated it:

This author continues to impress me with his combinations of imagined futures and thickly-layered evocations of past history, archaeology, comparative religious studies, cultures, scientific history, philosophy and human psychology. This book starts with the premise that a virulent form of the plague wiped out almost the entire population of Europe, instead of the substantial numbers that it destroyed during the years of the Black Death. It also posits that similar explorations, discoveries, and More...

0 comments like

Sep 29, 2009

The other John rated it:

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

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