The Years of Rice and Salt
Book description
With the incomparable vision and breathtaking detail that brought his now-classic Marstrilogy to vivid life, bestselling author KIM STANLEY ROBINSON boldly imagines an alternate history of the last seven hundred years. In his grandest work yet, the acclaimed storyteller constructs a world vastly different from the one we know....
The…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Years of Rice and Salt as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Complex worldbuilding and the alternate history genre often go hand in hand, and they’re the part I enjoy most when reading reimaginings of our world. This book intertwines history with spirituality and shows how a small set of characters can enact a large change to the universe, which is something that is shown to be both optimistic (if the characters are good) and pessimistic (if the characters are evil/selfish).
It echoes so much of what I believe—that karma is a real force and depends on how it’s released into the world—so I found it refreshing to see these themes echoed…
From Alison's list on reimagine the past and see a strange new future.
Robinson’s book is alternate history on the boldest scale, covering hundreds of years after a very dramatic change indeed: around the year 1400, 99% of Europeans have been killed by a double whammy of plagues, leaving the rest of the world’s story to go on without them.
Such a saga in other hands might be too far removed from the human, character-driven level to be enjoyable, but Robinson has a clever solution to that problem—reincarnation. The main characters are reborn again and again, for the most part lacking memories of their past lives, but identifiable by the initial letter/sound of…
From Tom's list on alternate/secret histories that blew my mind.
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