I was very disappointed. It's not that the book is badly written - it isn't - but I thought I was reading a "what-if-European-civilization-had-never-developed" novel, but really it seems completely irrelevant that the Europeans were wiped out in a plague. Instead, it's a series of vignettes about life in other parts of the world, that seem like they could have occurred with or without Europeans present.

If you’re a philosophy, religion, and/or world history buff, you’ll really enjoy Rice and Salt. Based on the idea that the plague wiped out the European population and reincarnation is real, the book takes you through an altered version of history post-plague, century after century, up until present time (well, 2002, which is about when the book was published). Though some parts are a bit too drawn out, there are many jewels strewn throughout that make Rice and Salt well worth reading.

Another sprawling tome from KSR - this one is a bit hit or miss in terms of narrative clarity and engagement, and also falls into some Orientalist tropes despite serious attempts throughout to guard against that (a hazard of the 'alternate history' genre in general, I would bet); still has a serious ethic of solidarity and magnificent writing to make it worth recommending, though.

"We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there will be garden everywhere,and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans, or zamindars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more qadis or mullahs or ulema, no more slavery and no more usury, no more property and no more taxes, no more rich and no more poor, no killing or maiming or torture or execution, no more jailers and no more prisoners, no more generals, soldiers, armies, or navies, no more patriarchy, no more clans, no more caste, no more hunger, no more suffering than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and then we will see for the first time what kind of creatures we really are."

There are books whose reading makes you feel exhilarated and excited, ready to explore further novels by the same author or novels with similar theme.

Not this one, though.

The concept is fascinating, but the end result feels lacking and incoherent. The book has a few really good parts (the first contact with the Americas, Widow Kang), but there are also some parts that are way too long  like for example the part in which the characters discover the laws of physics. It's fun for a short while, and then it goes on and on and on and boring. I wish it wasn't so -- I'd had this book on my to-read lists for ages -- but in the end, it didn't work for me.

DNF at 15%

I am very disappointed in this book. The blurb promised an interesting foray into an alternative history of our world where the black plague killed 99% of the European civilization, so history was written by the Chinese, Muslim, and African people instead. This had so much potential to show us something new, and to take the development of human civilization down unexpected paths. Not to mention just how different human values and customs would be without Christianity in the picture.

Unfortunately, what I got instead is a long and tedious story following select "souls" who keep reincarnating into different bodies during different time periods after the history diverging event. And some of these stories have nothing to do with the original premise of the book, because they don't really show anything other than a slice of life in a particular part of the world. 

Even that would have been okay. I like slice of life books when the lives they depict are interesting and different from my own. I like learning about other customs and traditions. The caveat is though that I need to care about the characters I'm following. I need to be invested in them. And that's where the downfall of this book is for me.

It's written in such an impersonal and almost clinical way that I feel absolutely nothing for these characters. Heck, I don't even know what they feel, or what their hopes and aspirations are. I am told they are hungry, or angry, or die in horrible ways, but because it's put on the page in a very dry language, I feel nothing. Kyu got murdered, and I just shrugged. He got stoned to death in his next reincarnation, and I didn't feel a thing. 

Once I reach the chapters where one of our characters is reincarnated as a tiger, I found myself skimming pages, trying to skip ahead. This is a sure indication that I was losing interest in the story, and I was barely 100 pages in. I was honestly dreading having to sit through 700 more pages of this.

So I'm calling it quits. Some people seem to love this book, but I gravitate towards character-driven stories, and this one isn't for me. But at least that's one more book off my TBR list.

Come for the uchronia, stay for the budhism

I would have liked this one more if there had been a bit more of an inspiring end. The idea of the transmigration of souls into various historical settings was interesting, but I felt that Robinson could have gone further making the characters more interesting sometimes. This is a bunch of novellas grouped with the reincarnation spirits, but the writing is uneven because I felt that the early stories were much more engaging than the later ones and found the last one oh so uninteresting and ultimately frustrating. The final story just sort of drives me into the middle of nowhere, lets me out of the car, and drives off leaving me stranded. I mean maybe some folks like that kind of open ending, but with all the talk in purgatory, I thought there would be some closure and was sorely disappointed that there wasn't.

I took this book out in April. I've been trying to finish it ever since. I finally admitted to myself that I'm not going to be finishing this one. I remember having the same problem with Red Mars, the only one of Robinson's Martian trilogy that I read. I feel badly, there were parts of this book that I loved, especially the story of the Widow Lang and Ibrahim. I could have read a novel about them. I also loved Bold and the story of him riding through lands emptied by the plague. I thought the poetry was lovely. I don't really know why I couldn't finish this, although some of the stories I found tedious. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what year it was according to the Gregorian calendar and which character was which. Maybe I'm just too distractible.

n  Viviamo in un universo dominato da poche leggi, ma il moltiplicarsi della violenza tramite la violenza è una delle principalin

Un libro che ripercorre l’intera storia mondiale dal 1300 al XXI secolo, solo che non è la storia che noi conosciamo perché l’epidemia di peste che colpì l’intera Europa tra il 1347 e il 1352 ha ucciso il 99% della popolazione e non solo un terzo.

Trionfo della morte, Palazzo Sclafani, Galleria regionale di Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo (1446)

Protagonista indiscussa del romanzo è la Storia: gli eventi fondamentali (scoperta dell’America, scoperte scientifiche, imperi coloniali, guerre mondiali) si svolgono ugualmente? Cosa sarebbe potuto cambiare?
La risposta di Robinson è, mutatis mutandis, che la natura dell'uomo avrebbe comunque portato gli eventi verso le medesime direzioni (abusi di potere, guerre, sperequazione sociale, intolleranza) ma (forse) non verso la medesima conclusione grazie all’influenza di elementi culturali divenuti centrali per la scomparsa del pensiero occidentale e della religione cristiana.


Un planisfero in cui la rappresentazione dei territori non è europacentrica

Io ho letto con interesse questo libro: mi incuriosiva capire cosa si sarebbe inventato l’autore per giustificare gli eventi storici cruciali (ad esempio le scoperte di Galileo) in un mondo in cui il centro culturale e politico si è spostato in Asia. Alcune soluzioni sono interessanti ma la riedizione fedele di tutta la storia umana in Oriente alla lunga può annoiare; inoltre l’autore spesso si lancia in spiegazioni filosofiche e storiche che prendono il sopravvento sulle vicende dei personaggi, i quali, nel corso dei vari secoli, cambiano lentamente e con grande difficoltà: ma questo, secondo me, è coerente con la tesi dell’autore e con la sua volontà di mettere in primo piano la Storia attraverso le storie di persone comuni che, generazione dopo generazione, hanno la responsabilità di imparare dal passato per non ripeterne gli errori. Forse Robinson non è molto originale (almeno in questo romanzo), ma sicuramente è un ottimista.

n  Questa è la storia, non gli imperatori, i generali e le loro guerre, ma gli atti sconosciuti di gente sconosciuta. Il bene che fanno per gli altri si tramanda come una benedizione, fa per lo straniero ciò che tua madre ha fatto per te, e non fare ciò di cui ti ha parlato male. Tutto si tramanda e ci rende quello che siamo.n

Rereading notes at 10percent. 2/2025



This book took me at least 7 years to finish..... what made it
Happen was me getting a Kindle and a Kindle edition. TOWARD THE END I read it at night.

Below note from 2016

returning this to the library.
What I read of this I enjoyed. Perhaps this would be a good summer vacation week book for me.
-back at it ---
This is a book which has a number of unfamiliar historical references . Here are some URL's for details,
Book 1:
Temur the Lame -aka as tamerlane- http://www.historytoday.com/richard-c... .
The Magyar Plains and the Magyar People http://hungarianhistory.freeservers.c...
Zheng-He & the Great Chinese Armada
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm...
The Tooth of the Buddah-Temple of the Tooth
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templ...

This is the second Kim Stanley Robinson novel I have read. This one I picked up based on a friend’s suggestion. I wouldn’t have read this on my own so I am glad I was forced to stretch. Like the previous Robinson I read , The Ministry of the Truth, it is very long, dense, well researched and not super engaging. Rarely did I eagerly turn the pages. Despite that, there is engaging material and ideas worth contemplating.

Here is the synopsis. We follow Muslims, Chinese, Native people, Japanese, Indians but not Europeans. That is because the black plague wiped out virtually all Christian Europeans. This a great way for Americans in particular to look at World history without the usual bias towards Europe. The other interesting idea is to consider is how strange Christian ideology is compared to the other religions. He folds in the Buddhist concept of bardos so that we experience characters after they have died. He also discusses reincarnation and he left me to wonder if some of the characters live again in the novel but he never says. I also liked how he doesn’t sugar coat the universal impulse men in particular have towards war. This is no utopian novel. However, there is one very engaging but too short section on Muslim women imagining a tantalizingly different concept of the world.

On the down side, many of the characters aren’t compelling and I quickly knew that they wouldn’t be around long given the 1500 hundred years of the novel. I also think too many are either political leaders, their advisers or leading scientists so we don’t get the ordinary people’s perspective. I also think economics in general get little attention compared to politics. Overall, though I’m glad I read it.

Už je to delší dobu, kdy bych četl nějakou beletrii (natož pak fantastiku) a dost by se mi to líbilo. Opět mě nalákalo to, že se děj knihy odehrává v alternativní historii. A tato kniha je poměrně roztažena jak v čase, tak na mapě světa.
— Nicméně, všechno popořádku! Děj knihy začíná v polovině 14. století, kdy morová epidemie vyhladila zhruba polovinu Evropy. V alternativní minulosti, kde se odehrává tato kniha má mor mnohem fatální následky a hlavní hrdina této knihy, bojovník mongolského vojka najde Evropu víceméně zcela vylidněnou. Putuje sám, zcela mrtvou Evropou a teprve když doputuje až na pobřeží Středozemního moře jej zajmou arabští obchodníci s otroky a po strastiplné plavbě po moři je prodán do Číny.
— V té Číně ještě prožije spoustu dobrodružství než je zabit. V další části knihy se objevuje v bardu
(což je podle buddhismu prostor, ve kterém duše tráví dobu mezi smrtí a dalším zrozením) a další kapitolu už najdeme našeho hrdinu jinde a v jiném těle. Hlavní hrdinové mění nejen svoji národnost, rasu ale někdy i svoje pohlaví. S každou kapitolou se posouváme v čase a také svět, ve kterém se děj knihy odehrává se stále více a více odlišuje od reality, jako známe my.
— Nejvíce mě asi zaujaly předposlední dvě části románu. V jednom se dostáváme do celosvětového konfliktu, který se odehrává zhruba v době naší první světové války ale zde mezi sebou bojuje Čína, říše z oblasti dnešní Indie a spojené síly muslimů. Nejtěžší a nejzuřivější boje se odehrávají v Himalájích a autor je líčí hodně sugestivně. Další část knihy se odehrává těsně po skončení této války a hlavní hrdinkou je muslimská vědkyně, která se snaží ukrýt své objevy v oblasti válečného využití jaderné energie, jak před nepřáteli, tak před vlastní vládou.
— Autor si docela dost hraje s jazykem a to s pojmenováním jak zemí a různých reálií, tak jak by to znělo z pohledu Arabů, Číňanů či Hindů. Celý „epos“ končí v blízké budoucnosti a s mírnou pachutí čínské levicové propagandy. Jednou větou bych možná román popsal, že jde o realističtější Atlas mraků s buddhistickou omáčkou. Každopádně s motivem světa bez Evropanů jsem se v literatuře setkal poprvé a ani si moc nevzpomínám, že bych o něčem takovém třeba jen slyšel. Čte se to celkem svižně a pokud nejste volič SPD nebo podobný exot a obraz muslimské Konstantinopole dobývané indickými parníky nebo představa Evropy rozdělené na spoustu muslimských chalifátů, které mezi sebou válčí o správný výklad Koránu vám vyvolává blikance, tak vám mohu tuto knihu doporučit.