Kim Stanley Robinson can write. No doubt about it. So, when I picked up the Hugo Award Winning, The Years of Rice and Salt, I knew I was in for a treat. Robinson’s tale is of history reimagined. The characters are interesting, and the perspectives are fun at times. It’s just that the book gets, well, tedious and boring at times.
I love sci-fi because there are great ideas and wild imaginings – even weirdness. Things that you want to chew on cud-like and come back to because they spark your thoughts. There’s little of that here. It’s also a reincarnation tale which I found engaging as a mechanism for reimagining history.
In Robinson’s universe, you die, go hang out in the Bardo, and wait your next spin of the wheel. You are also reborn in clumps of people – jati – so the same souls follow you throughout time.
Spoilers follow.
One of the early twists is that nearly all of Europe is wiped out by a plague (two actually) over a short span of time, so that the continent and its cities are left abandoned. Cool idea, and also a way to remove Christianity and Christians, with all their accompanying issues, from the planet. It’s a great plot device and allows other groups to expand unchecked until they encounter another culture and grind away at each other.
There are very long sections where Robinson harangues us with the philosophies (as he imagines them to be) of various religions and peoples. That’s where I started losing interest. Additionally, I wasn’t overly enthralled with long explanations of the discovery of calculus, gravity, biology, and the natural world in general.
Sorry.
I’ll absolutely read more Robinson, but will likely turn to his Mars series.
On the Feral Scale, this comes in at a 6 for story, a 9 for science, and—new category—an 8 for authorship. Robinson made the telling interesting enough for me to finish a book that I didn’t really like. I “read” it as an audiobook and Bronson Pinchot knocks it out of the park.
Good to have another author’s take on this author. Thank you!