An intriguing tale that spools out over many centuries and across continents, The Years of Rice and Salt is a vast, episodic alternate history whose starting point is that the Black Death kills 99% of the people in Europe rather than a mere third or so as in the real world. The aftermath of this disaster is memorably witnesses by Bold, a Mongol warrior, who then moves on to further globe-trotting adventures. The story then moves out from there, with Buddhist reincarnation as a driving plot device, pinging around the world to show a world that is different from our own and often strangely the same, but focused on figures from the world of Islam and China, and later India and North America. The looping plot is and recurring characters is somewhat reminiscent of Cloud Atlas, which came out just a couple years later… There must have been something in the water in the early 2000s.
Some of my favorite episodes included the accidental discovery of the New World by a lost Chinese fleet; a scientific renaissance led by a disgraced alchemist Samarkand; and a massive flood that sweeps immigrants out from this world’s version of California’s Central Valley to a new life in Fangzhang, the City by the Bay (built on the Northern side of the Golden Gate… half the fun is figuring out where in the world the action is taking place). Other moments are bizarre and terrifying, with some really rough moments of violence and war, especially as the plot moves closer to our own time. One element that is really intriguing is that I think you’d be hard pressed to say which timeline was “better,” both our own world and this alternate history abound with a mix of the horrific and the sublime, progress and regression.
The book is understandably all over the place, and some of the lives chronicled here are far more interesting than others; in all honesty some of the longest sections I personally found quite boring, and I found myself reading in a somewhat distracted manner to get ahead. But the book also has plenty of intriguing ideas, surprising historical twists and rhymes, metafictional jokes, stylistic flourishes, and lovely character moments. The over-arching meta plot builds to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion that was quite moving.
