The Years of Rice and Salt
- 720
- Pages
- about 13 h
- Reading time
- Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
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Our view
“The Years of Rice and Salt” imagines seven centuries of history after a plague that all but empties Europe, on a grand, humane scale. It follows the same reincarnated souls from life to life, and some readers marvel at the research and imagination behind its episodes. The book runs to 720 pages; others find a few stretches dull and get through it in stages.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 2002. The novel explores how world history might have been different if the Black Death plague had killed 99 percent of Europe's population, instead of a third as it did in reality. Divided into ten parts, the story spans centuries, from the army of the Muslim conqueror Timur to the 21st century, with Europe repopulated by Muslim pioneers, the indigenous peoples of the Americas forming a league to resist Chinese and Muslim invaders, and a 67-year-long world war being fought primarily between Muslim states and the Chinese and their allies. While the ten parts take place in different times and places, they are connected by a group of characters that are reincarnated into each time but are identified to the reader by the first letter of their name being consistent in each life.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.3 across 108 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 42% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.4 | 5 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 7.3 | 103 | 95% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Years of Rice and Salt?
It has 720 pages — longer than 92% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 7.6, the closest to this book.
