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The Years of Rice and Salt

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Overview

With the incomparable vision and breathtaking detail that brought his now-classic Mars trilogy 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 Years of Rice and SaltIt is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur-the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe's population was destroyed.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews for this product are not available at this time.

Author Information

Bio of Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He is the author of eleven previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. He lives in Davis, California.

Customer Reviews

  • 5 stars out of 5Fascinating

    Posted December 02, 2008 by PenDever, Albuquerque

    You have to pay attention, but it is worth it.

  • 5 stars out of 5Tremendous book

    Posted July 09, 2009 by Jean, Waterloo

    Tremendous book- I think Robinson's best. Historical alternative and interesting look at following a character through history via reincarnation. Loved the idea of the "Bardo." It is a place one goes before moving on to the next life time, and the things that happen there are fascinating.

Additional Info

Imprint

Spectra

Filesize

2.33 MB

Number of Pages

784

eBook ISBN

9780553897609

Awards

  • Arthur C. Clarke Award
  • Hugo Awards
  • Library Journal Best Books of the Year
  • Locus Awards

Excerpt from: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Another journey west, Bold and Psin find an empty land; Temur is displeased, and the chapter has a stormy end.

Monkey never dies. He keeps coming back to help us in times of trouble, just as he helped Tripitaka through the dangers of the first journey to the west, to bring Buddhism from India to China.

Now he had taken on the form of a small Mongol named Bold Bardash, horseman in the army of Temur the Lame. Son of a Tibetan salt trader and a Mongol innkeeper and spirit woman, and thus a traveler from before the day of his birth, up and down and back and forth, over mountains and rivers, across deserts and steppes, crisscrossing always the heartland of the world. At the time of our story he was already old: square face, bent nose, gray plaited hair, four chin whiskers for a beard. He knew this would be Temur's last campaign, and wondered if it would be his too.

One day scouting ahead of the army, a small group of them rode out of dark hills at dusk. Bold was getting skittish at the quiet. Of course it was not truly quiet, forests were always noisy compared to the steppe; there was a big river ahead, spilling its sounds through the wind in the trees; but something was missing. Birdsong perhaps, or some other sound Bold could not quite identify. The horses snickered as the men kneed them on. It did not help that the weather was changing, long mare's tails wisping orange in the highest part of the sky, wind gusting up, air damp--a storm rolling in from the west. Under the big sky of the steppe it would have been obvious. Here in the forested hills there was less sky to be seen, and the winds were fluky, but the signs were still there.