The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's been several weeks since I posted to my book log, but I'm not dead. It's just that a combination of factors worked to keep me from reading a lot of books in September: a busy stretch at work, our decision to buy a house, and The Years of Rice and Salt.
As you probably know unless you've been hiding in a cave to avoid reading any book reviews, The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history, taking off from the question "What if the Black Plague had killed 99% of the population of Europe?" In Robinson's alternate world, Christianity is essentially wiped out, leaving the world to Islam and Buddhism, and he follows the resulting history over several centuries. He maps out a generally plausible history for the rise of technological civilization over a span of many centuries, from the re-colonization of Europe through the discovery of the New World (by the Chinese), through the present day.
This wasn't an especially easy book to read, even in those rare stretches when I had time to spend on it. The story is told in an episodic manner, following the same small group of souls through a series of reincarnations, and using them to chronicle crucial moments in the history of the world. We see the reincarnated souls (conveniently identified by first initials-- one has names that begin with "K", another with "B", a third with "I") as explorers, adventurers, scientists, scholars, soldiers, and politicians, and each time at a pivotal historical moment. It's an interesting device (if maybe a hair too clever), but it makes the book a little disjointed, as you're thrown into a completely new set of circumstances every time the scene changes. It may be smoother than if he'd done it with entirely new characters in each scene, but then again, I found myself being a little distracted by looking for the signature names, and trying to match them up with previous chapters.
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1 - Paul
"The story is told in an episodic manner, following the same small group of souls through a series of reincarnations, and using them to chronicle crucial moments in the history of the world."
That's a take on the same device he used in the Mars books, and he recieved the same criticism for using it then. People thought it made the books disjointed by telling the story through the eyes of different characters throughout the book instead of focusing on one character. I thought the device made the books much more interesting since you see how much perception differed from reality as you bounced from character to character, and in the Mars books it was the perceptions of the people that built the new world.
I'm interested in seeing how he employed the same tactic this time around.