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Book Review of The Years of Rice and Salt

The Years of Rice and Salt
Cattriona avatar reviewed on + 200 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 10


I love alternative history and looked forward to reading this book, but I was greatly disappointed. It is a disjointed set of stories about a small group of people who keep being reincarnated, coming back in different forms, different lives, different genders, even as a tiger once. While this would sound, at face value, to be interesting, it was too jumbled up to be so. As for the alternative history part, the main problem is that the author did his research too well -- I consider myself fairly well educated, but not well educated enough to recognize some of the more subtle historical details that were changed or "alternative". I really struggled, wanting to like this book, but I cannot recommend it.