Wot I Read Third Times the Charm Edition

I picked this book up when I was in high school. I don't remember where it came from or what drew me to it, but every reader has those few books that Changed Them. That took root in the soul and affected everything about them afterwards and this book is it for me. I must've read it a dozen times, through and through, in high school. It's probably a good part of the reason I'm as fascinated as I am with Chinese and Japanese culture, as interested as I am in deep history, as interested as I am in the intersection of religion and science, and as interested as I am in historical fiction.

And then I basically forgot it existed for 20 years lol

Happy to say though, that it still holds up.

The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history of Earth. The divergent point is an unnamed disease (likely the Plague; possibly the plague mixed with another disease) that wipes out 99% of Europe's population. As a result, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Native American cultures come to dominate the world.

Structurally, it's a series of connected short stories that follow continually recurring souls as they live their lives, die, rejoin together in the Buddhist bardo, and then emerge again. You can track who the characters are by the first letter of the name as well as their general personalities and it's the friction of these personalities that cause the conflict that drive the plot. It's both lower-case history as the characters bicker and fight and journey and Capital-H History as these characters also shape the history of the world.

It's definitely a book I recommend but it's hard to do so outright without covering the caveats: as with any alternate history, the further out you get from the point of divergence with the real world, the sparser the details become and the more you need to suspend your disbelief. Robinson manages this dilemma by condensing some details (e.g. the Scientific Revolution in everything from optics to sound and gravity is credited largely to three guys in Samarkand) as well as by focusing the story on the experiences of the characters in each of the anthology's short stories while (often not-so-)subtly feeding you details about the world in the background.

But even then, with the focus on characters-over-history, it's hard not to notice that the later stories become much more heavy-handed in their discussion of the author's philosophies about history and progress as the novel sets up its finale and draws all the threads of theme together to make the final point.

It's not a bad philosophy and, honestly, pretty uplifting in a humanistic way. As far as novels go, it just doesn't quite nail the landing largely because it doesn't set one up. It's not a novel in the traditional sense, with a traditional novel's structure. It's 800 pages of thought experiments mixed with short stories, attempts to explore history through the lens of human social and religious progress, and a bit of fantasy mythology to as the connective tissue to keep tie everything together.

So your mileage with the book is largely going to depend on how invested in the project's ideas you become. It's not that it's a bad journey and some of the scenes and setpieces are absolutely memorable (my particular favorites are the The Haj in the Heart and the surreal story of the sixty-year world war). It's just that it's the sort of work where the ambition far outpaces the final product.

A few other caveats: the novel largely focuses on China and Muslim countries, with only occasional dips into India and North America which creates the notable hole where Africa and South America are underrepresented and only barely mentioned (and even then, North American natives are largely seen from the perspective of Chinese/Muslim characters). It's disappointing, but I can't fault the author for sticking with what he knows (Chinese Buddhism).

Still, it's a novel I think I'll return to now and again - especially in times when I need a reminder of the grander scope of humanity's journey when, lately, it feels like humankind is just revving in the mud.

Alas, this one had such a neat concept. So apparently this guy, Thomas De Quincey, wrote Confessions of an Opium-Eater, which is considered one of the first examples of "drug addict writes about their experiences and struggles with addiction" literature and it really scandalized Victorian Britain. De Quincey would go on to write a lot of other really (by Victorian-standards, I guess) shocking and lurid books and pamphlets as an early true-crime writer as well. This is all real. Real guy, real writings.

What the novel does is turn De Quincey into a character who is pitted up against someone who recreates the murders he wrote about to get revenge on him. De Quincey is suspected to be the initial murderer and he gets lasso'd into solving the mystery.

Between the concept and the haunting first chapter – describing the first set of murders and the initial investigation into them – the novel was off to a good start. It, unfortunately, doesn't go anywhere from there except downward.

I have a book I can point to when I want to describe "bad dialogue". Everything is wooden, all of the characters sound the same. Half of every conversation is an infodump – clearly the author did a ton of research into historical London in order to give the novel a good grounding in the setting, but couldn't figure out any way to do that except to either A) put a two paragraph history lesson at the beginning of every chapter; or B) have every conversation read like this:

"Did you used to live on Boopadoop Street?"

"Boopadoop Street? It was named after the Boopadoopers and was the site of the Boopadoop Riots of 1685 when Boop Booperson murdered his whole family. This resulted in the Gin Taxes of 1687. I remember the way that the street smelled. It always made me feel so happy. The Mayor of Boopadoop Street went on to become the Queen of England. Yes, I used to live there."

Now imagine that, but in nearly every single conversation. And it's always told in the same wooden, clipped tone. (This is probably me reading too much into it based on my own experiences, but it sounds like my dialogue after I've written it and then gone back some days later to edit it and then have to work to make my additions match the tone and cadence of what was there before. The way this dialogue feels as it comes out reads like the author never made those additional editing passes. But who knows?)

And it's so repetative. All the main characters have exactly one trait that the author needs to keep reminding you about, afraid you'll forget. Emily is rebellious and you know that because she's wearing bloomers. Bloomers, as you'll know, are controversial because they represent female independence from heavy skirts. And Emily is wearing them because, to her, they represent how independent she is. That's why she's there because of her bloomers I mean because of her independence. Repeat that same kind of thing for each character. (Maybe that's how the author wants us to tell the characters apart given how they all sound the exact same.)

It's like that with plot details too: over the course of the novel, the characters mention John Snow, one of the first people to identify the source of cholera as being tainted water. One of the main characters mentions him, they go and visit him in the course of their investigation, the characters remind you who he is again a few chapters later and then not even two pages later this conversation happens:

“He’ll bleed to death,” Emily said.

“You heard me mention Dr. Snow.” Becker jumped to the bottom of the stairs. “He lives the next street over, on Frith Street. Ryan sent me to him on Saturday night.”

Sigh.

Look.

C'mere. This messages is for the author. Mr Morrell? Can I call you David? You're an author with a long bibliography. Really, it's an accomplishment. You should be proud. You've written a lot of books from a lot of different perspectives including Rambo (really? Rambo? anyway….)

You need to trust that the people reading your novels are…you know, like, people. And not, like, creatures with the stereotypically incorrect memory of a goldfish. You have to trust that the reader – who is willing to invest the time into reading a novel, can remember more than just the last word that they read.

Also please hire an editor willing to tell you no. A murder mystery where the villain is revealed halfway through and there's still 200 pages left to go is…too long. And I say this as a bag of hot air herself.

But hey, at least it taught me about Confessions of an Opium-Eater which does sound like an interesting read. I'm usually happy to read sequels to bad books if there's something fun about them, but there really isn't anything to recommend this one and so I won't be finishing off the series.

I needed a palate cleanser after the last one so I went with a detective story I've read before and I know is solid.

I'll be blunt: this book is bleak as fuck. Earth is about six months away from being hit by a civilization-ending meteor and as society decays around our main character, he struggles to solve a murder that everyone else has written off as an end-of-the-world suicide because having that little bit of control is the only way that he can keep himself sane. He's the kind of person that needs to have the puzzle solved in a world where the puzzle doesn't matter anymore and the book its in is on fire.

I've read these books before. I remember, explicitely, finishing the third book in the trilogy while sitting on the literal beach and feeling so cold.

My favorite thing about the book is how the author dripfeeds information about the state of the world to the reader in a way that feels like the character through which that information is being told is desperately trying to think about anything else - like trying to drown out an annoying sound with white noise that's growing increasingly louder and louder and louder.

I'm going to re-read the rest of the trilogy too and will probably write up more about them as a whole. I remember this one being the weakest of the three and I think that's still true. The last third of the book, as the answers to the case(s) all fall into place feels a bit rushed and a bit dreamy.

But overall, it's good to read like….a good mystery after whatever the hell the other book was.

It…wasn't bad. It had a good narrative voice - it's just that the narrative voice wasn't necessarily totally engaging. The language is clipped and short which is fine - Eisenhorn is a man of few words (humorously lampshaded by literally being physically unable to smile). The plot just covers a lot of territory, moves very quickly between settings and scenes, and there doesn't seem to be an effort to really settle down and soak in the scenery. Granted, I know that this is a setting that people reading the books are probably familiar with and the author was probably relying on people to fill in the blanks for him in those regards but still.

That said, I did enjoy it, and there were a lot of moments that really touching in an understated kind of way. There's a scene where Eisenhorn is forced to reveal to a character that she's a psychic blank – she's basically someone who psychically makes everyone around her uncomfortable (look, it makes sense in the context of the universe, okay?) and he is particularly weak to that effect being a psychic himself but he still sits down and helps her work through her grief. So there's a kind of subtle kindness to the character and the sort of tragedy is that he can't ever celebrate that kindness because of the grimdark nature of the universe.

I just wish we got more of those moments. At the end of the novel, when Eisenhorn is recovering from his injuries after saving the day, there's some really adorable scenes as his crew – the characters he's been fighting with this entire time – come to visit and talk with him. The dialogue is really cute and charming but we never see any of the buildup to that, which is a real shame. There are multiple multi-week periods where the characters are traveling through literal Hell the Warp to get to the next planet that are just mostly skipped over. I imagine that's where the majority of this bonding occurred - I just wish we got to see more than a few words of it.

Look, I'm a sucker for the Found Family trope okay and if the book is telling me that a family can be an Imperial Inquisitor, his Pilot, his Walking Encyclopedia, his Psychic White Noise Generator Girlfriend, his Conduit to Hell, and Judge Dredd From Wish.com then I want to see them actually becoming a family.

It's short so that's probably a big part of why I enjoyed it too. I finished it in about four hours.

This review contains spoilers. Also note the content warning at the top of the entry.

Weird little book that I'm not sure how I feel about. Unnamed narrator lives in a religious cloister after some kind of unspecificed ecological disaster. The cult is violent and mysterious, the members are expected to report and enact punishments on one another with a healthy helping of body horror. The cult's elected holy figures are mutilated for holy purposes. Blood, gore, torture etc.

I liked the paranoid, haunting atmosphere. I like the sense of death surrounding the characters from the fears of it coming from the outside world to fears of the ghosts of the cloister's previous occupants (dead in the apocalypse). I like the mysticism and the magical realism. I like the sense of mystery about the state of the world. I'm just sort of….unsure about how I feel with regards to the ending.

Spoilers Begin Here

The final pages reveal that the cult is a sex-cult. Those elected to join the holy saints in the locked-down portion of the cloister are mutilated and turned into sex-slaves for the master of the cult, the only male character in the narrative who is never seen and only referred to as "He". It's not exactly a surprise reveal - it's pretty heavily foreshadowed in the early pages of the story.

The horror from the novel is meant to be, I believe, the universality of violence against women. That even in, what is functionally a post-apocalyptic society, women will still have to suffer for the barest of scraps and safety. Even when there's complete destruction and the breakdown of society, it's patriarchal violence that women have to fear but is also the only thing that will keep them relatively safe.

The cloister is, relatively speaking, a safe haven from the perils of the outside world and the women inside are fed, clothed, and cared for (albeit to not exactly great standards). And in order to attain this meager safety, they have to trade their bodies and live lives of distrust and paranoia. It's a system where they're encouraged to report on and betray each other, where there's no way to build any sense of loyalty, safety, or community because each member is made to turn on one another and they seek to harass, punish, and hurt one another for a sense of control (especially against the lower class servants in the convent).

And I think with this ending I'm just sort of…disappointed that that's all that it is? Maybe that was the author's point? That no matter how you dress it up in religious mystery, the truth is much more inescapably predictable and sad? For all the horror of the body mutilations and the horror of the world that they live in and the horror of paranoia, the truth is just that…banal?

Is believing that a novel conveys its point too well a valid criticism?

Spoilers are over.

Either way, I think it was a good read. It was definitely short enough that the problems don't really linger clocking in at 144 (ebook) pages. The author is apparently very well regarded in terms of writing short horror works like this and lots of people consider this to be one of her weaker works so I've grabbed some of her other books.