The Years of Rice and Salt (2003)
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Bantam Books
Format: Novel
Genre: Fiction / Science Fiction
Date: June 3, 2003
Pages: 763 pages
Number of issues: 1
ISBN: 9780553580075
ASIN: 0553580078
Language: English
Also known as: Awake to Emptiness
Adaptation: Inspiration
Summary:
Book One: Awake to Emptiness
Bold and Psin, scouts in Timur's army, discover a Magyar city where all the inhabitants have died from a plague. Timur turns his army around and orders the scouting party executed to avoid the plague, but Bold escapes and wanders through the dead lands of Eastern Europe, encountering only one lone native. Upon reaching the sea he is captured by Turkish Muslim slave traders and sold to Zheng He's Chinese treasure fleet. Bold befriends a young African slave, named Kyu, whom he cares for after the Chinese castrate him.
In China, they are kept as kitchen slaves until Kyu burns the restaurant and convinces Bold to escape with him. The pair make their way north to Beijing where they find work at the palace of Zhu Gaozhi, heir to the Yongle Emperor. The vengeful Kyu, hating the Chinese for what they have done to him, incites violence between the eunuchs and the Confucian administrative officials. After his scheming is discovered, Kyu is assassinated.
Kyu and Bold reunite in the bardo, where Bold explains to Kyu the concepts of cyclical reincarnation alongside one's jati. He explains that their jati also includes Psin, the restaurant owners Shen and I-li, and an unknown number of others, and that their group has been especially close since an avalanche in Tibet killed them all at once in a previous cycle. Kyu resolves to do better in his next life.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt
