Years of Rice and Salt / Kim Stanley Robinson / 672 pages / Asian Setting

Though this book wasn't exactly what I was expecting, I really enjoyed it nonetheless. The premise that the plagues in Europe in the 14th century led to 99% of all Europeans dying, rather than the 33% that actually died is really interesting. The author posits that the world would be divided between two major superpowers, the Chinese and Dar-es-Islam with other powers coming into their own in the 19-21st centuries, Travancore (aka India) and the Haudenosaunee (a league made up of Native American nations).

The story is told with the idea that the same people keep reincarnating over the centuries with the K character being rebellious and often a leader and the B character is usually hopeful and often religious. The biggest thing I did not expect was long discourses about religion, philosophy, and science, but I think the author was really trying to get the whole western European mindset out of our American heads to see how the mindset of Buddhists, Daoists, and Muslims affect how people in the Eastern Hemisphere live, work, love, and learn.

At nearly 700 pages, it's a long book and it took me about 3 weeks to get through it all, with the combination of both reading and listening to the audiobook while commuting to and from work. Pick up this book only if you are in the mood for something really meaty, not something fluffy.

A Different Flesh / Harry Turtledove / 292 pgs

What an amazingly thought provoking and interesting book. The story is of an alternate America where those who landed at Jamestown in 1607 did not find Native American humans, but homo erectus, otherwise known as Sims. These hairy "sub-humans" have no power of speech, no chins and no foreheads. They communicate with grunts and hoots and use only sharpened rocks as weapons. In the subsequent short stories from 1610 to 1988, we learn about how the absence of Native Americans as we know them, and the presence of Sims drastically alters the USA we know in this world.

The book was written in 1988 and has some problems that we in 2019 could possibly find offensive given our knowledge now of colonialism and the mistreatment of Native Americans. In this made up world, black slavery is outlawed a good 50 years earlier than it was in the real world. Steam engines also made an appearance about 50 years earlier. The USA is based on the Roman Republic with two censors instead of one president. In 1988, Sims are used as test subjects for AIDS cure experiments, being deliberately exposed to the virus first, something we would barely allow in animals now, certainly not human beings, but are Sims human beings? That's the question the book wrestles with throughout. 

Underground Airlines / Ben H. Wilson / 327 pgs

Underground Airlines was an amazing ride! The book is set in 2016, but in an America in which the Civil War was never fought and amendments were passed in 1861 that would keep slavery legal in the United States for all time. Over the years, most states have chosen to abolish slavery, but there are still four left in the South that have not only maintained slavery, but incorporated it, where big corporations now own slaves, give them numbers, tattoos, and shuffle them around massive plantations. Another amendment to the Constitution requires ALL states in which an escaped slave is found to send them back to their owners, and the FBI is legally required to do all it can to track down escaped slaves. Our anti-hero, Victor, is one such escaped slave who the FBI kept to help track down other escaped slaves. He's a master of disguise and voices, doing all he can to infiltrate one group dedicated to helping escaped slaves make it to Canada. I found this book very thought-provoking and captivating. I think anyone who likes alternate history books, dystopias, science fiction, or thrillers will enjoy it. I haven't read Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad yet, so I can't make a comparison, but I can't imagine I would like it more than Underground Airlines.

My Lady Jane / Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows / 491 pgs

Hilarious. Just--hilarious. Perfectly wonderful as an audiobook.

If you know the story of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine-Day Queen of England, you know it has a tragic ending. This story, not so much. In alternate history at its best (or at least most fun), Jane's story has become an adventure and romance that involves shapeshifters, kings, thieves, and one husband who happens to be a horse (at least part of the time).

Jane prefers books to boys, and runs through lists of synonyms in her head when stressed. She is stubborn and smart and resourceful, but not enough to escape a wedding to a boy she's just met. After all, how do you refuse your dying cousin's last wish, when he also happens to be your best friend AND your king?

Gifford spends each day as a horse and each night as a human. As an Eðian (shapeshifter) who can't control his change, he is the despair of his father, Lord Dudley, who nevertheless plots to marry him off to Jane. G. is content to be a horse, most of the time, but his family's political maneuvering and the arrival of his bossy new bride might spell the end of his equilibrium.

Edward is the king, which you'd think would be satisfying. Except he's a teenager, dying of a slow disease, and the main problem on his mind is that he wants to be kissed. That, and take care of the country, which is gearing up for a bloody fight between the Eðians and Verities (non-shapeshifters). So he's easily convinced to change the line of succession and name Jane his heir, right before his oh-so-convenient demise.

At least, that's what's supposed to happen. What actually happens as we follow these three characters is a funny, perilous, snark-filled journey that goes from hilarity to danger and back as quickly as Jane can finish one of her books.

Those of a geeky persuasion will enjoy the added layer of references to popular culture and Shakespeare, but all readers who want a fast-paced, humor-filled adventure with a dash of romance will find this history is one worth learning.

11/22/63 / Stephen King / 842 pgs

This book has been recommended to me SO many times over the last couple of years, but for some reason, I have only now finally read it. I don't WHY it took me so long! I love alternative history. I love time travel. I just knew it was a really big book. Even then, I'm unsure why that would daunt me. I used to love reading long books.

Anyways, it was a great book. I have very little, if anything, I can say negative about it other than the length. I feel it could have probably thinned down a bit, cutting out a bit of the repetition, but the book intrigued me and put me on the edge of my seat regardless.

Jake Epping is a recently divorced high school English teacher in Maine. When a friend, the owner of a local diner, calls Jake to come over to the diner, Jake learns of sort of "rabbit hole" through which one can travel back to a certain date and time in 1958. However, Jake is given a task that will change his life, and perhaps the lives of everyone else in the world - stay in the past and find a way to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.