Look, I'm very impressed but I'm not going to finish it ( )

II have raised my rating of this book from 3 stars to 4 because I find it occasionally popping into my thoughts years after having read it.
The greatest gift this book can bring to a reader is an awareness of history outside the West. By positing an alternate history in which Western Europe is essentially depopulated by plague in the Middle Ages, it gives scope to ask how the East might have developed.

But for me, this helped prompt the question of what the Eastern view of history is. Who made the major mathematical, scientific, and engineering developments in Asia, contemporaneous with or before their being wrought in the West? ( )

This is a strange book with a long, loopy, non-traditional plot structure and extended philosophical ruminations. But I loved its characters, and the issues it grapples with are near to my heart. If you like to read about anthropology, you'll like this. ( )

Kim Stanley Robinson is a brilliant writer, as evidenced by his Mars trilogy. This book however, hardly seems to have been written by the same person. The premise is clever, but the execution of that premise is poor. ( )

While it dragged on at parts, It was still good overall. It might've just been the epub edition that I was reading, but the paperback seems to be much better organized with maps and timelines, so I'd recommend reading that. It also divides the novel into multiple 'books', which makes it easier to keep track of the transitions in the writing style.

I think that the book is more enjoyable if you have previous knowledge of Islamic and Chinese culture, since the book doesn't really explain much of it. I feel that 'Dar Al Islam' as a whole is underdeveloped compared to China.

I think once you understand how the book is written and the characters developed (Characters whose names start with the same letter are that person reincarnated), its much better.

**Spoilers**

My biggest issues are with some of the events, like the Kerala and his nation of Travancore. I just find it hard to believe that he managed to conquer and unite India and Arabia all the way to Constantinople just because he has Steam Engines.

Also, I don't think a 67 year long War is sustainable. From the descriptions it sounds like a super World War 1. People were getting tired of the war after only 4 years, it just seems unlikely that a population will tolerate a stagnant war for 16 times as long.

Somewhere in the last pages, there's the line about how the Ka's change the world, but the Ba's keep it running that I really liked. I really liked the ending, even if it seemed like the author just shouting his views on history to me for a large part of it. ( )