(no subject)

Started reading The Years of Rice and Salt, and after three chapters had to stop and google to discover just how AU the AU is. Um well, Timur died in 1405 and Zheng He's first expedition was 1413, and I'm not sure it'd take one man eight years+ to walk and ride down from (that end of the world I can never keep straight) somewhere north-east of Turkey to the Mediterranean, though it might. But people in Mombasa are talking like Zheng is a known fixture, not an admiral on his first voyage to the Indies (and anyway, didn't it take him longer to get to Africa?) More to the point, the Black Death ravaged Europe in the 1340's, so if it's Black Death we should have bleached bones 75 years later and not still-preserved food. So, yeah, AU.

It's fascinating reading so far but I hope it's not all going to be the Great Figures of History Diorama with Guest Apperance by the Parthenon.
( Cut for Komahoshi brainlessness )