index index index index So you've read the first, and you can't help noticing that many people quit on the Baroque trilogy at that point. Should you keep going?

I guess it depends. This is a trilogy that is after enormous ideas. Where a straight history would focus on finance or economics or science or math or transportation or politics or power or even the human heart as the driving force behind history, only a novelist could demonstrate dramatically how all of these forces are related and combined and intertwined.

Or, as Stephenson puts it in this second volume, "Because it made a good story, Bob supposed, and people could only make sense of complicated matters through stories."

Of the three volumes, this is the most narratively straightforward, and it covers virtually the entire planet, focusing mainly on Jack Shaftoe and Eliza. It has everything that makes Stephenson engaging-- some great action sequences, some hilarious bursts of comic scene and dialogue, and large and complex ideas worked out in many ways.

Stephenson remains a master of pacing, and nobody can come up with so many different ways to set scenes of conversation.

And if this trilogy is Lord of the Rings, Cryptonomicon is the Hobbit-- you owe it to yourself to dig out Crypto again for all the many many many ways in which it is linked to this trilogy. Much of what connects them is easily forgotten (I had, for instance, forgotten that the mountain named after Eliza in this trilogy is in fact the site of the data haven in Crypto).

This trilogy is genius writing, and if Stephenson has lapsed in any way, it's in requiring a bit more thinking while providing a bit less mindless spectacle. If Quicksilver didn't quite hook you, I still encourage you to keep reading!Not as consistent as Quicksilver as I recall the latter. When it was good (as it often was) it was very good, otherwise it was just so so.if you read the first book, Baroque Cycle, then the ending keeps you in suspense.
This book builds on top of it with each page an unpredictable turn of events.
I was flipping fifty pages per day. Thats how i know "The Confusion" have got my attention.
Warning: lots of exclaimation marks from beginning till the end. I was not confused, but shocked!
Kudos to Mr. Neal Stephenson.The same qualities - good and bad - that plagued QUICK SILVER also are found in CONFUSION (and SYSTEM OF THE WORLD by the way). On the plus side is the originality of the story, the description of the origins of modern science, the history of the time from both a royal and a common perspective, fascinating characters and a writing style that merges seamlessly with the story. On the down side, it's the same old complaints that plague the entire series: Excessive wordiness (using ten words when one would do), excessive foreign terms (especially French), ridiculously long titles and names, long pages where nothing happens.
Still, the stories this time, the actual plot and actions, were superior to the previous work. The book could easily carry a sub-plot: The story of Eliza and Jack. Of course our hero Mr. Waterhouse is there with all of his wonderful insights along with Boyle, Newton, Liebwitz and other Founding Fathers of the Next Epoch. I especially appreciate how the author includes monetary policy and economics changes that were every bit - if not more so - as revolutionary as the scientific and political ones. Many times this is omitted or glossed over by writers who are either ignorant of the subject or think it is boring. From this trilogy one gathers that the Scientific Revolution would have been impossible in the old barter/feudalistic system that preceeded it. This money tale is continued and amplified in the next book as the pace quickens. Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy/Series is considered one of the great science-fiction collections ever written, forming the basis of countless derivative and inspired works over the past fifty years. The Baroque Cycle will not, unfortunately, inspire fifty years of copycats, for a unique reason: it would be far too difficult to undertake with even moderate effort. This is a nine-book/ three-volume masterpiece of historical fiction that really has no peer in my experience (and please comment if you find any!)

As an aside, I could, at length, review each of the nine books and prattle on endlessly about this or that, but that's far too many reviews for what I intend to say about the Cycle as a whole. My comments apply to all books equally.

The cycle begins in the mid 17th century and spans the adulthood of one Daniel Waterhouse, a fictional contemporary of Isaac Newton. Of course, it also traces the life of one Jack Shaftoe, a fictional hero with his roots in every pirate story ever written or filmed. And then there's the mysterious Enoch Root, popping up again from the Cryptonomicon to move things along as the deux ex machina of certain story elements.

The number of interleaved story lines would be an impressive enough feat of writing, but the historical references were simply amazing. The sheer amount of research Mr. Stephenson invested for the Cycle must have been enormous. In short, Mr. Stephenson describes London before, during, and after the Great Fire of 1666 politically, sociologically, geographically, architecturally, and economically; he performs the same rigor of place-setting with Hanover and present-day Germany, Paris and present-day France, diverse parts of Egypt, Algeria, India, Mexico, South America, and Boston. This is the kind of book series that would inspire high-school students to PAY ATTENTION. For, if the students really do their homework and have a teacher partnered with them to put the book details into their proper context, you could quite possible craft an entire school year around the nine books, such is the depth and breadth of scholastic research involved in putting together such a series. It's no small achievement or idle boast: Mr. Stephenson has in some way taken his education and put it to its greatest use, as an inspiration to students.

All of this would be for naught if the stories weren't truly excellent at their core, and they are. You could boil down the Shaftoe story line to "pirate story" but that sells it short after the first book -- and there are eight more to go. What starts as a pirate story quickly become something of a precursor to spycraft and terrorism/counter-terrorism in the 17th and 18th centuries: currency manipulation, political scandals, and assassinations. I haven't even mentioned Isaac Newton versus Gottfried Leibniz in the battle for Calculus, or Isaac Newton's Alchemy, the reconstruction of London post-fire, the gold trade, the silver trade, piracy in the Atlantic and Pacific, the timber economy, the commodities exchange of northern Europe, the court at Versailles, and so on. I'm astonished as I write this.

This is well-worth the time invested to read, as a Cycle. If Mr. Stephenson ever posted his complete bibliography, or if some doctoral student ever decided to craft that two-semester, eight-course class tracing the book's scholarship, I would be among the first to delve deeply into it and re-learn my forgotten history, mathematics, and economics. Simply, this is one of the finest fiction series ever written.

-Fred

In the year 1689, a cabal of Barbary galley slaves -- including one Jack Shaftoe, a.k.a. King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Half-Cocked Jack, lately and miraculously cured of the pox -- devises a daring plan to win freedom and fortune. A great adventure ensues, rife with battles, chases, hairbreadth escapes, swashbuckling, bloodletting, and danger -- a perilous race for an enormous prize of silver ... nay, gold ... nay, legendary gold that will place the intrepid band at odds with the mighty and the mad, with alchemists, Jesuits, great navies, pirate queens, and vengeful despots across vast oceans and around the globe.

Meanwhile, back in Europe ...

The exquisite and resourceful Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, master of markets, pawn and confidante of enemy kings, onetime Turkish harem virgin, is stripped of her immense personal fortune by France's most dashing privateer. Penniless and at risk from those who desire either her or her head (or both), she is caught up in a web of international intrigue, even as she desperately seeks the return of her most precious possession -- her child.

While ...

Newton and Leibniz continue to propound their grand theories as their infamous rivalry intensifies, stubborn alchemy does battle with the natural sciences, nobles are beheaded, dastardly plots are set in motion, coins are newly minted (or not) in enemy strongholds, father and sons reunite in faraway lands, priests rise from the dead ... and Daniel Waterhouse seeks passage to the Massachusetts colony in hopes of escaping the madness into which his world has descended.

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