Changed my original 4/5 to a 5/5... This series is just indisputable. Pure genius.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/111019.html[return][return]If you liked Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver, and I did, you'll like this as well. Qualifies as sf only on the Damon Knight principle. Set in Europe between 1689 and 1704 with most of it concentrated towards the first three years of that period. I thought actually better than Quicksilver, with more imaginative use of settings including Mediterranean, India, and Spanish America. Good stuff.

I picked up and put down Quicksilver over the course of a few years... Books of that physical size tend to intimidate me, so I was in no hurry to start The Confusion.. But once I got an ebook reader the physical size was no longer a factor. While I ostensibly started this book a few years ago, I really started it mid Jan 2013. Once I got into it I couldn't stop, finishing it two weeks later (though with a massive assist from a beach vacation).

It took me way too long, as so much time had passed since I had read it, to recall the events of Quicksilver, even with a Wikipedia assist. Other than that I found the book to be interesting and engaging, and I honestly cared about the characters.

On one hand it could be (easily) argued that this book could use some editing, the length really did allow for some serious pondering on the characters and their story.. That said, this book s certainly not for everyone..

Took me a while to get through the middle of the book but the last 100 pages were the biggest emotional roller coaster I've been on in a while.

Just like the first volume, this one was immensely enjoyable, but suffered from similar faults. It's a true marvel to read the whole thing though - especially the way it adumbrates the trade and politics of the time are superb, and really does send us back. It's historical fiction with a heavy stress on the 'fiction', or perhaps better, historical fantasy. In my humble opinion Stephenson often takes too many liberties with the historical personas and inserts too many fictitious characters - but perhaps the latter is more forgivable than making real historical characters do things that they did not. But of course he does that too, and he is a bit too familiar with some of them (like Leibniz and Newton, where the latter is delineated as quite the camp character). Some characters which I happen to admire, he makes into villains. But at the same time, Stephenson really does bring history to life, and pushes history with all its complexities into our faces. That is the quality which Stephenson's works should be admired most for - his ability to make us see how complex and subtle society actually was in bygone days. We often sneer at things which appear trivial, barbaric, or simplistic to us today - and we are indeed usually mistaken when doing so. Stephenson shows us the how and the why.

Review title: That wild mercury sound

Quicksilver is the old word for mercury, that odd metallic element that is liquid at room temperatures, and the title of the first volume of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy that is his fictional account of the transition to the modern world of the 18th century in which that metal plays a part. While the first volume was a thought-provoking assemblage of the strategic vectors of free-market economics, politics, science, and religion that drove the movement of minds to the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution , this middle volume drills down into the tactics of commerce and geography driving the movement of gold, silver, and the transformative enchantment of mercury that alchemists believed would convert base metals to valuable gold.

When I tried to find a copy of The Confusion it appeared obvious that its sales must have fallen far short of the first volume, and reading it confirms why. Crafting the tactics of commerce and geography into a fictional narrative leads Stephenson into long stretches of convoluted plot development which he offsets with action and dialogue that combines into the occasional eye-roll and a two-star rating. My review title references Bob Dylan"s description of the musical alchemy that transformed his words and music into pure gold during one of his successful mid-career transformations. Stephenson's attempt at alchemy instead results in turgid and poorly-mixed lead and fools gold.

The same main fictional characters are in play here: Jack Shaftoe the n"er-do-well Vagabond providing the action with his band of misfits throughout the Indian Ocean, Asia, and the Spanish Americas, and the brilliant and beautiful Eliza providing the commercial brains and planning amongst the tangle of European nobility and royalty. The strategic historical characters are still here but have too-little onstage time, save for Isaac Newton, the polymath whose mind encompassed calculus, Christianity, alchemy, and direction of the British Mint.

The reader who will find this mix most readable is a student of the rise of international commerce driven by the newly established national banks amidst the shifting governmental structures and national borders driven by interlocking royal families and splintering and shifting religious loyalties. That student, if willing to put up with the scenery-chewing dialogue and bodice-ripping action, will be able to follow the tactical plot twists that lay out the commercial and geographic tactics that are the historical core of the fiction. This is not an unreadable mess by any means, but an 815-page textbook that takes some effort to enjoy as fiction.

I was a huge fan of ‘Quicksilver’. Unfortunately, I didn’t make any notes about why back in 2018. I do remember loving the historical fiction element and everything to do with Daniel and Isaac Newton. I'd just finished 'A Place of Greater Safety' and it had a similar vibe, one I really craved in the aftermath of finishing the Mantel. I read 'Quicksilver' over the summer, and on a visit to Paris in September 2018 I bought ‘The Confusion’ in Shakespeare & Co. I was clearly gunning to find out what happened next, and yet it’s taken me three years to get around to it.

I suspect part of that might have been that Jack lives. I’m clearly in the minority of people for whom the ‘swashbuckling hero with a foul mouth and few morals’ – according to the Guardian – was the weakest part of ‘Quicksilver’. I wanted more Newton and Leibniz, and second to that Eliza. In fact a vast proportion of this book is devoted to a detailed rendition of various of Jack’s plans, down to the detail of ‘the mast is seven hundred feet long and fifty feet wide and it sat at an angle of twenty degrees to …’ The most annoying thing about this is that all these plans ‘fail’; we go from one scenario to another and skip the bits of ‘oops, foiled again!’ I had to wait till page 299 for Leibniz’s library, and even then it was scanty compared to ‘here is some excessive detail about ships.’

The action spreads out over many, many years, which has the effect of diluting the tension to homeopathic levels. Again, I’m not invested in Jack/Eliza, and the story makes only cursory efforts to get me invested, so there’s no sense of urgency – particularly when Jack ends up in countries that, in the context of seventeenth century Europe, were as far away as the moon is to twenty-first century Europe.

Also, the phonetic rendition of Irish accents? Just. No.

He also commits a fatal textile history error in calling something ‘homespun’. My understanding of the topic is far from comprehensive, but broadly before the industrial revolution every textile was ‘spun’ at ‘home’, so using the word in a pejorative sense with regard to quality is … incorrect.

That being said – a book that’s uneven and off-focus from Neal Stephenson is still heads-and-shoulders above its rivals. It’s not as good as ‘Quicksilver’, but it’s still better than the vast majority of either historical fiction or swashbuckling fantasy (which is the other genre I’d file it under). I am curious to see where ‘The System of the World’ ranks in comparison, although possibly it’ll be another three years before I get to it.

“[…] if the world were populated solely by persons who loved and desired each other symmetrically, it might be happier, but not so interesting.”

I love this quote, although one thing Eliza is not is particularly preoccupied with her romantic conquests.

Funny:

“[…] Moseh’s plan was to synergistically leverage the value-added of diverse core competencies into a virtual entity whose whole was more than the sum of its parts…’
Jack stared at him blankly.
‘It sounds brilliant in Armenian,’ Vrej sighed.”

Surendranath’s BATNA!

“You too, my lady, may so arrange it that you shall hear from [Sir Thomas Neale, who runs the Mint] frequently, and even discover him loitering in front of your House several times a Week, merely by giving him some cause to phant’sy that you are in control of some bored Capital that wants an Adventure.”

And I love this encapsulation of Leibniz’s philosophy:

“[…] What do we know of monads thus far?’
‘Infinitely small.’
‘One mark.’
‘All the universe explainable in terms of their interactions.’
‘Two marks.’
‘They perceive all the other monads in the universe.’
‘Three. And -?’
‘And they act.’
‘They act, based on what?’
‘Based on what they perceive, Dr Leibniz.’”

I absolutely love this book and the whole Baroque Cycle. The only reason I'm not giving it five stars is because it's far too deep and detailed for most readers. Unless you happen to be a scientist AND have a serious interest in cryptography AND an interest in the deep minutiae of international finance AND you're a serious history geek, large portions of this book are going to bore you to the point of wondering why you're bothering to still read it.

But if you happen to be the sort of reader whose library shelves include astrophysics and the history of science, interleaved with political theory and economic discourse, then you'll probably dive into this epic series and devour it as happily as I have.

The story just keeps getting better--longer but better. It was more fun in the first book to meet all of those famous scientists, and they become more matter-of-fact participants in the story, but the scope and detail of Stephenson's writing is unparalleled in my experience. His knowledge of geography, commerce, multiple cultures and all types of warfare, even chemistry, is staggering. I'm taking a break from 900 page books for a while, then right back to the finale!

This was okay, only okay, and as such must rank as a disappointment. The segments which followed the adventures of Jack were just dull, to such an extent that by the time I got halfway through the book I was just skipping over them entirely.

Book 2 of The Baroque Cycle, and when we last left off, Jack Shaftoe, king of the vagabonds was unfortunately sold to slavery on a Barbary galley after a business deal went awry (don't you hate it when that happens), Eliza the rescued Turkish harem slave, through her ingenuity and enterprise, was made Duchess in TWO different countries, and now is plotting some nefarious business deals (there are a lot of business deals in the book) in Louis XIV's court, and Daniel Waterhouse the English scientist was... dying from a kidney stone because he refused to be operated on (due to an irrational fear of being cut open so close to his sensitive areas).

Book 2 continues the CRAAAAZY adventures of the trio; which includes Jack taking over a Dutch pirate ship and somehow becoming a King in Hindoostan (India) with a term of 3 years (naturally) while plotting to steal gold from a Spanish treasure ship coming in from Mexico; Eliza plotting the downfall of a Saxony Baron who kidnapped her son that she conceived with the French royal cryptologist; and Daniel convincing Isaac Newton to become the master of the English Mint (you know, that one in the Tower of London in charge of making coins) to revive the western monetary system... Meanwhile all three was embroiled in a convoluted conspiracy to get their hands on a legendary stash of gold allegedly leftover from King Solomon (yes, THAT King Solomon), the first ever alchemist (or something)... Shenanigans of the highest degree, in other words.

Book 2 of the Baroque Cycle continues to be convoluted in the most entertaining way. I suspect that this is not a book for everyone, since I lend book 1 "Quicksilver" to a friend of mine and he "just can't get into it" because he thought it was kinda slow. I find the book very funny, and also a very fresh take of "historic fiction" (if we can call this that) genre.

Slaves turned Pirates turned Bucaneers, Courtesans turned Duchess' turned World Monetary Manipulators, and Natural Philosophers turned Mathematicians turned Alchemists?!

It's Baroque Cycle 2! Leaping thirty years into the past from Baroque Cycle 1 we find a whole new slew of characters involved with western world changes that set in motion the events of the first novel. And like most Stephenson novels, he has done his research.

Filled with all sorts of over my head math and flip flop politics of the late 17th Century, Neil Stephenson knows how to balance a novel with actual History while supplying a welcome plot of fantastic fiction. And like all his books, you catch yourself wishing it was all real. Maybe it is. How much of it is? I don't know. I want to know.

Which got me thinking this,

introducing children to Historical Fiction in school could lead to an actual interest in History?

I know I now want to know about the Whigs and the Torries of the 1690's, the war between France and England and Holland, Piracy as a military tactic, The great atomic free will rift between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz

and most importantly;

what happened in this time period to change the worlds currency from hard (Silver/Gold) to soft (numbers in a bank)?!!!