See my review of Quicksilver. This one is more tedious, and despite the fact that I normally like a book that has global scope, this certainly wasn't as interesting as I thought it could have.

At the end of Book One Jack Shaftoe was on is to becoming a galley slave. He and several other galley slaves of a myriad different nationalities end up taking over the galley, robbing a Spanish treasure ship, and then escaping across land to the Indian Ocean. There they lose their fortune in gold to a pirate queen. Getting into the good graces of the queen they manage to get another ship, manufacture some watered steel to trade in Japan for some quicksilver, which is then sold in Mexico to the mines for a replacement fortune. Unfortunately at the end of this circumnavigation Jack ends up in the hands of King Louis, where he is forced into taking on a secret mission for the king, to be performed in Book three.

Meanwhile Eliza is in Europe manipulating the financial systems in furtherance of her own schemes. Along the way she has several children and gets married and becomes a duchess.

Daniel wants nothing more than to get out of Europe and move to the Massachusetts colony, where he can continue his own studies in private. He succeeds in doing this (as we know from Book One, which starts with Daniel there already), but Leibniz convinces Daniel to assist him in his own research, which involves creating a data set for his mathematical machine. This data is recommended to be binary in nature, and preserved on something more permanent, such as gold sheets. This sticks out in my mind because in another work by Stephenson, The Cryptonomicon, Daniel's distant descendant Randy recovers a box full of things just as described from a salvaged U-Boat in the Philippines.

Along the way, the reader can learn more about manipulating money supplies than they ever thought they would know. The reader also gets a fair assessment of the calculus debate between Leibniz and Newton, and a clear and detailed expression of Leibniz's Monadology.

While a bit of a trek to get through these books, they are definitely worth the reading.

The Confusion is convoluted to be sure, but if you can keep track of the characters, not so much confusing. Lest the title fool you, however, at least twice within this tome's deep page count, characters mention that 'Con-Fusion' is also a term referring to the blending of metals (literally, to fuse them with one another). This is relevant to a Macguffin that drives what could be considered a part of the plot of some of the book, but also works as a nice analogy for the intermingling of world cultures that was really heating up in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. Whereas Stephenson focused (if that word can be used when describing The Baroque Cycle) on Western Europe and Franco-Anglo politics leading up to the Glorious Revolution, The Confusion manically zooms off to everywhere else and in between with a cast made up of an international and inter-social players.

Part one of this cycle is odd in that it is nearly 1,000 pages of dense historical scene-setting. As much as it has a plot, it flows like spilled water down a hillside, finding indirect routes that wend in counter-intuitive directions until it reaches its destination. But with all that context established and characters introduced, The Confusion is able to get down to the business of doing something, and that purpose, though obscure, really does elevate this above Quicksilver, which though very entertainingly written, feels in hindsight more like some mad genius had a stab at writing a historical travelogue.

Back are two of the principal protagonists, Jack Shaftoe and Eliza. The former now a galley slave in the Mediterranean, the latter a spy and financier lurking around the high echelons of Paris. The third protagonist, Daniel Waterstone, puts in a few key appearances, but doesn't figure in most of the action. Though, interestingly, his relationship with Isaac Newton leads to a rather important conversation that turns out to be a lynchpin of what these books are actually about (other than an novel and insightful account of the era). That scene aside, this is Jack and Eliza's book, and though they seldom share the same continent throughout this portion of the cycle, their lives are still interlinked.

Indeed, one of the most remarkable sequences in the entire cycle (I haven't read the third volume, but I have trouble imagining anything better), is actually a sequence of extended set-pieces, alternatively featuring Eliza then Jack, then Eliza again. It starts with a garden party and an encounter between Eliza (she's a countess now!) and a notorious Duke, then it careens down to Algiers where Jack and his misfit band of galley slaves enact a rousing caper. This is followed with a fascinating glimpse of 17th Century Cairo and a brilliantly crafted battle in the streets of the bazaar, which then jumps back to an eminent encounter with Eliza and no less than King Louis XIV. If it were all simply masterfully written, one would be impressed enough. But Stevenson has con-fused the events of these disparate tales such that everything that happens is interdependent with everything else, and a one-upping takes place as the stakes are constantly built up and re-contextualized. It was so much fun to read, and when it hit its climax, I realized that I was only about 300 pages into an 800 page book!

I can't say that anything else in the book matches the heady, tangled chaos of that bit, but the rest of the novel is highly enjoyable, with its collection of wild pan-global schemes, hidden agendas, and sprawling menagerie of international characters more than up to the task of keeping one's attention.

I honestly wasn't sure how frequently I would care to revisit Stephenson's loopy, baroque take on this era. How long would it take be to read all three volumes? But with two volumes finished I'm very much looking forward to The System of the World, which looks like it may have the most focused plot yet! I really can't wait.

The Confusion, volume two of The Baroque Cycle, is okay - somewhere between a 2 and a 3. It’s a con-fusion of Jack Shaftoe’s personal journey and a bridge volume depicting how the characters we met in the 1713 storyline of Quicksilver got there from wherever they were in the 1680s. The former moves all over the world in very made-up setups, while the latter is set against the backdrop of the European Nine Years War and ends as it sets up the War of Spanish Succession.

I did not have high expectations of this book to begin with. For one thing, the natural philosophy and Royal Society themes of Quicksilver were a major draw for me, and I was aware that this book would feature much less of those. For another, I was going to have to read what a middle-aged white guy had written about a bunch of foreigners having adventures in Mughal-era India. And a middle-aged white guy who has never demonstrated an understanding of the concept of Giving A Fuck, at that. All of my expectations were answered. The natural philosophy arc in this book is, apart from the obligatory bridging and some discourse on monadology, essentially a mass of repetition from the previous volume, and reaches a semi-climax where it devolves into an Interpersonal Drama with a none-too-subtle implied quadrangle. The India chapters were painful to read, featuring, among other things, Grossly Over Described Proper Nouns and a strong-headed female who takes a lesson from the hero, a la the glorious tradition of second-rate Tamil movies, not all of which should have seen the light of the day. Ironically, I am almost inclined to forgive the relationship drama, racism and cultural misrepresentation simply because of the inadvertent appeal to audiences that will never read or even hear of this book, and will probably not like it even if they did. The situation is almost ludicrous, if you think about it. While we’re on the subject of representation, this book should also have content warnings for anybody who has opinions on imposed religion, colonization and slavery.

Stephenson shows that he can write Plot and not just Exposition. There’s a lot of the former in this book, and consequently little of the latter, often arriving Just In Time for the characters and the readers. Things just keep happening, one after the other, and although many of them may not bear on the overall plotlines of the series, they do make a huge impact on the pacing. This book is much easier to read than Quicksilver, and most of the content is much easier to retain too.

Individual character arcs, barring a few exceptions, are underwhelming. Particularly disappointing is Daniel Waterhouse’s, as he achieves almost no emotional fulfillment and primarily serves as a plot device. The conclusion, as we saw in Quicksilver, is rather sad, as this man with a complex identity crisis ends up working at a data entry job for a project that is doomed anyway, considering the fact that von Neumann is not going to be born for a couple of hundred years yet. It’s not surprising though, for those who understand the role of the Waterhouse men in society. Eliza does not really distinguish herself, as most of her character growth in this novel concerns motherhood. She does pull some badass motherfuckery (not literally, of course), but it does not shine in comparison to her colorful past. But Eliza and Daniel are not the stars - this is a Shaftoe book. For the ones who do get personal growth and catharsis are, respectively, Christendom’s most famous deadbeat dad and the conventional dependable soldier whose only documented indiscretion was to screw Eliza. Not that Jack completely redeems himself - but he suffers, and he does learn to not fear things like establishment and short-term commitment and returns to London a different man.

This is a magnificent book, with discourses on economics and science, a good amount of drama and politics, a couple of likeable and non-disposable female characters (whose one conversation is not anything remarkable), some secondary characters who get a great backstory but are jettisoned midway, as well as a dose of mysticism. Alchemy plays a larger role in this book than the previous one, and certain rumors about Enoch Root that belie the hard science thematic identity are confirmed. However, the devil is in the details. The Malabar section reeks of fantasy, which leads one to wonder how much of the expository details in the non-Europe sections should be taken seriously. There are inconsistencies - lexical (why use both lanthorn and lantern throughout the books, or was it a typo?), character (A Sophie/Leibniz non-romance would fit the general themes, but is Leibniz not gay?) and factual (Jupiter and Neptune are not Olympians, as any fifth grader who has read enough Percy Jackson will tell you). One cannot wonder at these things though, since this book was written and published in a remarkably short time frame for a work of this size. But I don’t know how I would feel about this volume as a whole if it weren’t a part of The Baroque Cycle. Bonanza is Jack’s around-the-world adventure, and for all that it’s informative and engaging, I would have preferred to read the second act of it as an adventure genre story with more points of view and no ‘Malabaris’ in it. The Juncto is interesting, with an epistolary style that works, but not top-tier fiction. Overall, The Confusion is okay, and made significant by the opulence of its setting.