This enormous novel starts out well, but was in serious need of editing. There's probably a good 400-page novel in the 900 pages. Way too long, and way too much meandering filler. 2.5 stars, rounded up because, well, there is some really good stuff in with the flab. Disappointing. And boy, am I glad I'm living now, and not back then.

The review that comes closest to my reaction is Althea Ann's, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Here's the review that lead me to read it.
Patrick Ness's favorite novel,
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

"... I've simply gone for the sci-fi novel I enjoyed reading the most. Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is a huge (900-plus pages), brilliant, Arthur C Clarke award-winning story about the founding of modern science. It's also – incredibly – outrageously good fun."

So many people have already reviewed this book--so instead of a comprehensive review, I will only mention one of many truly memorable scenes. In a meeting of the Royal Society in London, various natural philosophers report on their recent findings, inventions and discoveries. The juxtaposition of banal reports with momentous discoveries is absolutely hilarious. I won't try to paraphrase it--the scene is lengthy--but this section is worth reading by any modern-day scientist. The point is that at the time of discovery, its true importance is not known, or even guessed at. It's only after time has passed that we learn whether a discovery is trivial or important.

I've owned this "cycle" of books for something like seven years. I don't read massive books but I did love Stephenson's cyberpunk books and this sounded interesting, but no way was I ever planning on reading it, size matters after all.

But I've had a hankering for something approaching the content of Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies since finishing the second book and despite being set over a hundred years later - taking place after the other Cromwell was beheaded - Quicksilver is similarly furnished with excellent period detail, political intrigues and as it's Stephenson great writing and the feeling of intense research behind it. And did I mention that it's massive?

I don't really know why it's science fiction, perhaps the alt-hist subgenre? But I'm going with it anyway and if I'm not totally burned out after a few quick reads I want to dive right back in to the sequence and get through the next 2000 pages or whatever at least by the end of the year.

It seems people who have read 'Quicksilver' have either loved it or hated it. I'm sorry to say, I belong to the second group.

Neal Stephenson originally became one of my favorite all-time authors for 'Snow Crash', for I felt his prose was quick, sharp, precise and very enjoyable. I remained a fan throughout 'Cryptonomicon', because although he was no longer quick, his drawn-out discussions on Things Geek remained fascinating.

I was looking forward to 'Quicksilver', but I'm afraid this book has seriously damaged the affection I had for Mr. Stephenson's work. Quicksilver is no longer witty, nor particularly fascinating. It sounds a lot like somebody who's spent a long time doing historical research setting out to prove the depth of his knowledge... which I guess is exactly what it is.

Stephenson spends the better part of this novel throwing out random historical facts of no importance whatsoever in the hopes of sounding as historically knowledgeable as, say, Umberto Eco. It seems in the middle of his research, Stephenson actually forgot about such things as 'plot', because all we're left with is a very, very, very long mess of discussions of things related to historical events and trying to cleverly tie in with historical characters such as Newton or Franklin.

To cap it off, this book is only one of three in a series (if you exclude Cryptonomicon as 'Volume 0'.) My god, how can one write so many pages on such a lack of plot? I cannot imagine plodding through another such book, let alone two 1000 pages bricks.

If you're thinking of picking this book up because you enjoyed 'Cryptonomicon', try and read a few pages in the library before shelling out the dough. Perhaps you will like it, but I certainly know I did not. I miss the days when Stephenson remembered how to get to the point and pack his novels with action and revelance, instead of being so infatuated with the names Waterhouse, Shaftoe and Root that he felt necessary to write 4000 pages about them.

I received an unexpected visit yesterday evening from a Mr. Nosnehpets, who told me he was a time-traveller and writer from the early 25th century. He had just published a historical novel, and wondered if I would do him the service of reviewing it.

"Why me?" I asked, bemused.

"Well," replied my visitor with an insinuating smile, "You appear in it more than once. You don't know it yet, but you're one of your period's major authors."

I snatched the book, Mercury, from his hands, and it was even as he said. There was hardly a chapter where I didn't turn up. Often I would speak for paragraphs at a time.

"You have cast me in an overly flattering light," I protested. "I think you'll find that quotation actually comes from Oscar Wilde. And this one is due to Winston Churchill."

"Details, details," said Nosnehpets impatiently. "Only the worst kind of wikipede is going to object. Try and see the big picture."

"I never came close to stopping the invasion of Iraq," I said faintly, as I continued to leaf through it. "I went to a demonstration in Washington, that's all. And I never had a torrid affair with Catherine Zeta-Jones. I know we were both brought up in Wales, but..."

Nosnehpets sighed. "I suppose you're going to tell me you didn't discover the Higgs particle either?" he asked, with an unpleasantly ironic inflection. "Even though you do admit that you were resident in Geneva in 2011, and you worked for years with Stephen Hawking?"

"I live in Geneva," I agreed reluctantly. "And in Cambridge, my office was on the other side of the road from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics. But to jump from that to..."

"You inspired them," snapped Nosnehpets. "Stop nitpicking. You and Angelina were the real source of all the ideas. If I've exaggerated a little, it was only for dramatic effect."

He looked hurriedly at his wrist. I suddenly noticed that what I had taken for a tattoo was actually a high-resolution display projected directly onto his skin.

"I'm sorry," he said. "The portal will be closing in a minute. But please, before I leave, just answer me one question. Why did you do it? Why did you destroy the whole world of classical literature? And why that ridiculous pseudonym? I've tried my best to explain it, but, honestly, I still don't understand."

I gaped at him. "Whatever are you talking about?" I asked.

He was already starting to fade, but I could still hear his voice. "Doctor Rayner," he whispered plaintively. "Why, why, why did you write Twilight?"

He may be over it by now (as I have not read any of his more recent work), but I’m convinced that at the time he was writing Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle (of which Quicksilver is the first volume), the first thing Neal Stephenson did every morning right after getting out of bed was to shamble into the bathroom and stand there for ten minutes, just staring bleary-eyed into mirror and bemoaning his fate that it was not Thomas Pynchon looking back at him.

If with Cryptonomicon Stephenson tried to write Gravity’s Rainbow, then the Baroque Cycle is his attempt at authoring Mason & Dixon, an exploration of modern technology and the effect it has had on the 20th century followed by a sprawling, weird, detail-obsessed historical novel. Unfortunately, Neal Stephenson was not only too late in both cases, but is also not nearly the writer Pynchon is, and therefore ended up failing rather spectacularly, producing a series of novels that, in spite of their massive bulk, seems rather flat and shallow if held up against Pynchon.

Admittedly, I am being somewhat unfair here – not every writer can be a Pynchon, and usually that is not something you’d hold against anyone. It is just that Stephenson so clearly, desperately wants to be Pynchon, making it impossible to not judge him by that standard, a standard which he just cannot measure up to. I already disliked Cryptonomicon, but that was at least was somewhat entertaining; while Quicksilver, when I first read it (shortly after it was released) was just a terrible slog to get through. I did made it to the end somehow, but didn’t touch another novel by Stephenson afterwards.

But sometimes I do get those strange urges, and a few months back I started ogling the Baroque Cycle again. Whatever the reason, after some months of futile resistance the urge became irresistible, I got myself the e-book version of Stephenson’s trilogy and started – not without some misgivings – digging into Quicksilver. And ended up surprised at how much I was enjoying it – so much so, in fact, that I read the whole of the Baroque Cycle, all almost 3000 pages of it in almost exactly a month.

Which is not to say that I did not still have some problems with it. If one comes to this novel with Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series fresh in one’s mind it is almost painfully obvious to what degree Quicksilver fails as a straight historical novel. Not that I’d have thought even for a moment that Stephenson attempted to write one, but his attempts at mimicking the Baroque writing style are quite grating after O’Brian’s full immersion in his chosen period (and don’t even get me start on a comparison to Mason & Dixon). Stephenson seems half-hearted by comparison, his occasional usage of old spellings seems arbitrary (for example he inexplicably keeps writing “roofs” as “rooves” but is perfectly happy to use a modern spelling for most words) and generally gives the impression of someone just wanting to show off (which I strongly suspect is the raison d’être for a lot of the extended, quite often tedious descriptions of all sorts of minutiae). But then, this is not really supposed to be a strictly historical novel – Stephenson liberally peppers his narrative with anachronisms, and the auctorial is distinctly contemporary and postmodern. Which has the rather unfortunate effect that the novel reads like it wasn’t able to take itself seriously – on the one hand, it is a serious historical novel with a plethora of period detail, on the other it seems more preoccupied with finding precursors modern concerns like programming languages and arbitrary signifiers; on the one hand it seems to want to say something important, on the other it’s just here to have some fun.

Quicksilver is separated into three parts, each with a different protagonist, each of which seems to also work as some kind of allegory – Daniel Waterhouse who is the protagonist of the first book, is a Man of Science, Jack Shaftoe, protagonist of the second, is a rogue and classical picaro, and Eliza (not sure we ever learn her second name), protagonist of the third book and a genius of financial manipulation. Personally, I rather liked the first books but I suspect that was mostly because I already had an interest in the history of science of that period, but most readers (and that would include me) tend to prefer the second, because it is there that Stephenson changes from trying to write serious literature (which, seriously, he is just no good at) to spinning a yarn of colourful adventure (which, it turns out, he is really good at). “King of te Vagabonds,” the Jack Shaftoe part of the novel is an inordinate amount of fun, taking our morally doubtful hero from Vienna to the Netherlands to Paris in a series of increasingly wild and improbable adventures in the true picaresque manner and lets the reader forget about the ponderous, slow-moving first part with several hundred pages of glorious entertainment.

Unfortunately, Stephenson then goes and ruins it all (well, part of it, anyway) with the third part where things just fall apart – for some reason, he decided to not tell his tale straight any more but instead approaches all the important events in his narrative at an oblique angle, only telling of them indirectly and second-hand, which gets really annoying after a while and again slows the novel’s speed down to a crawl.

I’m really not someone who scolds novel for being pretentious – usually, I find that it is just a convenient (and extremely flimsy) excuse for lazy readers to not have to read novels that are difficult or challenging in any way and which might possibly ask of them to think about what they are reading, or even only just pay attention to it. With Quicksilver, however, I think the shoe fits – this is a wonderful adventure novel (almost) ruined by its pretensions to be something more. Thankfully, Neal Stephenson seems to have realized where his true talents lie, and things improve steadily over the next two volumes.

7/10

I know the guy is brilliant and knows a lot of stuff about a lot of subjects, and in Anathem and Cryptonomicon he showed me he could write a long book and keep it interesting and even exciting. I also realize that he was inspired (as I was) by several of Pynchon's books especially Against the Day and Mason & Dixon when he wrote this one. But, really did not enjoy the first third I found it boring, confusing, and muddled. The section was my favorite because the most lovable characters here are Jack Shaftoe and Eliza and their relationship was truly interesting. However, he lost me again at the last third. I guess I am saying that I really didn't like the Daniel Waterhouse character at all, and since a good 40-50% of the book focused on him, that bummed me out. I wish he had spent more pages on the enigmatic Enoch Root than all the court intrigue in England that reminded me of why I hated Wolf Hall so much. It is strange, admittedly, that the French court intrigues were more interesting to me than the English ones, but then all the killing and torture due to stupid religious differences on both shores of the Channel were equally appalling and meaningless. I think that this book could have used an editors scissors at some point because it really is too long. In the other two long Stephenson books, either he went from a static universe inside the concent to the outside world as in the former or he kept two parallel timelines with far more interesting incarnations of Daniel, Jack, and Enoch as in the latter, but here it comes across as imply too long. I'll probably give Neal the benefit of the doubt and trudge on to The Confusion because I want to see what happens to Jack on the galley boat.

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Stephenson’s tome of a book follows a handful of main characters as they navigate the changing political, philosophical, and social landscape of early modern Europe. We get to see characters like Newton, Hooke, and Leibniz through the eyes of a rather less important (and fictional) Royal Society member, Daniel Waterhouse. Other main characters include a vagabond and a Turkish harem slave turned lady and spy (these two are obviously my favorites), through whom we experience the tumultuous politics and precarity of existence during this time.

Stephenson did an amazing job doing historical research, and really trying to understand the philosophical and political stakes of different theories of the world during this period. He really gets the political nature of seemingly apolitical matters—even if at its heart Natural Philosophy was about understanding, all men are political creatures with egos and stakes, and those are well represented here. I also like his attempt to link economic to philosophical theories—I really hope he goes further with this in subsequent books because there is SO much more to say about how economic modeling borrowed from natural models (and vice versa). The character Eliza is well poised to investigate this.

This rating is more like 4.5 from me, but I can’t bring myself to give it a five because there are some places in the narrative that I just didn’t really feel worked for him. For example, his attempts to transition in and out of an epistolary format were way less engaging than his first- or third-person prose. Also, he has a few theatrical vignettes that do represent the period well but are drawn out and more difficult to read. The one exception to this is the reading of the minutes of the historical society (if you have never read the actual historical minutes you might think Stephenson is being a comedian here, but no, they really are that weird and hilarious!).

Often when I know something about a subject I get distracted by picking out inaccuracies, but I have to say that Stephenson did not give me much to complain about on that level. I thought it was exciting that he seemed to understand how the concept of force was viewed as mystical or alchemical in its time since there was no physical causal explanation—yet it just seemed to work. He could have made Hooke way funnier (Micrographia is an amazing and imaginative read and Hooke was suuuper quirky), but in general I was happy and am looking forward to where he takes this transformative tale in the next book…

That one man sickens and dies, while another flourishes, are characters in the cryptic message that philosophers seek to decode.
- Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

Not done, with BIG Quicksilver, just finished internal-Book 1: Quicksilver. It gives a bit of a low-brow SF Pynchon vibe. It works well in parts, and falls a bit flat in parts. I sometimes wish Stephenson wouldn't chase down every last snowflake. I really do, however, enjoy the primary narrator Daniel Waterhouse and his interactions with such figures as Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys, John Wilkins, etc.

Having already read Cryptonomicon, I was also glad to see Enoch Root (one of my favorite characters from that book). Like Pynchon, Stephenson takes historical fiction and probes the fiction needle into history at funky angles. He thrills at causing his fictional characters to interact in oblique ways to historical characters. Given the large amount of negative space in history (think about how much we DON'T know about people like Newton, or even the consumate diariest Pepys), a creative writer of historical fiction can bend/reflect/refract the light of the past to tell many compelling stories (and they don't even have to be plausable, they just can't completely contradict major historical events).

4.0 Stars
Video: https://youtu.be/eLlHLaTmHd0

As a huge fan of Neal Stephenson, I am slowly working through his backlist which means tackling the daunting Baroque Cycle. Quicksilver is an intimidating read and I would not recommend starting here with his work.

I don't read a lot of historical fiction so this one went a bit over my head in places. There were so many references to people and events that I was not very familiar with. Yet that's what I love about this author. I love that he inspires me to learn and research.

I enjoyed some sections of this novel more than others but I overall really enjoyed it. I will absolutely be continuing on with the rest of the series.

The gold that paid for a pound of Malabar pepper was melted and fused with the gold that paid for a boatload of North Sea herring, and all of it was simply gold, bearing no trace or smell of the fish or the spice that had fetched it. In the case of Cœlestial Dynamics, the gold—the universal medium of exchange, to which everything was reduced—was force.
- Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver



Book 1: Quicksilver

That one man sickens and dies, while another flourishes, are characters in the cryptic message that philosophers seek to decode.
- Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

Book 1: Quicksilver gives off a bit of a low-brow SF Pynchon vibe. It works well in parts, and falls a bit flat in parts (dialogue, etc). I sometimes wish Stephenson wouldn't chase down every last snowflake. I really do, however, enjoy the primary narrator Daniel Waterhouse and his interactions with such figures as Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys, John Wilkins, etc.

Having already read Cryptonomicon, I was also glad to see Enoch Root (one of my favorite characters from that book). Like Pynchon, Stephenson takes historical fiction and probes the fiction needle into history at funky angles. He thrills at causing his fictional characters to interact in oblique ways to historical characters. Given the large amount of negative space in history (think about how much we DON'T know about people like Newton, or even the consumate diariest Pepys), a creative writer of historical fiction can bend/reflect/refract the light of the past to tell many compelling stories King of the Vagabonds(and they don't even have to be plausable, they just can't completely contradict major historical events).

Book 2: King of the Vagabonds

"Jack had been presented with the opportunity to be stupid in some, way that was much more interesting than being shrewed would've been. These moments seemed to come to Jack every few days."
- Neal Stephenson, King of the Vagabonds

Stephenson continues his Quicksilver Volume with Book 2: King of the Vagabonds. Where Book 1: Quicksilver dealt primarily with Isaac Newton and Daniel Waterhouse, King of the Vagabonds centers around the adventures of "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe*, Doctor Leibniz, and Eliza. It seems to have taken stock of Joseph de la Vega's .
'Confusion de Confusiones (1688), and perhaps also Charles Mackay's later Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and even Frances and Joseph Gies' Life in a Medieval City. Much of the book involves the adventures of two or three of the above Jack, Liebniz, Eliza making their way across many of the markets and cities of Europe. It allows Stephenson to discuss not only the politics of the age of Louis XIV, but also the changing markets (Leipzig, Paris, London, Amsterdam), politics, religion, and birth of the Age of Resaon.

Stephenson has said in Book 1 he was primarily dealing with nobility and the top-end of the economic ladder. So, in Book 2 he wanted to spend a bit of time at the bottom of the ladder (hence Vagabonds).

* "Half-Cocked" Jack Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse, and Eliza (of Qwghlm) are all ancestors of characters from Stephenson earlier book, Cryptonomicon. Enoch Root appears in this book as well as in Quicksilver AND Cryptonomicon. He is like a Zelig for science. Always appearing just where he needs to be to give the wheel a turn, the cart a push, the clock of progress a wind.

Book 3: Odalisque

"Even a well-made clock drifts, and must be re-set from time to time."
- Neal Stephenson, Odalisque

An odalisque was a chambermaid or a female attendant in a Turkish haram (seraglio), particularly the ladies in haram of the Ottoman sultan.

So, the book title references Eliza, who in book 2: King of the Vagabonds is rescued by "Half-Cock" Jack (King of the Vagabonds). Eliza in this book enters the world of European economics and spycraft. She rises from broker of the French nobility, eventually earning the title of Countess of Zeur. She also aids William of Orange as he prepares to invade England, gaining the added title of Duchess of Qqghlm. Odalisque also brings us back to Daniel Waterhouse.

I personally missed Jack Shaftoe, but that was partially assisted because we were introduced to his brother Bob Shaftoe.

I've enjoyed Volume one. I'm a big fan of the Age of Enlightenment and was thrilled to experience of fictionalized Pepys, Newton, Leibniz, William of Orange, etc.

***

Negatives of the book(s), and series, so far? Like in Cryptonomicon Stephenson is going big (think Pynchon, Eco, etc), but his prose is flat often and his dialogue is worse. The dialogue seems closer to a Boston pub in 1987 than in a Royal Society meeting, but meh. It was still intersting and fascinating. I like the label: History of Science Fiction. So, I might not read this one twice, but I'll for sure finish the series - just not tonight.