Pros: Frequently hilarious; Stephenson's wordplay and punning are as keen as ever.
Cons: Anyone who finishes this scientific juggernaut deserves an honorary B.S.
The Bottom Line: The Bottom Line phant'sies that logickal thought and experimentation will discover the Alchymickal and Ineffable Mysteries of the Worlde.
disinclined's Full Review: Neal Stephenson - Quicksilver
Ever since I first heard that Neal Stephenson was coming out with a new book, I’ve been awaiting it with equal parts excitement and dread. How, after all, could he top 1999’s Cryptonomicon, that sprawling wartime epic of codebreakers and computer geeks? To what subject would this renowned cyberpunk author next turn his attention? And how many upper-division classes would I have to take to keep pace with Stephenson’s graph-intensive, multi-page mathematical proofs this time? As it turns out, I’d have been better off doing less fretting and more weight-lifting, for the 900-page Quicksilver is just the first in the forthcoming Baroque Cycle trilogy. Strangely enough, the more I read, the less sure I was whether I liked it or not; but is it the usual Part-One-of-Three syndrome, or something more problematic?
As the trilogy’s title suggests, the book is set in the Baroque Era (late seventeenth century and early eighteenth). There are three main story arcs here, each more or less following one of several protagonists: Daniel Waterhouse, a Natural Philosopher cursed with peers like Newton, Leibniz, and Huygens, and therefore doomed to anonymity for want of genius; Jack Shaftoe, an itinerant and syphilitic ne’er-do-well whose sword-for-hire hijinks are the talk of Europe; and Eliza, a disturbingly beautiful girl kidnapped from her homeland of Qwghlm and enslaved in a Turkish harem – an ideal preparation for her career as a European courtier. How these characters attain their own individual brands of notoriety – and the succession of events that brings them into each other’s orbit – is the focus of Quicksilver.
And, for the most part, the characters work; at least, they work well enough to hang the desultory plot on. Stephenson delights in portraying geeks – particularly Famous Historical Geeks – in all their brilliant, tactless, prickly, idiosyncratic glory, and his love of characterization is evident in his affectionate portrayal of real-life scientific giants. Daniel Waterhouse, by comparison, is a straight man, a likable but unremarkable man of modest achievements whose main function is to navigate us through his world from luminary to luminary. Eliza, like previous female protagonists attempted by the author, is problematic, a computer geek’s wet dream: terrifyingly intelligent, ferociously lusty, and beautiful enough to render men speechless wherever she roams. Oh, and she appears to be the world’s first female cryptographer-spy (which, it seems, is something you can just sort of pick up in your spare time). Quite simply, she’s unbelievable, as are her romantic relationships (also a problem in Stephenson’s other works); if the flaw of the Natural Philosophers is their arrogant certainty in their own rightness and their refusal to step outside their quirky comfort zones, Eliza’s flaw is that she changes too much, too easily, and too quickly to keep up with.
I don’t know anyone who can sail smoothly through Stephenson’s dizzying, dazzling onslaught of high-concept, science-loaded prose; even his helpfully illustrated explanations tend to be beyond my ability to grasp. To successfully read this book, you will need: the ability to draw, without peeking, the royal family trees of England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire; a flawless comprehension of the battle for succession to the throne, and the intricacies of court politics; familiarity with the great scientists of the Baroque Era and their work; and an intimate understanding of the prevailing religious sects of the time, their major beliefs, and their grudges and alliances with each other. Oh, and a thorough knowledge of the development of stocks, shipping corporations, and banking institutions wouldn’t hurt, either.
For most of us, all the political and scientific background is just that – background, a way to establish the setting for the action. Stephenson, however, seems to view the religious squabbling and the endless scientific discourse as exciting, page-turning plot development. If you’re not similarly fascinated by this stuff, you’re going to have a steep uphill climb ahead of you. Likewise, the frequent flash-forwards and flashbacks defy the reader’s attempts to understand the chronological sequence of events. The sheer volume of information to process can be maddening, especially the accompanying suspicion that you, the reader, are the only one having difficulty with any of this.
Stephenson is an immensely talented writer, and even an epic of this magnitude is not beyond his grasp. It’s obvious that he’s done buckets of research, and that he’s got all the plot threads securely in his hands, ready to tweak or let dangle, as he sees fit. Clearly, Stephenson finds all this stuff fascinating and cliff-hangingly suspenseful; unfortunately, he’s not able to convey that excitement and drama to the reader, and a few family trees and charts of geometrical proofs aren’t enough to get us properly in the spirit of things. As a die-hard Stephenson fan, I’ll be slogging my way through The Confusion (due out April 2004) and The System of the World (October 2004); but if your soul quails at the thought of roughly 2,700 pages of scientific arcana, it’s understandable. Even for the most dedicated of readers, Quicksilver is slow going.
In this wonderfully inventive follow-up to his bestseller Cryptonomicon, Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in a time of bre...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.