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Title: Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) by Neal Stephenson ISBN: 0-380-97742-7 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.26 (178 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: why I was royally disappointed with _Quicksilver_
Comment: The ironically named _Quicksilver_ is the most disappointingly leaden
book it has been my displeasure to read in recent years.
After _Cryptonomicon_ my expectations were high. Early on in
_Quicksilver_ I realized that there was no way this book could be as
good as the earlier one, so I adjusted my hopes downward
accordingly...and even then, I was disappointed.
The flaws are numerous.
The one thing that everyone knows about the book is that it contains a
frantic pile of trivia. I was actually looking forward to this aspect
of the book, given that I enjoy random learning opportunities as much
as the next geek, and given that this is one part of _Cryptonomicon_
that I was enthused about. _QS_ disappoints in this regard. To my
mind there are two main bins that trivia are sorted in to: (1) those
random items that are capable of clicking in an interesting way into
the knowledge structure I already have; and (2) utterly random
tidbits. NS delivered a few of the former, and a few truck-loads of
the latter. In so far as the trivia was interesting, I already knew
it (Germanic witch trials, etymology of the word "dollar", the broad
outlines and purposes of the various 16th century political
structures), and in so far as the trivia was not something I already
knew, I found it dreadfully boring (hail-storms of random names of
royalty, many of them playing minimal roles in the plot, etc.).
Ah. I used the word "plot", so I've segued onto the next region of
disappointment. _QS_ does not have a plot, in the conventional sense.
Sure, in a 900 page novel (or a 2,700 page novel, really), one
wouldn't expect the broad sweep of the action to be clear by page 50,
or 100...but by page 500 or so, one would hope to have an idea of
where things might be going. The book has Theme aplenty.
The Theme, however ("Things Really Changed a Whole Lot, Religiously,
Economically, Politically, and Scientifically"), is big, but too
insubstantial and too vague to construct a huge novel like this on.
_A Winter's Tale_ managed to work very well with out a real plot - it
could hang off of the Theme that "New York changes a lot, and is
magical through the ages". Then again, _A Winter's Tale_ was about
1/9th the length of Stephenson's Inflated Series.
Speaking of inflation, this book needed an editor, badly. Dialogue
and exposition are clunky in many many places. For that matter,
dialogue and exposition are poorly differentiated. There's a joke about
1950's science fiction that 3/4 of the plot and background information
are revealed in "As you know, Bob" asides. The same is true of _QS_.
There's some minor variation on a theme: there's "As you know", there
is "I need not mention the fact that X ...<1,000 words
elided>...because you already know that", and there is "as everyone in
the town knew...".
There's a persistent and pernicious meme in the art world that to
truly convey some situations you need to recreate those situations for
the audience. Thus, the only way to convey tedium is through a four
hour movie, etc. NS seemed to be held by this meme: to convey the
intellectual ferment and vast scope of the 17th century he felt the
need write a book that was adrift in a ferment and vast in scope.
Certainly he could not have conveyed these things in a novella, but
that does not mean that he could not have pruned perhaps a third of
what he wrote.
The book is large enough that there's a Dramatis Personae at the end,
which was somewhat useful...but it didn't work wonderfully well for
me, because the entries were fairly short and defined the characters
(well, historical figures) mostly in terms of descriptors and events
that did not take place inside the book. If I come across a character
who I know was present 500 pages earlier, but I'm trying to remember
whether that character was a alchemist or a merchant, it helps little
to learn that the character was a friend of the Duke of Wessex (or
what have you). This is not a huge departure from how Dramatis
Personae are usually implemented, so this is not a failing unique to
NS, but in a long, meandering, and yawn-inducing book the author
should be at particular pains to provide aids to the reader.
Finally, I found it difficult to read the book at points because of
several incidents of barbarous cruelty to animals. I understand that
the moral code of the time was different, and that these actions are
historically accurate, and even that some reference should be made in
the book, so as not to commit the sin of omission, and thus render the
book less of its time...but NS went further than that and introduced
the cruelty repeatedly. If it was required to advance the plot, he'd
have an out. I would wince (and more) at a book that had explicit
scenes of child rape or brutality, but would accept it if the book was
about the pursuit and capture of a child abuser...but I would find it
hard to read a novel that threw in a random scene of a child being
scalded as punishment just, because, you know...these things happen.
Yeah.
Yay verisimilitude.
The book was not with out wondrous scenes. Jack Shaftoe steps onto
center stage in an audacious scene at the siege of Vienna, which
matched the very best action scenes of _Cryptonomicon_. Daniel
Waterhouse meets up with danger at sea, and the intellectual faint and
bluff of the ensuing engagement is wonderful, as is the nonchalance of
the captain of the ship that Daniel is on. However, the scenes are
all too rare and far between, and concentrated disproportionately in
the first half of the novel.
I suppose I'll end up reading the remaining two volumes to see if NS
manages to pull a rabbit out of a very battered and pathetic looking
hat...but I've got to say, I'm not particularly looking forward to
another 1,800 pages of lying back and thinking of Enlightenment
England.
Rating: 5
Summary: Neal Just Gets Better & Better
Comment: The name may be Quicksilver but the read is hardly that. And I'm happy about it. This is a book that I simply could not put down. History, politics, science, philosophy and quite a bit of humour all find their way into Neal's current opus. He has chosen a time and place (actually several times & places) that today can be looked back on as watershed years for all the subjects he has chosen to cover.
Does he ramble on? Yes. Does he provide too much detail on some aspects and not enough on others? Yes. But at no point are you not entertained and enlightened. And that to me is the key. Not only did I learn more about Newton, Hooke, Leibniz, Huygens and Pepys from Mr. Stephenson, I actually spent many hours researching these and other historical figures and historical events during and after my read.
This book is not for everyone but there is something in it for NEARLY everyone. Neal's previous works such as Snow Crash, Zodiac and most obviously Cryptonomicon were mere lead off hitters for this grand slam.
I truly cannot wait for the 2 follow ups that Neal has promised in 2004. I may just book a few days off immediately after their release so I can devote my full time to losing myself in their pages as I did with Quicksilver.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wow, just wow
Comment: To start off, let's talk about a few things that 'Quicksilver' is not. First of all, it's not really sci-fi. If someone held to my head and forced me to categorize the thing, I'd say it's either 'speculative-fiction' - a genre name that seems to have fallen by the wayside of late - or that it belongs to whatever category that 'Mason & Dixon' and 'The Sotweed Factor' belong to - overwrought, anachronistic, pomo, pseudo-historical novels, or something similar.
What else is this book not? Well-plotted, I suppose. It does meander here and there, and the thread tying everything together seems to be along the lines of 'A whole lot of really interesting and revolutionary stuff is happening all over the place.' Is that a problem? Not for me. A) I like books that meander and B) this is the first of a trilogy - I trust things will begin to gel in the coming two books.
So what is 'Quicksilver?' Well, it works on a number of levels. In the first 300 pages or so, it is largely a novel of ideas, of the philosophical, scientific and political explosion occurring in Europe in the latter half of the 17th century. Then the focus shifts to some entirely new characters, and we're smack dab in the middle of some swashbuckling adventure melded with a nuanced tale of international finance. And then the last third of the book tries to, sort of, unite the two approaches. There are times when the whole beast, to my mind, seems to be a story of the development of a vast and primitive internet.
For me it's all fascinating, digressions included. Admittedly, I tend to favor big bloated novels, but I think that Stephenson has done something special here - it's a big bloated novel that works, not just as a rarified text of ideas and metaphors and such, but as a damn enjoyable story with characters that I care about.
I can't recommend this enough.
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Title: The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2) by Neal Stephenson ISBN: 0060523867 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 13 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson ISBN: 0060512806 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 05 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan ISBN: 0345457684 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson ISBN: 0399149864 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: 03 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title:The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition) ASIN: B00009TB5G Publisher: New Line Home Entertainment Pub. Date: 18 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.99 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $25.99 |
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