Quicksilver

I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson.  I am well on my way to having read everything that he has ever written.  My most recent read in his bibliography is Quicksilver, which is the first book in his Baroque Cycle, a historical fiction series.  The Baroque Cycle is a trilogy in eight parts (to paraphrase the Hitchhiker's Guide series) and as a whole spans from the 1660's to the 1710's, chock full of enlightenment era goodness.  Quicksilver contains the first three books of the eight: Quicksilver, The King of the Vagabonds, and Odalisque.  Of these three, I would say that the middle one is clearly the best.  It pains me to say so because I do enjoy mathematics and physics and much of the first and third books deal with a young Issac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz they did drag somewhat.  In contrast with that, most of the second book is told from the third person limited point of view of a vagabond.  The story flows better and is more entertaining for sure.

Like all Stephenson books, this has tidbits of humor sprinkled throughout, really lightening the mood and causing occasional chuckles (there is one part in The King of the Vagabonds involving cuckoo clocks that made me laugh riotously).  In addition, the characters are well formed and the setting is incredibly well executed.  The author uses some enlightenment era jargon ("phant'sy" instead of fantasy for example) and takes every opportunity to explain the origin of words and ideas.  While this novel does play a little fast and loose with the exact players, the historical events portrayed mostly accurate and shape the development of the characters.  Someone who doesn't know much about 17th century European history can still find the story engaging (and perhaps educational too) and those who do know about it will still be left guessing about how the events will shape and affect the characters in the story.

Overall, while the first part was lackluster (compared to Stephenson's other works at least) it was good enough to encourage me to persevere on to the second and that was a good story that was continued into the third.  I am currently reading the second book in the trilogy and do not yet regret my decision to give up on Quicksilver.  It is a large book but an enjoyable one.

While I would not normally divide a book into sections like this, the disparity between the first part and the rest of the book is significant.  I would give the first part a 65%, the second part an 85%, and the third part an 80%.

If you have not read anything by Neal Stephenson, I highly recommend Snow Crash and Anathem.  They are both exceedingly good books.

Snow Crash was written in the early 1990's and predicted many aspects of the internet fairly accurately.  Despite being written so long ago, the book holds up pretty well as a futuristic story.  The book is a fun read, being smart and humorous (the main character is named Hiro Protagonist), and I would recommend it regardless of your technological savvy.

Anathem was, without a doubt, the best book I read last year.  It is a really strange blending of the fantasy and science fiction genres but it is great.  About three quarters of the way through the book I looked back on the journey that brought me from the beginning to that point and was amazed.  I really cannot say enough good things about this book.  The one problem some readers might have is that the book has its own slang and titles (sort of like Clockwork Orange) and it takes 100 pages or so to get used to that.  That would be a bigger issue in a shorter book but Anathem clocks in at just over 900 pages, making it just a minor bump in the beginning.